Episode: 2822
Title: HPR2822: What's in the Box! Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2822/hpr2822.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 17:18:41

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This is HBR Episode 2008122 entitled What's in the Box.
Part 1 and is part of the series, Hobby Electronics.
It is hosted by NY Wheel and is about 21 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summer is, and it will open the mystery box, if found in the mailbox.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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Hello, this is NY Bill and I'm here with, I don't know what I'm here with, actually, two
weeks ago Box arrived in my mailbox and I know who it's from now because they sent me
a question, I think it was signal asking if it had arrived or if it, but it takes a
little while to get this game all the way from England, it came from Cornwall, it came
from Mr. Tim Timmy and I have no idea what it is.
I've just put it on my bench and he kind of hinted that it might be electronics in nature,
so I said when I get some time to record, I'll open it up and I'll, let's see what this
is.
I'm going to open the window while we can listen to the rain now, but it's hot in here.
It's finally getting towards spring.
Oh, drop my ball.
So let me get a knife and see what's in here, where do I start opening it?
I guess I don't start opening it, I just peel off Marshall, did you completely cover
this tape as a joke?
I don't even get in here.
Watch, I'll get through all this tape and he'll have sent me a box of tape, that would
be.
I'm going to call this episode tape.
Finally, holy cow, no, he's got tape going in the other direction too.
If you can hear a card doorbell, that's one of my buddy's sent me a text.
Marshall, I'm going to edit this so everybody doesn't have to listen to it, but I'm going
to send you the raw, because this is 3.45, 3 minutes and 45 seconds of me opening tape,
buddy.
You're going to have to listen to it all.
It's in an HP box.
It's in a toner box.
He sent me some crunch bang stickers, awesome man.
Wow, that brings back memories.
He's still had some of these, huh?
Cool.
One of those is going right on the new laptop, because I didn't have one.
What is this?
Oh, sweet.
It looks like a guitar pedal kit.
A tremolo.
Awesome.
Yeah, I do like these.
Tremos.
I had one way back in the day by boss.
Wow, this is a lot of parts.
Thank you, man.
Yeah, we'll get an HP R or two out of this.
The build of this.
Debian volume.
It's a complete kit.
That's awesome.
Nice.
I'll just open it up a bit here.
Let me check and take a look at the board.
That looks pretty straightforward.
Cool.
Well, this might be a short HP R, but I have to build this thing now.
I hope it doesn't work the first time, and I got to fix it.
That'll be good.
All right.
It takes Marshal.
That's awesome.
So I just went down and showed Mrs. NY Bill, and she said, who knew guitars needed pedals?
How do you think they get all the noises here?
Oh, Mrs. NY Bill.
So I thought, you know, I'll build this up someday, and then I realize it's raining out.
There's nothing to do.
I'm going to start building it now.
It's fun.
The instructions are minimum.
They just show where each component goes.
So I'll build this up like I do all my boards, lowest components first, and then stack
up.
I wonder why there's so many LEDs.
Oh, no, just the one LED.
All right.
So let's see what we got here.
Magnification, because I'm getting old.
Transistors.
I wonder if they're doing like a push pull thing with the transistors.
And resistors.
I'll start with the resistors.
Well, I'm going to have to edit some of this out because I'm in a long text conversation
with a bunch of friends from the look.
My buddy, B. Spamike, is a Lenovo fanatic.
So I'm just, he says he's going to start cleaning his house and start actually getting rid
of stuff.
But I just told him I picked up a pallet of Lenovo's from an old school, and he's going
to want that.
Let me send it.
All right.
Yeah, it's like, what is this episode going to be like, an evening with Bill?
All right.
Let's open up these resistors.
Well, I'm curious where you got this from, Timmy.
I had a tremolo once, a boss tremolo, and it was used, and it worked fine in the store
when I got home.
I started doing this weird, I think it was a ground loop.
So like a weird buzz sound to it, but the buzz was in the tremolo, like, yeah, that's
what a buzz sounds like in a tremolo.
I wonder why I got so many of these leads up to the, yeah, up to the pots, of course.
So that's nice.
They labeled the resistors for you.
They don't have to get out a meter and check each one.
Well, I'll pause it here while I populate some parts.
20 meg.
I might have to put this one on the meter.
I can't read the writing of whoever wrote very tiny on your 20 meg, or 2.2 meg, probably
2.2.
I'll just save that one to last.
This is something I do.
If you're not sure of a component's value, or it's like, way in between something, just
leave it to the last one you put in, and it might, you know, it's going to be the last
slot on the board.
Yeah, it's hard to read this person's writing 10k, I think this is.
I'm going to check a few of these.
Let me turn on the meter, ohms, 1.2 k ohms, when you're here's a tip, when you're using
a meter to check resistance, your tendency is to grab both leads and push them down onto
the probes with your thumb.
You're actually going to start reading the resistance in your body as well.
So if I hold this one, I'm only holding one end, and I got 1.2 k ohms, but if I touch my
thumb on the other end as well, it goes down to 1.1 k ohm, that's not much, but I am changing
the resistance by using both my thumb.
So that's 1.2 k ohm, all right, it goes there, here I'll check this one, that one I said
I'll save the last, let me just check it while I got the meter going, so it's 0.8, no,
2.2 mega ohm, yeah, 2.2 so that's a 2.2, it goes right there, all right I got it.
Did you buy one of these for yourself, Marshall, to build as well?
I know you're into guitars, and I know you're a guy that's not afraid to solder, or did
you build one already?
All right, there's the resistors populated, I got the wrong tip in my, I got a tip I
don't want in my soldering iron and it's already hot, let's try that again, I'm trying
to clip the leads of the resistors and get them all to fall in the box, but inevitably
one goes flying off and it's in the rug somewhere and it'll stick in my sock and some
future date.
Oh, look at that, 2 I forgot the solder, well clipping them off I just sold 2.
When you bend the pins over on like all the resistors at once it's like a little forest,
sometimes you can't see a couple in there, just put it back in the stand and I lost it
again, there's it, maybe it was just the one, oh there it is, all right what's next, next
biggest thing, next biggest thing is the transistors, so what do we got here, I got to look
under the, we got 2N 3904's, 2N 3904's, I'm going to go look up what that is, but 2N
3904 is a NPN transistor and they're look, let me look at the traces, they're putting
them in, kind of back to back here, then there's one other transistor, a K30A, I've never
heard of this, oh it's a fat, now I've never heard of this one, so this one goes in down
here, there's the transistors, next up in height-wise is, oh these look like a little
tantalum, tantalum capacitors, oh they're dipped, they look like they're just dipped in
some type of plastic, these are 105's, and then we got another, this looks like a tantalum
there's a little tantalum, 1.75224, what the heck is that, oh it's 224 over here, all right
I got to open up another package of, what's all this, this is all the pots and the LED,
I don't know, here's a 3-pole double throw switch for like a true bypass, I'm not sure
if these are directional, I guess I have to check them with them either, I'm gonna put
that in last, that's pretty tall, got some pots here, here's an LED, on these instructions,
I'm not sure what's going on here, it looks like they've drawn two bodge wires from the
3-pole double throw down to the 1-meg resistor, and then they crossed it out, and then
they've drawn another one between the 1-micro-fared cap and the center leg of the transistor, and
then they've crossed it out, so I don't know if, I don't know if you need to put those
jumpers in, or they didn't, and they didn't, or Marshall did you buy one of these kits and
put it together and it didn't work, this might be like long distance troubleshooting,
let's see, okay, it just took a little while to kind of figure out these pots, you've got
a D1D2D3, you've got a V1D2D3, and an S3S2, okay, speed volume depth, and it doesn't
tell you which wires to use for what, so I'm just gonna make it up, I'm gonna put, in all
the one positions, I'm gonna put black, they give you black red and white, oh speed
only gets two wires, so it's only got speed only has two and three, for two I'll use red
I guess, and then S2, the speed does have a number two right there, boy this just reminded me
I started another, I think it was another HBR I did where I was talking about etching, and
I etched a board for a big muff pipe pedal, a distortion pedal, and I never finished back, it's
still over there, it's over near my computer, it's just not a case yet, and I haven't tested it,
maybe someday, so the three wire, D3, those are all, I'm gonna have to be white, so here's S3,
I was soldering the wire, and when I let go of everything the wire fell back out, so I gotta
clean this all up, LED plus LED minus, plus I'll do red, minus I'll do black, last thing
is the switch I'm gonna put in here, because it's big hunk and switch, so the pins on this
are pretty heavy duty, if you're soldering something like that, put your soldering pan on one side
of the heavy duty metal, and then bring your solder into the other side of that metal, so you get
everything up to the same heat, it's kind of like the way plumbers do a coupling or a joint,
now I just got to remember which one of these was what, we got three different parts,
500mg, the one that wasn't labeled is the 500mg, that is for depth, so depth 123, oh that's a tricky one,
let me take a picture, so I got the potentiometer up in the vice, and then I gotta just bring the
leads up with my thumb and finger, that's a trick, okay I'm gonna do the barrel jack now, but I
don't know which one is, which pin is what, so I'll get it on the meter, touch the center pin,
okay so there's a bent over tab, if anybody gets a kit like this, that's your center pin,
and then there's two other tabs, those are both ground, and then the last thing here is the LED,
short leg is the cathode negative, I don't want to shrink wrap these, okay just found,
I'm glad I caught this now, I have soldered the LED negative to the volume in one side of the
volume, let me fix that now, just we just lose a whole troubleshooting episode because I found
that already, okay I think that is the whole thing, it looks like an octopus on the bench here,
the big question is will it do anything, let me go get an eyeball battery, and I guess I'm
gonna have to turn on an amp and find a guitar and some chords, all right I got my trusty telly,
okay I need one more guitar cord, this thing ready to go, the amp is ready,
so which one of these is output, tip out, it's doing something,
it's just making a buzzing noise, where I need another chord, just all went on the floor,
out, tip in, well we got, I can play through it, let's see what happens,
the volume just went down,
there is no tremolo,
so we start troubleshooting, also the LED does not come on, there's a difference,
is that the volume, volume's working, but no tremolo, all right let me check into this,
I think, well I just found something already, I went to pick up the board and the
negative wire from the battery, just go right out, it's not soldered in,
it's, well I got a little solder on there, but not enough, so the only thing working on this
is the volume, let me see, do I have my LED backwards maybe,
usually an LED is just an indicator, but sometimes they do run circuits through it,
well I'd say basically the build is failure, it's doing a little something, but not the right
something, so I guess we get another HPR out of this, as I do a repair episode, so that'll be
a part two I guess, thanking you Tim Timmy from like a long distance and like holding my arm out
along, should I thank you for this, or is this going to be down the rabbit hole, all right,
I'll see you guys next time,
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