Episode: 2893
Title: HPR2893: Whats in the box! Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2893/hpr2893.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:51:35

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This is HPR episode 2008193 entitled What's in the Box. Part 2 and is part of the series,
hobby electronics, it is hosted by NY Wheel and is about 12 minutes long and carries a clean
flag. The summer is, and it will finish in a guitar pedal kit to present him.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org. Support universal access to all knowledge
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Hello this is NY Bill and a few weeks ago I ordered electronics kit and it just came
yesterday and I brought the box upstairs and today I was going to open up the box and
maybe start messing around with it on the bench and I looked over and the bench is
trashed as always and right in the middle of the bench is that tremolo pep pedal that
Tim Timmy gave me way the heck back when it's still sitting here in the same state it
was the last time I recorded it. So I figured I better fool around with this first before
I get into another project so I looked at the board closer to see what was going on and
I overlook something back when I first built this. If anybody gets this and I could take
a picture of the instructions as well. I was looking at the board for dry solder joints
and while I'm on the back of it I realized there's two unpopulated pads. So I start looking
at the drawing here and it's pad. What is that? PWB and PWC we're not populated so I keep
looking around the instructions and I realize what these are. If you have a guitar pedal
and you plug the input in that closes the connection to the ground loop, the negative
in the pedal and turns the pedal on. That's why sometimes, well not sometimes, if you
got a boss pedal and you leave them plugged in with batteries and you just kill the batteries
because you're leaving the pedal on all the time. So this PWC comes out of the input jack
so when you plug the tip of the guitar in the negative of the circuit gets closed between
you. If you look down inside the jack you got the one tip that goes to the one pin that
goes to the tip of the guitar that's where your signal is going to go in and then you have
the long negative ground shaft of your guitar cord. That's what's going to make a connection
to two other pieces there and that's going to close the negative to the battery into the
board. I did all that and I go and I start testing around and I have zero volts and I go
up to my battery and I have zero volts and I realize something shorted. So I made a little
progress and then I found a second problem. I omitted the battery and I kept looking at the
instructions. There's these instructions, I don't know if I mentioned this in the previous one,
it's just like a zero copy of a, there's no instructions on it. There's no, you know, do this,
do that, do this, you just got to figure things out. So I keep looking around and I realize
on the DC jack there is also a PWC connection. So that's if you don't have a battery and you plug
this in with a power supply there you're making that negative connection to turn on the board.
So both in the input jack and the DC jack and as I looked closer I had the positive
and the PWC, you know, reversed on that jack. So that's where my short was. So I fixed that as well
and I just put a battery in it and I had burned out the original LED messing around with it before.
I think I had a bad LED and I put it on too much voltage and I popped it. It happens. It's fun
to do sometimes. You can get these so cheap. But anyways, I found another LED after making these
modifications and I'm playing with an LED right now just with my fingers. I gotta figure out which
way is what. And there it's lit up green. I'm not going to use a green LED in a green case but
there's a picture of a green LED. So now I'm wondering if we have signal. So I got to get a
guitar and well first I got a solder this LED up permanent. So I'll do that. Let me find another color.
Maybe blue would be cool. It would be blue and green. Let me get some LEDs.
I found a blue. I got a solder this in here. Let me make sure I get it the correct way.
All right, the blue LED is in and it's going on and off.
Now let's see if we have any sound. Let me turn on the amp.
I got to get another cord, a guitar.
Let's try a good old S-Paul this time. I don't really plug in that much anymore.
I misplaced these the quarter inch jacks.
I don't know if you just...
If you just start all that racket, I'm looking for the jack. I can't find it.
And it's because it's on a hook that's on my door and my door is always open and I like hang
my belts there and some other things. When I open the door to go look in the other room,
they all made a racket. All right, maybe that was a head to beat there. All right, let's see.
The amp is on. Let me go in. Oh, I can hear something already.
A little bit closer. Can you hear that?
Yep, it's... we got a tremolo. There's volume working.
We'll see the other one. Volume, depth, and speed.
That all that buzz is because it's not in a guitar yet. Hang on.
It should be... I hope it clears up. There we go.
Oh, it's working.
There's volume.
There's depth.
And there's the speed.
Awesome. All right, so it pays to double check your work or I didn't even double check work
there because I didn't do the work in the first place. Let me turn this off and try and get it
all in this case. Okay, I'm just starting to put it together and I realize if anybody builds one
of these, you have to solder the wall wart, the plug-in for the battery pack. You have to solder
that after it's in the case. There's no way for me to get it in the case the way it is. The nut
is on the back of it. So I'm going to have to desider this and switch things around. Oh, and I need
a battery in my... I have no battery left in this recorder. I think it drains the battery as it
sits in the off position because it was a fresh battery last time I recorded. It just sat there
for a month. All right, well, I'm rambling. Okay, so there it is all in one piece and let me try it
that I hope I didn't get anything shorted together while I was closing the case up. Put the input in.
Okay, I still see a blue light. That's good.
I think it chords everywhere.
This uh, let's call humbuckers really make this. This is a little uh, I don't know who makes this.
It comes out of China, but it's a little like five watt one watt two band. These humbuckers make
this thing scream. Let me turn the game down. Okay, and uh, turn to a reverb. And let's see what this sounds
like. We have a tremble.
It's too much bass. I think I was playing a telecaster in this last, so I had it... I had it
bassy. Let's balls are bassy.
Well, I'm sure you don't want to sit there and hear me noodle around this thing, but uh, okay,
it's back. It's in one piece. The uh, the problems that I had with it were all because of me.
I think I was just rushing it. I was building it too fast last time. I needed to slow down and
taking a little break from it for a little while actually did help because I came back with fresh
eyes and immediately saw that, you know, I didn't immediately see the problem, but I immediately
saw that there was unpopulated pads and it got me thinking, why would they have those pads there
if they don't do anything? So that got me down the, the path of getting this thing going. So I
thank you again Marshall. It was a fun project and we got two HPRs out of it. I know this is a
short one, but it's just like a follow up to that first one just to get a little closure that
if you order one of these things, I still don't know where he got this. So I don't know if you
want to leave a, in the uh, comment section, Marshall, if you want to just leave a URL where you
found these other people might be interested, but uh, no, I'm not going to play the HPR or the
join us now and share this off with you. See you later.
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