DIY Slow Gear SG-1

[duhvoodooman***]

Adrian30 recently posted HERE about his BYOC kit version of this vintage Boss pedal, about the same time that I was ordering parts for the same pedal. However, I opted to go the "a la carte" route by ordering an SG-1 clone PCB from General Guitar Gadgets (GGG) and buying all the parts directly from my favorite pedal parts and electronics suppliers.

As you may have noticed from Adrian's photos, this is a fairly extensive pedal build compared to many, with a boatload of resistors, capacitors and transistors to be mounted on the PCB. Additionally, by going the less expensive route (my total parts cost came to under $50 vs. $75 for the BYOC kit), I gave up one nice advantage the kit would have provided: the high quality BYOC circuit board. Though GGG offers some very nice boards with silkscreened labeling and double-sided, through-eyelet designs, this was a much more rudimentary board. The circuitry and solder pads were a simple single-sided etching and were unlabeled, so I had to populate the board very carefully, referring to a layout diagram for each component.

There was one other snafu--the GGG page led me to believe that the PCB would fit a standard Hammond 125B enclosure, and it most certainly did NOT. So I had to buy a bigger 1590NS enclosure, and will just use the 125B on some other future build. But completing the build after these adventures, the effect worked perfectly on the first try. There's a trimpot to adjust to give the maximum swell effect, but it was set nearly perfectly (at its midpoint) to start.

I decided to name the pedal "Gee That's SWELL", and some photos and a link to a brief clip demonstrating the swell effect are attached. It's an exercise in purple; even the LED is violet colored.



Sample Clip

[Tone2TheBone]

Is that a blue or purple LED? Very cool looking pedal.

[mrmudcat]

Cool love purple!

Sounds Swell

[Algonquin]

Neato! :

[duhvoodooman***]

Is that a blue or purple LED? Very cool looking pedal.

As I said in my original post, "It's an exercise in purple; even the LED is violet colored." :

[Algonquin]

Cool looking pedal DVM!

So what colour's the LED?

[Tone2TheBone]

As I said in my original post, "It's an exercise in purple; even the LED is violet colored." :

Doh. Missed that. Some people miss things...like replying to PMs. : :

[duhvoodooman***]

Cool looking pedal DVM!

So what colour's the LED?

I put in an LED?? Hmmm, I'll have to go look....

[SuperSwede]

Sounds & looks great DVM. Another master built pedal from our own witchdoctor


But I really think that you should put in a Violet led..

[Kazz]

Hey Vood....what color is the LED?


Seriously...can you turn it over and let us have a look at the solder points?

I love the purple......too bad it does not have a purple LED tho.

[duhvoodooman***]

Seriously...can you turn it over and let us have a look at the solder points?

Well, actually, no--not without disassembling the pedal again, which I have no intentions of doing! Believe me, there's really nothing to see, other than the copper circuit traces and a lot of little silver-colored solder cones. Also, because the board does not come with standoff mounting holes (and there's no room to add your own), you have to fasten it in place some other way. I used double-sided foam tape on the back of the two pots. But I also had to tape off the entire back of the PCB with electrical tape to avoid potential shorts. You can see a bit of it peeking around the upper righthand corner of the PCB in the "gutshot".

Here's a photo of the PCB from the GGG website:

SG-1 PCB Photo

BTW, there are 135 solder pads on that board (yeah, I counted), and when you get done, all but ONE are filled. So it's a lot of soldering....

Sorry, everyone, about not having a violet LED. I really should have thought of that--it's so obvious....