What's in the works.......

[bclaire]

3M makes an artist adhesive that's removable that might prevent the bleed-under. If your stencil is too thick though, you're going to run into that.

To really stencil you'd probably need to silkscreen the design - a lot more work than a DIY stencil....

[Les Paul Lover]

I've looked it up billy - thanks for the tip.

It just seems to be a bit better than the ordinary masking tape thing?
Have you used it before?
Can you cut through it nicely?

After all my problems, I must say that new material I bought, the low tack plastic cover seems to be a pretty good material to work with. I'm gonna have another try - and will try to keep in mind that the least intricate, the better my DIY stencil is likely to come off.

I'll see how it goes.

[Les Paul Lover]

I'm currently stuck home with a knee injury, so it's great for regular updates.

I can instal myself confortably and work on stencil/soldering with a leg up on a bean bag, and hobble a bit and do a little painting in the garden, then return and put my leg up again.


And so I have more time for this sort of work and to update..... that's what I've done in the last couple of days.


Gold is the new chrome - honest:



Also lacquered the moon box. Still wondering about redoing that one with gold stencil instead of chrome that cannot be laquered.....


And then yesterday, I spent the day trying to draw a frog i coud stencil on the gold box, for my Frog Fuzz fuzz factry clone.
I can't draw a decent frog. God knows I tried too. A lot.
So I googled the next best thing..... Unicorn stencil! Yay!
Who doesnt like a good Unicorn stencil? I'm sure just by having that unicorn on the box it'll make my tone so much better. I know it!

I found that one that I really liked:



So i tried to draw it in the right size:



And cut off the full stencil:



At that stage I was fairly stocked.
I'll post a picture of the actual stencilled box later.

I was gonna add UNIFUZZ to the stencil, but decided against it - I think the box would have looked too crowded.

[Bensnake]

+1

[Randy Bass]

That Unicorn is pretty classy, you know, if you're not into Duocorns and stuff.

[Les Paul Lover]

That Unicorn is pretty classy, you know, if you're not into Duocorns and stuff.

I might attempt a triceratops sometime, or is the 3rd horn just taking it too far for you?



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I sprayed it and the Unicorn actually it came off really well!!!!! Yay!
But the signs for the controls not so much........ Boo.....



I think I sprayed too much paint - I'm obviously still learning the right technic to use.



A couple of leaks too, so I'm gonna have to sand that off a bit, and the masking tape took off some of my pain work on a couple of side.

Funnily enough the marking I put in my stencil seems to have marked the pain work too, which is disappointing. But anyway, the hardest bit, the unicorn, whilst not perfect, came out well enough that I'm not gonna touch it again, so really pleased with it.





Jobs for the day - sanding the controls signs and respraying, and research the next stencils......
I'm very lucky most of that stuff can easily be done sitting down with my dodgy knee raised up.

[Les Paul Lover]

Pretty pleased with my recent work. I sanded off the control signs on my unicorn pedal, masked the unicorn and resprayed and restenciled. Only down side is that I know have a small line around the unicorn, but I can live with that.

At least the control signs are neat.




And then went to work with my niece's pedal. Clearly my best stencil to date. I feel confident doing them now.
I have a big muff pi clone enclosure to do still, I'll be doing another stencil for it. Very happy with how this is going now.


I'll try to post a better pic at some point, the flash messed that one up a bit. I still have to spray a puddle of liquid escape the barrel the rat is pouring away:

[Les Paul Lover]

I sprayed the escaping liquid yesterday - turned out better than I thought!





I thought I'd use the angle of the pedal and make that liquid run down the side too:






And once I sprayed it, I was gonna take off the stencil but saw the sprayed paint making a big run on the stencil side... Considering that I was painting liquid, I thought I'd wait and see if the paint manage to run far enough down the side on the stencil to reach the pedal - and it did! Looks really good (IMO anyway). Particularily happy with the splash too.

You can see the paint run to the right side of the splash, ginving a bit of a 3D effect.

[Randy Bass]

That turned out awesomely well.

[Les Paul Lover]

That turned out awesomely well.

Thanks Randy, I'm really please with it. My best pedal by far, but unfortunately won't keep it as it's for my niece. I hope she'll like it!!!!



----------------------------------------

I haven' updated much last week as I spent quite a bit of time going to the hospital for lots of appointments not getting anywhere really, but have managed to do stuff still.

I did my last stencil for the Big Muff Pie clone I'm doing.
Really pleased with it:



Only couple of mistakes.... I overdrilled the hole for the LED.... so had to add a washer during the painting process. I hope it'll stay nicely on when I screw the bezel onto it. And right at the top, the sign should have been a diode sign, but I had a slight leak.... Every time I do one of those, there's has to be a mistake somewhere ...!!!!
Still pretty pleased, I'm not considering redoing that.

I wasn't too happy with my moonverb reverb stencil though, so I sanded it and started it again. Still not happy with it, but that'll have to do.

[Les Paul Lover]

And I clear coated all the enclosure too.

I don't have a toaster oven I could use for those....
But I have a wood burner..... so I stood the pedal on angle brackets on top of the wood burner at full blast for en hour or so.

That's really accelerated the lacquer drying process, the pedals should have reached similar temperature as they would in a toaster oven.



An I had some time to start assembling some circuits.....

[Les Paul Lover]

And we have a finished pedal!!!!!!

I only started that one in march this year........

That's my new reverb, based on the Box of Hall Reverb designed by users of the culturejam forum:



Wiring a bit messy, I had inverted the in and out.....

and the final look:




It;s funny, that's the pedal I had the greatest difficulty painting half decently. And I'm still not happy with it, but that's the best I got - and now it's at least ready to be played.
Great reverb, spring type ish, has a bit of modulation too, it's really nice. Feels quite tamed compared to the RV50 reverb, but very nice.

The left knob controls the brightness, very much an onboard EQ tone control left knob the strength of the decay. All in all very nice, wroks great with my AD15.

[Les Paul Lover]

And a 2nd pedal finished!


That one is the zvex woolly mammoth clone for my niece.

Lovely fuzz, pretty nasty. It doesn't sound like a muf or a fuzz face, but a pretty straight up mean full fat fuzz.
Oh, and it's pretty nasty!!!!




Wiring a bit better there!




Whilst the knobs are chunky, they're not as huge as the picture makes it look like. Just decent chuncky. Nice solid feel to them too, and the "grainy" sides of it mean they're an easy turn, sweaty fingers or not. I'll probably use those again.

[Les Paul Lover]

And a 3rd pedal finished!!!!!


Zvex fuzz factory clone:






Not perfect again, but pretty happy with it still.

Now, the Fuzz Factory is MENTAL!!!!
That isn't half a box of noise!!! Gonna take some time to find out how to best use it!
I've added an extra on off on switch in the bottom corner to make it a fat fuzz factory too - though to be honest, i'm not sure it's going to be that handy. I suppose if I hadn't done it it would just have kept nagging at me....

Now it's done. For all of you who have the fuzz factory and are hesitating about the fat fuzz factory, i would say you aren't missing much. Sure, you do get extra low end, but you lose a lot in definition - and seeing just how noisy that box is, i have prefered it in fuzz factory setting so far.

I have gained extra respect for Matt Bellamy of Muse. The control he has over his Fuzz Factory is amazing!!!!!!

[Bensnake]

They're just awesome looking! Very impressing work, indeed! Enjoy!