My New Professional Project: A2PB.com

 I haven't posted in a while on this blog.

I have been more active on the blog A2PB.

A2PB is my new professional project that I've started around June of 2021. It's basically an automated stock trading and portfolio management system. Check out the homepage if you're interested: A2PB – Automatic Portfolio Balancing

I got a new rug -- corona triggered home improvement

Does a Celestion Gold fit into a Fender Pro Junior IV?

Short answer: No

The Celestion Gold is too big. Even with the aluminum cover removed from the back of the Celestion, the magnet of the loudspeaker won't get clear of the chassis of the Pro Junior by about 5mm.

Longer answer: It's possible if you want it bad enough and take out your tools. The following pictures illustrate the process.

The cover of the Celestion needs to be removed. Remove the screw and gently lift the cover off with a screw driver (there's some silicon paste between the cover and the loudspeeker that generates some resistance).

The pictures above illustrate what you save in terms of depth. 

But it's not enough. The problem is that the Celestion's magnet is also too big in diameter.

So the critical part of the chassis of the Pro Junior needs to be removed. It can be done with a Dremel like cutter. Make sure to protect the electrical parts and circuit board of the amp from the shavings (covering everithing with tape works good enough).

I took my time cutting - with ear and eye protection. This is about half way through. Each of the long cuts took 10 to 15 minutes.  

After cutting and cleaning the edges - not beautiful but effective.

Fits like a glove now.

The tubes have enough clearance.

My New Soulman Pedal Board

The finish company Soulman produces great looking and extremely functional guitar pedal boards.

I recently bought a Soulman S44 board and set it up with a Truetone 1Spot CS7 power supply.

Check out the pictures below about the setup and final result!

Optional patch and switch boxes can be ordered for the boards. This is an input patch box.

The Truetone 1 Spot CS7 power supply

Access to the dip switches of the power supply

All pedals powered up

The final result

Signal path:

• Guitar input starts bottom right into my buffered switch/fx box (see earlier post). The bottom right foot switch activates the tuner and mutes the rest. The left bottom switch on my pedal engages the whole board's pedal chain. (With the fx switch off, the guitar signal skips all pedals except for the reverb pedal (top-left.))
• The first real (sound) pedal in the chain is the MXR Custom Comp compressor.
• Then comes the Fulltone OCD overdrive.
• Then into the big muff.
• Next comes the Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail delay.
• Then to the Trio plus.
• And finally to the TC Hall of Fame 2.

Jam Box

This is my latest project. I call it "Double Trouble" - it is a two guitar input cross-switch with optional buffering and a switchable FX loop for each channel.

The purpose is to be able to connect two guitars to two amps and to cross-switch the guitars between the amps by pushing one button.

The top-right switch engages the buffer. There are two independent single JFET buffer circuits inside, one for each channel. The buffers are true by-pass using relais. This means that if the power goes out, the pedal switches itself to true by-pass and keeps operating (un-buffered).

The bottom-right switch switches the channels.

The bottom-left switch engages FX loop 1,

the top-left switch engages FX loop 2.

The following picture shows the circuit board with the components:

This is the schematic:

The following pictures show the strip-board layout, the templates for the cuts and jumpers, followed by illustrations of the work in progress and a couple of files for download.

DIY layout (http://bancika.github.io/diy-layout-creator/)

Position of strip cuts (copper side)

Jumper layout (component side)

Cutting the strip cuts

Running the jumpers

Resources:

• The LTSpice layout file: schematic
• The DIY routing and component layout file: layout

My messy pedal board

This is what it looks like. The bottom right pedal and the RT-1 in the top row are my own designs. The bottom right one is a dual input buffered cross-switch with FX loops. The RT-1 is a transparent overdrive / boost with a 12AT7 tube inside. The black bricks top-right are a TC Electronics tuner, a 12V lead battery for effects power and a 9V Sanyo Eneloop battery also for effects power.

To get this more organized, I'm planning to build a board for home use like this: it will be a more narrow design with space for three to four pedals across and three sloped boards on top of each other.

My favorite guitar

This is the guitar I've been playing since about a year:

• Fender Custom Shop 1965 built to spec Stratocaster with relic/closet-classic finish (Nov. 2012)
• Serial #R53483, Part # 11180111-49
• Black, alder body, rosewood fingerboard, white pick-guard
• Mid 60's style oval "C" neck with custom 9.5" TO 12" compound radius
• Mother of pearl inlays
• Abby hand wound 65 pick-ups
• Vintage 2 7/32" string spacing at bridge
• Vintage tone pot wiring (no pot on bridge p/u)

I found this guitar (or it found me) in January 2015. I walked into a guitar store with the aim to get a new guitar (my second one). I didn't have a specific model in mind but I always liked strats. It was a quiet afternoon in the store and I just sat down and took my time trying out about 10 different guitars. Of the ones I tried, this one was just different - the feel, the sound, the look! I didn't know it was a custom shop model until after I had played it. The price was about twice my target budget but I had to have it. Checking the specs against the Fender Custom Shop options and price list after I had bought it, I realized that I actually got a good deal from the shop (a 35% discount).