Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive

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Shawnee
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Post by Shawnee »

Any interest in this pedal? I just got one and can post pics if anyone wants to work on this. I am not too good at tracing but I can identify most of the components.

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okgb
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Post by okgb »

Never heard of one But , if it lives up to the name ...............
how do you like your's ?

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mttmg
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Post by mttmg »

I have some pics of the Alpha Drive circuit board, it's pretty gooped up and components have been covered with blue ink or paint to hide what they are.
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Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
ADboard4.jpg (63.18 KiB) Viewed 4377 times
Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
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Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
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Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
Freekish Blues- Alpha Drive guts
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KindaFuzzy
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Post by KindaFuzzy »

Looks like a blue nail polish and nutella sandwich.

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Post by WhiteKeyHole »

Is the strip at the bottom even covering anything?

:?

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Barcode
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Post by Barcode »

any shots of the underside of the pcb?

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Post by culturejam »

Wow, what a waste of time. Why do these people keep doing this crap? :slap:

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Shawnee
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Post by Shawnee »

okgb- the alpha drive is pretty new and is supposed to detrone the Zendrive as the best dumble pedal ato date. It's a very bassy pedal. I loved the sound clips but I really only like it with the bridge pickup of a tele with my rig so far.
I have the board cleaned and will take some good pics so no one else has to bother. The IC is a TL082CN, there are 3 transistors (one BS170 and two 2N7000), four diodes (two 1n4001 and I'm not sure about the other ones. One is a fairly large clear glass with a red stripe and the other is the small glass orange and black one). The pots are: OD- B1M, Vol- B500K, Tone-A10K. 17 resistors and 13 caps (11 film and 2 electrolytic- 100uf/25v and a 10uF/25v). The resistors are really small and it's hard to see the bands. I'm hoping the camera will help. I'll take pics by the window to get some natural light so maybe that will help with colors. I can see almost all of the caps but it's really hard to read the component labels (EX: C1, C2, ect). They are super small and are right under where the component solders in. I 'm not too good with tracing circuits but I should be able to get some good pics and identify everything on the board.

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Post by Jack Deville »

500K volume control?
Linear taper?!

Oh boy.
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Buy my products and make me rich.

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Post by Jack Deville »

Previous post supplement:

Maybe its an active control?
*fingers crossed*
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freq67
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Post by freq67 »

KindaFuzzy wrote:Looks like a blue nail polish and nutella sandwich.
BAHHHAAAAAAA..................QUOTE OF THE DAY!!! :applause:

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Shawnee
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Post by Shawnee »

Sorry about the prior post. I was having trouble posting pics and couldn't figure out how to delete it the post. Anyway, here are some pics of a cleaned up Alpha Drive. When I get some more free time, I will finish making the list of components.

Image
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Post by RnFR »

thanks for the pics, and nice degoop job.
oh, what fun. this double slop job is just too much. i can't believe he even shot his ink all over the 1n400X diodes, too. as if you can't tell what they are, and it would make any difference at all which version you used.
silly bootweeker!
and what's up with that crazy bendy cap? i assume it's like that for a reason?
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Post by Barcode »

RnFR wrote:thanks for the pics, and nice degoop job.
oh, what fun. this double slop job is just too much. i can't believe he even shot his ink all over the 1n400X diodes, too. as if you can't tell what they are, and it would make any difference at all which version you used.
silly bootweeker!
and what's up with that crazy bendy cap? i assume it's like that for a reason?
judging from the silkscreen, it looks like he made the spot for an electro and opted for a film cap instead.

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Post by RnFR »

if you say so! :wink:
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Cannibal
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Post by Cannibal »

The clipping stage looks similar to the zendrive (diode+mosfet and an antiparallel mosfet). Probably it's just a zendrive clone with different values :slap:
Seiche wrote:there's a difference between being drugged (I don't think it was only booze) and retarded.

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Post by MoonWatcher »

Barcode wrote:
RnFR wrote:and what's up with that crazy bendy cap? i assume it's like that for a reason?
judging from the silkscreen, it looks like he made the spot for an electro and opted for a film cap instead.
But they should be about the same height - maybe 11mm or so? The film cap must be hitting other stuff inside the box, so that's their solution.

Some heat shrink on those leads at least would be nice, or leftover wire insulation. But that wouldn't go well with the rest of the bubblegum and spit assembly method.

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Post by MoonWatcher »

Cannibal wrote:The clipping stage looks similar to the zendrive (diode+mosfet and an antiparallel mosfet). Probably it's just a zendrive clone with different values :slap:
Yeah - asymmetric ZD'ish. Probably Fv's of around 750mV/1000mV for a little more compression than the Zen. Folks could argue about the knee of the 2N7000's body diodes.

I guess it must bring a twist of something to the table. Maybe that BS170 is an output buffer instead of IC2 @ unity gain like a ZD. Or maybe it's actually running above unity gain.

Wiring from board to footswitch looks poor, too. From what I gather, people are on a waiting list for these things? Wow.

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Post by Shawnee »

It's not the cleanest build I've ever seen thats for sure. The demand went through the roof in a hurry and wait times increased so they probably just make them work and don't worry about being neat about it. I waited two months for this one.
It looks like the place that is scraped was a name of some sort. I wonder if it's a board from on another pedal that he sourced? This is a very similar pedal to the Zendrive from what I can tell. So does anyone know what kind of diode that is with the with the red stripe on it?

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Post by Shawnee »

This guy does some really nice clips of this pedal.

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