Hi, count me in for at least one board. Great work! Slightly OT - what PCB layout software did you use?
Thanks,
Joe
Thanks,
Joe
My New 1U GSSL Design (AKA SB4000) RELEASED!!! - GOTO PAGE 9 FOR ORDERING INFO!
- Thread starter ruckus328
- Start date
Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:
ruckus328
Well-known member
joe-electro said:
Mentor PADS. Solidworks for the mechanicals.
ruckus328
Well-known member
Sorry about the lack of updates guys. Life caught up to me and had to take a little break but things are rolling along now. I've concluded all tweaks and testing for Rev 1. There's nothing left to improve/tweak at this point. Moving forward with Rev 2 and will ordering final prototype in the next few days. Production run is right around the corner. I put it on the master on a mix I'm working on last night - sounds amazing. I REALLY like those T1/T2 filters. Can see why people love them on the drum buss so much. Really smooths out the cymbals but doesn't squash the bottom end.
Changes for REV 2:
-Default mode is now Stereo Sidechain (SSL/Turbo) Mode.
-I was able to remove a chunk of circuitry for the bargraph - the ground sensing circuit. It was done for increased accuracy but difference without it is practically nothing. 1% resistors will have more of an impact on accuracy. That being said, now that I have some extra space I'm going to add a pot on each L/R/I/O channel so you can fine tune each channel individually on the bargraph. I'll also add extra pads so you can easily just drop in a fixed resistor if you'd like. Currently mine is set up with fixed resistors (although I hand select and hand match values) and accuracy between all 4 channels is within .2dB, but since YMMV, I figure the ability to use pots is nice.
-Wherever possible, I've tried to keep the swing on the pots to a minimum, so single turns should be sufficient for most places as they're about 1/10th the price as the multi-turns. I personally use multi-turns everywhere because I'm cool like that ;D, but it all comes down to whether or not you want to spent the extra money. The only place I say to absolutely use a multi-turn is on the power supply to set your +/-15V. That's not the kind of place you want to mess around. THD Trim would be another placer to highly consider, but not mandatory.
-Unfortunately, I am removing the toggle to switch between Gain Reduction Resolutions (10dB/20dB). Through my testing, I found it to be more annoying/confusing than useful. I tested a few different meters, and found that because of meter accuracy the closer you get to full scale, the accuracy is all out of whack between modes. And if you get one set correctly, the other is off. It's not any fault of the design, I'm getting completely linear current proportionate to the amount of GR, it's just any reasonably priced meter is going to only be so accurate as they're only so linear, especially the higher the needle goes.
-I've increased clearance around audio path Electrolytics so you can use up to a 6mm 22uF AE on the inputs, and a 10mm 100uF part on the outputs. I've also added a few additonal pads for different pitch parts on those guys. I know preferences vary greatly on what caps to use there, so it'll be easy to try whatever you'd like. There is also enough room to use Polypro for the bypass caps in the audio path.
-I've added provisions to be able to use a couple different types of Pots for Threshold/Makeup. It makes sourcing easier and doesn't leave you limited in case something's out of stock.
-Front Panels will be available in black alodine .125" aluminum with laser etched white engraving. They will be optional, but I will likely have to do preorders for them for the first run. Again, they're optional, if you don't want them I'm not going to force them on you. No preordering will be required for boards, of course you can if you want to to ensure you get yours reserved, but that's entirely up to you. It will be first come, first served.
-Below is a rendering of what the final front panel will look like. The offical name of this beast is now the SB4000, shadowbuss was just the codename until I figured out what to offcially call it. There won't be anything like ruckus328 written on the front panel, I wanted the name to be something that looked nice an professional, looked good in the studio, sounded like a piece of gear, and tied it in with my codename and the orginal. SB4000 does just that IMHO.
-I know you're all still waiting for pricing for this thing. I have been relunctant to set that until I am ready for production. There are a few reasons for this. One I'm still working on quotes, sources, and have yet to figure out what shipping costs will be. Front panels are a little tricky as they're 19" long. The other reasons I won't go into
I will have all that info in a couple weeks when the production run is ready. What I will say now is that it will be the best deal out there.
-On a somewhat sidenote, if there is an interest I will also probably make the power supplies available to buy standalone. They are backwards compatible with existing GSSL's if anyone wishes to use them for that purpose. They also offer an additonal fixed +12V supply rail for LED's relays, etc. Reality is, you could make this supply rail any voltage you'd like, up to 18V or so depending on XFMR used. You could even do that with my new design, if you wanted to make your relay's LED's, etc run off of..... say...5V. But you'd need to adjust the values on some resistors a few places. As default, I sized everything for 12V, so if you're not the adventurous type, just use the default values and everything will be fine and dandy.
Now for some pics!:
Front Panel final concept
Finished wired unit (I haven't chopped my lorlin shafts down so they're even with makeup/thresh yet in case anyone wonders):
And rough front panel (It's just a cheap vinyl overlay for my prototype so it's already starting to scratch and fray around the corners but'll give you an idea of what the final version'll look like.
Changes for REV 2:
-Default mode is now Stereo Sidechain (SSL/Turbo) Mode.
-I was able to remove a chunk of circuitry for the bargraph - the ground sensing circuit. It was done for increased accuracy but difference without it is practically nothing. 1% resistors will have more of an impact on accuracy. That being said, now that I have some extra space I'm going to add a pot on each L/R/I/O channel so you can fine tune each channel individually on the bargraph. I'll also add extra pads so you can easily just drop in a fixed resistor if you'd like. Currently mine is set up with fixed resistors (although I hand select and hand match values) and accuracy between all 4 channels is within .2dB, but since YMMV, I figure the ability to use pots is nice.
-Wherever possible, I've tried to keep the swing on the pots to a minimum, so single turns should be sufficient for most places as they're about 1/10th the price as the multi-turns. I personally use multi-turns everywhere because I'm cool like that ;D, but it all comes down to whether or not you want to spent the extra money. The only place I say to absolutely use a multi-turn is on the power supply to set your +/-15V. That's not the kind of place you want to mess around. THD Trim would be another placer to highly consider, but not mandatory.
-Unfortunately, I am removing the toggle to switch between Gain Reduction Resolutions (10dB/20dB). Through my testing, I found it to be more annoying/confusing than useful. I tested a few different meters, and found that because of meter accuracy the closer you get to full scale, the accuracy is all out of whack between modes. And if you get one set correctly, the other is off. It's not any fault of the design, I'm getting completely linear current proportionate to the amount of GR, it's just any reasonably priced meter is going to only be so accurate as they're only so linear, especially the higher the needle goes.
-I've increased clearance around audio path Electrolytics so you can use up to a 6mm 22uF AE on the inputs, and a 10mm 100uF part on the outputs. I've also added a few additonal pads for different pitch parts on those guys. I know preferences vary greatly on what caps to use there, so it'll be easy to try whatever you'd like. There is also enough room to use Polypro for the bypass caps in the audio path.
-I've added provisions to be able to use a couple different types of Pots for Threshold/Makeup. It makes sourcing easier and doesn't leave you limited in case something's out of stock.
-Front Panels will be available in black alodine .125" aluminum with laser etched white engraving. They will be optional, but I will likely have to do preorders for them for the first run. Again, they're optional, if you don't want them I'm not going to force them on you. No preordering will be required for boards, of course you can if you want to to ensure you get yours reserved, but that's entirely up to you. It will be first come, first served.
-Below is a rendering of what the final front panel will look like. The offical name of this beast is now the SB4000, shadowbuss was just the codename until I figured out what to offcially call it. There won't be anything like ruckus328 written on the front panel, I wanted the name to be something that looked nice an professional, looked good in the studio, sounded like a piece of gear, and tied it in with my codename and the orginal. SB4000 does just that IMHO.
-I know you're all still waiting for pricing for this thing. I have been relunctant to set that until I am ready for production. There are a few reasons for this. One I'm still working on quotes, sources, and have yet to figure out what shipping costs will be. Front panels are a little tricky as they're 19" long. The other reasons I won't go into
I will have all that info in a couple weeks when the production run is ready. What I will say now is that it will be the best deal out there.-On a somewhat sidenote, if there is an interest I will also probably make the power supplies available to buy standalone. They are backwards compatible with existing GSSL's if anyone wishes to use them for that purpose. They also offer an additonal fixed +12V supply rail for LED's relays, etc. Reality is, you could make this supply rail any voltage you'd like, up to 18V or so depending on XFMR used. You could even do that with my new design, if you wanted to make your relay's LED's, etc run off of..... say...5V. But you'd need to adjust the values on some resistors a few places. As default, I sized everything for 12V, so if you're not the adventurous type, just use the default values and everything will be fine and dandy.
Now for some pics!:
Front Panel final concept
Finished wired unit (I haven't chopped my lorlin shafts down so they're even with makeup/thresh yet in case anyone wonders):
And rough front panel (It's just a cheap vinyl overlay for my prototype so it's already starting to scratch and fray around the corners but'll give you an idea of what the final version'll look like.
ruckus328
Well-known member
Forgot something - to all you guys outside the US, who are you using for 1U enclosures? I need to make sure my front panel will work with everything out there. This will likely mean the holes to mount to the enclosure will not be present, you'll have to drill them based on your particular enclosure, but I can have drilling templates available for all the different brands if I know what they are.
mitsos
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 4, 2007
- Messages
- 2,886
looking good man! Like the idea of extra spacing for caps... The 100uF Elna silmics I put in my gyraf board are quite lopsided Not to mention I left out the lytic bypass caps cuz there was no room for them... some people say it's better like that.. don't know, sounds good to me!
also what kind of pots are those on the ratio and makeup? and what kind of pushbuttons for sidechain and comp in? just wanting to get prepared..
Not to mention I left out the lytic bypass caps cuz there was no room for them... some people say it's better like that.. don't know, sounds good to me! also what kind of pots are those on the ratio and makeup? and what kind of pushbuttons for sidechain and comp in? just wanting to get prepared..
ruckus328
Well-known member
The comp/sidechain are NKK illuminated pushbuttons. Though the provisions to use any illuminated swtich are there - or non-illuminated if you choose. But why would you do that ?
haha Note you can only go so large before they start bashing into each other or start covering the text - but I left a nice amount of space there and also around all the knobs so there people could have some options of what to use. I went with those because they're compact, affordable ($11.00 US I believe), and come in a variety or LED colors - red, blue, green, amber. They're not the highest end pushbuttons you've ever seen, but personally I think they look quite nice on there.
Ratio. etc switches are lorlin. Indexing holes for them will be on my front panels.
The Thresh/Makeup Pots are honeywell's. There's quite a few different Pots you can use, I'll list 3-4 options on the BOM. And if for some strange reason you don't want to use the board mount kind, the alpha Pots used on the original design can fit there (they're shallow in height so they don't hit the board). Personally though, that was one of the things I wanted to improve on, makes it soooo much easier to just have eveything mounted on the control board, one ribbon cable to unplug, and if you're using the bargraph the three screw down terminal wires. Takes me about 3 minutes to disassemble the control panel and remove it when I need to.
Toggle switches are the mountain switches from mouser. Less than $2 a piece. There you can use any type of toggle you want though.
? haha Note you can only go so large before they start bashing into each other or start covering the text - but I left a nice amount of space there and also around all the knobs so there people could have some options of what to use. I went with those because they're compact, affordable ($11.00 US I believe), and come in a variety or LED colors - red, blue, green, amber. They're not the highest end pushbuttons you've ever seen, but personally I think they look quite nice on there.
Ratio. etc switches are lorlin. Indexing holes for them will be on my front panels.
The Thresh/Makeup Pots are honeywell's. There's quite a few different Pots you can use, I'll list 3-4 options on the BOM. And if for some strange reason you don't want to use the board mount kind, the alpha Pots used on the original design can fit there (they're shallow in height so they don't hit the board). Personally though, that was one of the things I wanted to improve on, makes it soooo much easier to just have eveything mounted on the control board, one ribbon cable to unplug, and if you're using the bargraph the three screw down terminal wires. Takes me about 3 minutes to disassemble the control panel and remove it when I need to.
Toggle switches are the mountain switches from mouser. Less than $2 a piece. There you can use any type of toggle you want though.
bruno2000
Well-known member
Looking VERY nice! Have you tried the 202s?
Best,
Bruno2000
Best,
Bruno2000
Chrome Heart
Well-known member
Looking VERY cool Ruckus. Id definitely be interested in some of that.
studio1670
Member
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2010
- Messages
- 7
I'm getting 2 of these as soon as they're available! I'm foaming at the mouth over here. Checking this thread twice a day for activity.
ruckus328
Well-known member
bruno2000 said:
Thanks buddy. No, haven't tried them yet - saving them for the 2nd proto round, so will get to hear them bad boys really soon.
daggertX
Active member
Yeah lookin good definitely interested
ruckus328
Well-known member
Soon, very soon. Surprised nobody's asked haha. Waiting on final prototypes to come in for both board and front panel.
livingnote
Well-known member
Ooh what about a little smokey plexiglass inlay in the FP where the bargraph is?
letterbeacon
Well-known member
Definitely interested in one of these!
