Slow gear

Category: Pedals

This is a PCB that I was gifted on the Madbean forum. Thanks to the kind person who sent it my way!

The Slow Gear is a volume swell pedal - it cuts the volume, then when you play a note it ramps the volume up after the note starts. It gives sort of a violin bow effect to the notes. Very freaky, but cool.

There are a few different builds of this floating around - different values for the attack pot and capacitor seem to have different effects. I tried out a few values, and have gone with the 25kB pot and 1u capacitor. The other values didn't make much difference in my opinion. Not that I could hear with our setup anyway.

I've used a Hammond trapezoid enclosure, and used bicycle gears and bits on the top. They are stuck on with PU glue - that stuff is awesome, even works on metal! I've also put 5 LEDs under the cogs, surrounding the switch.

The pot shafts were too long, so I've ground them off, and also ground the edges off the nut, so that the whole knob could sit down flush.

Writing has been done with a rotary tool with diamond bit, then coated with gold nail polish and sanded down. Could have been neater, but it does the job. The top has been sanded with 2000 grit wet paper, then polished, which looks awesome for about 3 minutes until someone touches it, then it's covered in fingerprints.

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