Interested in Tau Pipe Phaser / Flanger boards ?

fastheadache · Joined: Aug 21, 2008 Posts: 1 Location: atlanta

I'm interested in selling a 100% complete JH Tau Phaser PCB assembly.
No panel mount parts or wiring, but I do have the parts necessary for the headers (shrouds and pins) should anyone want them.

Stuffed with CA3046s I believe, and assembled to run off +/-15V.
A few extra parts small parts are required to run it from +/-12V.
Includes the tempco, the SMD bypass caps, etc. It's all there, finished.
One just needs to wire it up.

If anyone is interested, shoot me a message.

EDIT: BOARD HAS BEEN SOLD

norman phay · Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 4:09 am Post subject:

I got one working! (this implies some difficulty - it worked first time actually) It sounds really, really great, thanks for making this available, Jurgen, what a blast to run the Lambda through this and put it through loads of echo & reverb.

One question i have is about the "smooth" switch - it doesn't seem to have any audible effect (so I guess I didn't get it totally working, ahem) - looking at the scematics, I see it's part of the control circuitry - is it to affect the LFO signal, or can someone explain to me what I'm listening out for please?

Many thanks

norman phay · Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:26 am Post subject:

OK I think I got it - it's like a slew limiter on the LFO? And it's only really noticeable at higher LFO rates, am I right about that?

norman phay · Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:27 am Post subject:

oh yeah, the "over the top" bit of the LFO sweep on this is quite something! Almost...thrilling to listen to.

jhaible · Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 7:05 am Post subject:

dingebre · Posted: Sat Feb 27, 2010 2:55 am Post subject:

Thanks JH for a great project. Just got one Tau up and running. I'm holding off on the second one till I decide what I want to do with other modules. I'll post a photo tomorrow. For now, here is the FPD panel I made for a FracRack format. It should be easy to make it fit into a Euro size. I used the Alpha 12mm pots and Switchcraft "tiny jacks" (yes, a 3.5mm plug works in these, will actuate the switch, and doesn't ruin it). The pot labels are a bit tight, but I blame JH because of all the controls he likes to give us knob freaks Smile

David

Blacet JH Tau Phaser.fpd

Description:

The panel fits and works fine. Use a small pot, like the alpha 12 mm, or other small pot. There are two holes for standoffs. The labels are close and depending on the knob, might be barely covered.

Download (listen)

Filename:

Blacet JH Tau Phaser.fpd

Filesize:

1.81 KB

Downloaded:

900 Time(s)

Fetafarmer · Joined: Jul 29, 2007 Posts: 32

jhaible · Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 12:55 pm Post subject:

dingebre · Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:24 pm Post subject:

dingebre · Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:29 pm Post subject:

I put some photos up under the "photos" thread if you want a peek...

David

norman phay · Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 11:19 am Post subject:

Hello!

i got the second Tau up and running, but there's a weird problem with this one - there seems to be some kind of bleed from the LFO into the audio - with the smooth switch set to "off" and the LFO depth turned up, I hear a kind of tick-tock-tick-tock noise as the LFO cycles, when I switch smooth to on, it goes tick-tick-tick-tick instead. If I have the LFO depth control down to zero and I turn the phase pitch control all the way down, I can hear a tick-tick-tick-tick noise as well, this dissapears when I move the phase pitch control up through its range.

The fact that the smooth switch affects it suggests to me that the problem lies with the LFO itself? I've checked the component values, and solder connections in the LFO section, they all appear fine. I also tried running it with the 2 LEDs unplugged, this didn't make any difference at all.

does anyone have any suggestions? I'm a bit stuck.

jhaible · Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 2:09 pm Post subject:

norman phay · Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 8:10 am Post subject:

Thanks for the quick reply!

I tried routing the cables away from the board, as mentioned, but unfortunately it didn't make a difference Sad

I'l going to set it aside for a week, and come back to it fresh next weekend.

ach_gott · Joined: Sep 09, 2008 Posts: 79 Location: Chicago

Sorry, all, three years in and I'm finally getting around to testing my boards... While I've built many Synth Tech modules, I've never built from schematics/PCB.

I've built two boards, one of which seems to work fine. The one that doesn't doesn't seem to phase at all. Pin 7 of U1 on the good board varies from (roughly) 1.8V to 2.7V AC while the one on the bad board measures a steady 1.579V AC. Resistors and capacitors on that section of the schematic all seem to measure roughly equivalent. Thinking there could be something around the resonance trimpot, I refloed the solder around those joints. No change.

I'm well aware that I have a few hundred joints to check from board to board, but if anyone could accelerate the process, I'd be most appreciative.

jhaible · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:35 pm Post subject:

This may be interesting news for the non-diy musicians (feel free to spread the rumors to the appropriate forums):

Touched-by-Sound plan to make the Tau their second project based on my PCBs, after the Compact Clone. They will market them under the modemachines label (www.modemachines.com).

This means there will be another run of Tau PCBs soon.

JH.

jhaible · Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 7:23 am Post subject:

Tau PCBs will be available again in the 2nd week of December 2010

JH.

jhaible · Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 2:19 am Post subject:

I have Tau Phaser PCBs in stock again.

JH.

arnoid · Joined: Aug 23, 2009 Posts: 57 Location: Belgium

Finished my tau a few weeks ago it's was working from the first time I fired it on . Great sounding module Very Happy

! Better then I expected, really at's a lot to your modular.

I have a question:
Since I'm working with banana's I use a switch to cover the normalisation on the CV IN (the normalisation connects the Manual sweep circuit to the osc level pot (mod depth)). With a CV Input this connection is broken and the external CV is feeded to the osc level pot.

When I turn the switch so that the Manual sweep is connected to the osc level I can use the manual sweep (pitch pot) as expected.
Also when turning the osc level pot (mod depth) fully ccw I can close the modulation from the internal LFO.

When I feed in a external cv and turn the switch to CV IN the manual sweep normalisation is broken and I can't use the pitch pot anymore also as expected but when turning the osc level fully ccw I can hear the external modulation source good but there's still a litlle bit modulation from the internal lfo.
I would expect that I only hear the external cv modulating the phaser if this pot is fully ccw since the osc level pot reacts as a crossfader between the external and internal lfo ?

What could be the problem here ? Does someone experience the same behaviour ?

arnoid · Joined: Aug 23, 2009 Posts: 57 Location: Belgium

TekniK · Joined: Aug 10, 2008 Posts: 1059

I would check all the pcb solders again with magnifieing glass but first check if the earth pad is well done/connected/soldered

Spratty · Joined: Oct 08, 2007 Posts: 43 Location: Australia

Finally got around to putting mine together. Not finished yet, but, before I go back to a store to get some bits I'm missing, I've been looking at the power supply. Please forgive my scatter brain, but I am a bit paranoid about frying things by accident.

I have a 16VAC 500ma wallwart with a "DC Plug" I think should be ok. From my comprehension (or lack thereof) I believe I only need to connect two wires to the board to get the tau to work based on the inbuilt power supply.

The socket plug for the box I intend to use has three connections, but I only need to wire two i.e. no battery / power bypass like on a guitar pedal.

With these two connections, and because it's AC (not the DC I play with with guitar pedals) I believe it doesn't matter which wire is connected to pin 1 or pin 2 on the tau board right? I.e. there is no "positive tip" in this situation and as long as these two pins (AC live and "ground") are actually plugged in it will work? Assuming everything else is ok! Wink

The other thing if I remember correctly, in this case, with the wall adapter, with AC, this is a 'floating ground' arrangement as well, so none of my power/ground wires will be wired to the case as such either, with both wires only connected to the plastic socket and the TAU board.

If someone could affirm/dispel any of the myths above about the connections, I'd be very Smile

and appreciate it.

Spratty Wink

haima · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 8:57 am Post subject:

Yes, polarity doesn't matter in this case, the two wires from your wallwart are interchangeable.

Plug the "DC plug" into your plastic socket and the wallwart into the wall and measure the AC with a multimeter - the two pins where the AC is present are the two you'll use, ignore the other one.

BTW, Don't short the pins together with your probes while the wallwart is plugged in!

AFAIK plastic, insulated socket would be a good choice for your AC connection.

I'm not sure where you should connect AC on the PCB, and if 16v is enough - i haven't made the Tau myself, so you'll have to let someone else fill you in there...

For shielding purposes it's a good idea to connect 0v to the metal case at one point - unless your metal 1/4" sockets do that automatically.

Hopefully that helps!