Tagboardeffects Announcement

We've been posting tagboard and vero layouts for 5 years now and with myself and Miro being quiet for a while people have expressed some concern about where the site is going.  We have no intention of giving up on DIY but sometimes personal commitments take over and talking from a personal perspective a combination of a trapped nerve, a death in the family and a new job have taken a lot out of me.  It was impossible to concentrate like I needed to when I had the trapped nerve and by the time that had cleared up to the point I could, other things came up one after another to the point when the little bit of free time I got I just wanted to relax rather than spend hours squinting at schematics.

But we have built a great community here, something that is emphasised by a quick scan in the forum where some excellent topics are discussed and new circuits developed, with a continually enthusiastic audience.  So I think the site deserves a shot in the arm and something to get it moving again, maybe in different directions.

As such myself and Miro have spoken before about having more administrators and authors on the blog and it is with pleasure that we can now introduce Javi (JaviCAP), Zach (rocket88), Travis (Travis) :o), and Alex80 (Alex) as new administrators and authors.  All have been active members for a long time now and have helped make the blog and especially the forum a great place to be.

This isn't necessarily to just add new layouts to the blog because there really isn't as many to go at now we've posted over 800 layouts, but also potentially to move in other directions to appeal to a wider audience.  So posts about general DIY, tips and tricks, and other things that will be of interest to people can help liven the place up and give people some interesting opinions to read.  There can also never be too many people to answer questions! :o)

So we have increased the numbers by 4 at this stage, but there are a number of other people on the blog and forum who have been great members of the site and contributed massively, and to be honest I am happy to increase the admin numbers more if some other people think they have something they would like to contribute.  Be that vero, perf or maybe PCB layouts.  General DIY posts?  Or what about amps?  I'm happy for us to go in whatever direction the members here want, and I'm always available on email if anyone wants a chat about it.

At the end of the day I want us to provide something for everyone interested in DIY am sure that the guys we have asked will help us do that.

Solder on dudes! :o)

New US based kit supplier

This has been requested by lots of people in the US.  Bitsbox are a fantastic resource for this site supplying kits and other parts to many destinations around the world, but unfortunately the insurance requirement for shipping goods to the US became prohibitively expensive for some businesses over here and so they had to make the decision to stop shipments to the US.  Many of the visitors to this blog, in fact the majority of visitors to this blog are US based and I have been asked about kits for a couple of years now by many people, and now you can get them.

MKLEC is a small independent retailer located in Columbus, Mississippi and they have been working hard for a couple of months now to get their stocks up on the components required for the kits, and have now started putting them together.  At the moment only the Deep Blue Delay kit is up on their site, but it will be followed by the Klon very shortly and lots more to follow.  The kits will be posted on this page:

http://mklec.com/project-kits/guitar-effects-kits

The business is run by husband and wife David and Amanda who are lovely people, and I would encourage anyone who is interested in buying kits in the US to contact them to give them feedback of what kits you would like to see first, then they can give some kits priority in putting them together.

As I said they have been putting a lot of work in getting the parts together and David was adamant that he use high quality components throughout, so the kits use Xicon 1% metal film resistors, Nichicon and Panasonic polyester film capacitors, WIMA and Cornell Dubilier for the polybox cap and audio grade electrolytics so even if you are indifferent about component types, you can be assured of quality and longevity of the popular branded components chosen.

If you have any questions then get in contact with us, or even better MKLEC directly so you can hear straight from the horses mouth.

David has sent me a kit to build and when completed this will be given away in a free draw to new customers signing up for an account with MKLEC via this blog, so when you do sign up make sure you note tagboardeffects somewhere in the registration form so you can be included in the draw.  Just pop it in one of the unused form boxes like Fax, Company or Company ID or alternatively send him an email so you're added to the list.

600th Verified Layout!

Going into our 5th year online, the Briggs Unknown Fuzz has become the site's 600th verified layout, thanks to Neil for verifying that one. 

When I did the first 100th Verified Layout! post I didn't have any intention of doing them every 100.  I was just amazed that we'd got it up to 100 and so wanted to post something to thank everyone.  When it got to 200 I thought I should do the same thing again as a tongue-in-cheek parody, and so it has gone on since then. Thanks for that goes to you all for building and verifying these layouts, and discussing them to make this what is a great effect building community.  Seriously you are a great bunch and it's been a pleasure getting to know you all over the years. 

Special thanks to Miro from myself and I'm sure also from everyone else who enjoys his layouts.  He really has brought a new dimension to the blog, his work is always top notch (I doubt I could do most of his layouts as compact and neat as he makes them) and he has contributed a lot more than I have this year (and probably last year too).  So thanks mate, you're a star.

So one year is about to finish and a new one begin.  Let's see how long we can keep the parody going and how quickly we can get to 700 (Miro's turn), even if we are running out of suitable schemes :o)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all

500th verified layout!

This is truly amazing. Madferrect cracked the ETI Struzz/Fuzz today and... We now have 500 verified layouts. It's not that long since Mark wrote a note for 400. List of unverified ones is quite long too and there may be some interesting boards still unbuild.

Seems like we have a few new active people doing lots of builds and helping others on comments, which is just super. We also have tons of older faces still doing lots of very impressive builds and helping out. Thanks to you all, we're at this magical number. I think there are too many people to thank individually, so you'll just going to have to do with a collective thank you. Not even going to try to list you guys - i'm sure i would forget someone important.

Don't know how i could emphasize it - Thank you!

Knife the gaps and keep on building!

+miro

400th Verified Layout!

Another milestone hit, the 400th verified layout which is really amazing. 300 layouts verified since last March!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to verifications and/or discussions, and to Miro who has really helped me out and is on fire at the moment churning out layouts like a machine. We have so many regular contributors who make the site what it is that it's getting difficult to list you all, but a really huge thank you to everyone.

January is looking like it could be a 100 layout month which would be great.  The site is becoming more popular all the time and we are now getting over 200,000 hits a month, and the addition of the forum I think is really helping to make this feel more like a community.

So thanks again one and all, and Miro is doing the notification for the 500th verified layout so let's get going! :o)

Cheers guys!
Mark

New Forum

If you look at the top menu you'll see a new forum has been added to the blog.  This is pretty simple stuff but I think it's a much better option than the Whatever page and will give us a platform for requests, and also general troubleshooting (although we'd still like to keep pedal specific troubleshooting in the relevant post so that things are kept together to assist others who may have similar problems), or even a general chat about anything you like! :o)

The downside is that you'll have to create a forum account, but it's a really quick process and it would be nice if everyone kept the same user names so we know who everyone is.

The forum software we have used is ad free for 30 days, then it adds a single ad to every new thread below the first post.  We'll keep an eye on this though and if it's too intrusive we'll look at other options.

Sign up if you want to join in.

Merry Christmas

All the very best to everyone and hope you have a fantastic Christmas. I think Miro and myself will probably be too drunk to post much for the next few days, so if we don't make it, see you all in the new year :o)

A million hits

I had to post this because it's another site milestone.  317 verified layouts, 7600+ comments and we've finally got to a million hits.  Here's the stats page from the admin panel which show how much traffic has increased nicely since the blog opened in 2008.  And look at the top posts, all ZVex! 

Thanks guys and gals!

300th Verified Layout!

What can I say, 300 verified layouts.  I've made a point of writing something for the century milestones and whilst I suppose this has all been said before I really want to keep doing it so you know that all the work and input from you all is so appreciated and really what makes this blog.  I wouldn't be motivated to keep on doing them without the feedback, banter and friends I've made on here, so thanks to all of you from the person who gave his thoughts about a layout that had already been verified, to the machines who do 10 a week! (Or a weekend sometimes if you're from Finland)

I know for a fact that if I had to verify them all myself and work out mods etc that we'd be up to about 30 verified layouts on the site so it shows how important ALL the members are in this.

So 300 verified layouts, nearly a million hits, over 7000 comments in the discussions and still going strong.  Let's go for 400.

M

200th Verified Layout!

Well the Prescription Electronics Clean Octave Blend has become the 200th verified layout of the site, and even more amazing it was only 3 months ago that I posted a "100th Verified Layout" post!

Again thanks very much for everyone who has joined in, verified layouts, suggested mods, made corrections or just joined in the discussion.  We all learn from each other and so this is great for me too.

Thanks must be made to Vince, Milkit, thetinnedman and timmy amongst many others who have really helped keep the blog moving, and special mention has to be made to Mirosol who has built like a machine for the past couple of months and verified maybe 30 or 40 layouts himself in a very short time.

I don't think we'll reach 300 quite as quickly, I'm slowing down a bit because I've become very busy with work again (as happens from time to time) and so the layouts take a bit of a back seat, so I'm not expecting too many 70 layout months like February in the near future.  But I'm still going to try to get at least 10 new layouts a month posted up which I'm sure will be enough to keep everyone busy enough.

Thanks again guys, this site wouldn't be the same without you

Mark

100th Verified Layout

The Little Green Wonder has become the site's 100th verified layout, and I'd like to thank everyone who's helped out with the first hundred!

With a wife, kids and Labrador to keep me busy (oh yes and work :o), I don't get anything like as much opportunity as I'd like to build all these things and verify them myself, so a really big thanks to all of you for helping make the content as complete as it is today.   It has, in my opinion, created a really useful resource for effect DIY enthusiasts from your efforts.

Now onto the next hundred! :o)

All the best
Mark