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The red devils sound like an improved version of the 490/498 combo in my les paul. Little brighter, little clearer, little tighter. I dig 'em so far. They're loud! They're what make that green strat sound polite lol.

Knocked out a simple little dirt pedal the other night, miraculously went from breadboard to schematic to stripboard without issues and fired up properly the first time. Had to redo a bit of the wiring to tame some oscillations, but generally seems to be chugging nicely. It's basically two of my preferred ODs in a row (spaceman saturn) with a pot to starve the voltage on the last stage.

Well done!

Well I woke up this morning to my Trusty MOTU 16a in a constant boot loop with an occasional "Low Power" warning. Little research seems t suggest this is how they die. I bought it in 2015 so it has been really solid. NO issues until now. I'm probably going to pull the Power supply module and change upgrade the caps. If that doesn't fix it I'll buy the new 16a that came out last year because I'm completely reliant on AVB for everything to work, and if I go any other route I have to replace 2 other IO boxes as well with something Dante (gross). The new 16a is drop in and go with my rig. Hope I can get it going again and squeeze a few more years out of it. Times is hard.

So I'm going to recap the power supply in my MOTU 16a and see if I can scrape some more life out of it. Since I'm going to make a big order from Digikey or Mouser ima buy all the caps I need to recap my old Tascam 308 mixer at the same time.

I was going ot just get some Nichicon or Panasonic caps but does anyone have any particular brand of electrolytic they prefer for some reason? Anything to avoid.

Kniferide wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2026 12:18 pm I was going ot just get some Nichicon or Panasonic caps but does anyone have any particular brand of electrolytic they prefer for some reason? Anything to avoid.

I've never experienced a specific brand being shit or great. I usually narrow down the options based on parameters and physical size and then go with whatever is left.

We've historically used Nichicon caps, they've been good for 20+ years. Engineer before me swore by them

Kniferide wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2026 12:18 pm I was going ot just get some Nichicon or Panasonic caps but does anyone have any particular brand of electrolytic they prefer for some reason? Anything to avoid.

Nichicon and Panasonic seem to be the way to go. I hear IC (Illinois Capacitor) tend to fail.

thecr4ne wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 10:41 am I hear IC (Illinois Capacitor) tend to fail.

They had a bad batch some years ago that got used in a lot of Fender Hot Rod/Blues amps. People in the gear world tend to remember that. They fixed the issue though, so anything you buy now should be fine.

mdc wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2026 2:05 pm Knocked out a simple little dirt pedal the other night, miraculously went from breadboard to schematic to stripboard without issues and fired up properly the first time. Had to redo a bit of the wiring to tame some oscillations, but generally seems to be chugging nicely. It's basically two of my preferred ODs in a row (spaceman saturn) with a pot to starve the voltage on the last stage.

4 stages was too many stages, jumpered over the second and this thing rips. Might not need the voltage divider between Q3 and Q4 but it's not doing a tonne either way