Recreating VFE Mega Pedal — Part 2 — Planning

So bought my first story. Good! Seems that you’re interested to follow my journey recreating the VFE Mega Pedal. Let’s go with first thing first! The Enclosure.

1. The enclosure is 1456WL3WHBU — 15 deg slope
   It’s a big enclosure and you can buy it from Mouser or Digi-Key. I knew from the beginning that the enclosure won’t be easy to drill. I have never drilled such a big enclosure like this before. However, I am up for the challenge.
2. Got the Enclosure drilled. Here’s the picture of final enclosure drilled

I created a Solidworks Template for drilling the holes

Thanks a lot to MBP folks (Brian, Aentons, AlexS, all the friends). The MBP documentation for the VFE drill template is the one I used to create a dummy board and stacked them together. I drilled them BY HAND using electric drill and drill press. It’s quite nerve wrecking knowing you have a chance to bend the enclosure when you’re drilling the enclosure. It takes a lot of patience.

3. Powering the unit

I decided to create a 6 DC Jacks to incorporate the builds. It’s a Mega Pedal (18 pedals) so I believe having one input DC Jack won’t last long. I figured that 6 DC Jacks will give each CLUSTER Isolated INPUT. Assuming each of the current draws is 50–60 mA then it should be good to power 3–4 pedals with one 300 mA daisy chained. Ultimately, I plan to power this unit using the Pedal Power ISO/ similar decent 9DC Power Supply.

4. CLUSTERING Method

I figure that turning on/off pedals during live situation will make me perform tap dancing. The cluster works just like a loop pedal. There are 5 loops and a Tap Tempo for Blueprint. The 5 loops are Compressor/Auto Swell/ Pre-EQ as the first loop, OD as the second loop, DIST/Fuzz as the third loop, MOD as the fourth loop, and DELAY/VERB as the fifth loop. I will wire the DELAY/VERB chain separately out of four daisy chain loops. This will make the Bypass signal way much better and shorter than the original VFE Mega pedal.

So the I/O for the boards are only four:

1x Input, 1x Output, 1x Send (DELAY/VERB), and 1x Return (DELAY/VERB). If it happens there is an amp without a SEND/RETURN like VOX AC15 then I’ll just easily connect the OUTPUT to the SEND and the RETURN would be my OUTPUT.

IMHO, The CLUSTER/ Loop system is way more effective in a live situation rather than having 18 I/O on the backplane. The 18 I/O would be better in studio/ experiment situation.

The final build is different than the VFE Mega Pedal list:

Cluster(1) COMP/AW/SWELL — White Horse, Mini Mu, Bumblebee
Cluster(2) OD — Merman, Pale Horse, Blues King, The Scream, Rocket EQ
Cluster(3) DIST/FUZZ — Alpha Dog, Triplet, Fiery Red Horse — Focus (Mid Boost)
Cluster(4) MOD — Tractor Beam, Old School, Choral Reef
Cluster(5) DELAY/VERB — Blueprint, Mobius Strip, Yodeler
Cluster(6) TAP TEMPO