Dual Tarkin for 2014 Circuits to Cure Cancer charity auction
There are many, many charities around the world that are worthy of support. Truly loads. The St Jude's Mission Statement connects with me on a few different levels, and I'm very proud to be able to support them while doing something that makes me happy. While the NHS is being broken up and sold on to the highest bidder on this side of the pond, the healthcare system in America has far more entrenched problems that leave some people unable to get the treatment they need. Both Britain and America have the finances and technologies to treat many more people than they actually do, but it would appear this comes second to, unbelievably, profits.
St Jude's basically goes against that system and, to quote their Mission Statement, "no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family's ability to pay."
This attitude is a shining example to all those involved in making decisions about healthcare. Now let's see a pedal get made...
First step is to sand the enclosure super flat and get it super clean. This gives you the best possible surface for the toner transfer needed to etch the artwork. The toner transfer is achieved using an advanced technology called the "iron". After the toner has been transferred, the box is cooled and the transfer paper removed to reveal our artwork, inverted. The artwork is inverted because the toner is resistant to the acid we are going to use to etch the other areas. The etched areas are then recessed from the rest of the box, and we can then fill those recesses with paint later for our artwork. Simple, eh?
Next, the rest of the box is protected using masking tape and enamel paint. The acid can't get through these, so we are now left with only our artwork as exposed metal. All Cog Effects pedals are etched in batches in-house currently, and in this batch we have some Grand Tarkins, a stock version of the Dual Tarkin, a couple of custom pre-amps, custom Dual Knightfall and Knightfall 66s, a Line Selector, and two more involved custom projects featuring Knightfalls and the upcoming T-65 Octave pedal. Time to etch.
Here's the obligatory "here's one I made earlier" picture, with the box etched and partially cleaned. The actual etching process is fairly dirty but also requires a lot of attention, so alas I struggle to ever get photos of it. Our artwork is now on the box and we are ready for it to be cleaned, drilled, and painted.
Drilled and part-way through cleaning. The artwork is now visible and will be ready for painting once clean. For the best contrast we will use black.
Below we see the box painted black and ready for sanding, and then two pictures during the sanding process showing how the artwork appears when the rest of the box is sanded back. The enclosure is now ready for fine sanding and clearcoating.
That's it. With the wiring all complete, that right there be the guts of a Cog Effects Dual Tarkin Fuzz Pedal!! Three PCBs: one for the circuit and two tiny PCBs for the footswitches. True bypass and channel switching handled by relay.
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