# I take my hat off to Mark Hammer



## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

I sent mhammer a package of electronics bits and pieces as a fun surprise. Last summer, he sent a "SNAP" fuzz pedal that he built for me as a very generous Thank You gift. 

The pedal worked fine ...and then it stopped functioning a few days ago. 
I looked inside and could not believe how much Mark had stuffed into a little 1590A enclosure!

This pic is not of Mark's pedal (I must get a pic of it for this thread) but it gives an indication of the amount of stuffing happening.

Mark's SNAP pedal has 2 pots AND 2 small toggle switches AND an LED in addition to many more passive components then the pedal in this pic .

The "hot" of one of the jacks had somehow become bent and was grounding out on the switch casing and also not allowing the plug to fully engage the 'hot' contact and stay plugged in.

I only broke 2 solder joints (both on the switch) during my repair efforts. Thank goodness the breaks were obvious and easy to solder again.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Jeez! Busy!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Aw shucks, Dave. Thanks.

Unless one is getting surface-mount boards wave-soldered by a contractor, building FX into those tiny boxes is like building a ship in a bottle with one hand tied behind your back. I get suckered into using them because I can get them relatively inexpensively from Tayda, pre-powder-coated, and because they're so small and light, the shipping costs are minimal, compared to the larger boxes.

But yeah, I had to make some compromises with your pedal, Dave. The original would have used 4 pots, and 4 pots simply weren't going to fit in there, so I used 3-position toggles for the tone adjustments. I think they provide enough variation. The jacks, however, are an absolute bear to situate in those boxes. And unless you have the "right" ones, , and your drill press has absolute dead aim, one can be severely limited in what you can stuff in there using thru-hole components. Thank goodness for 1/8W resistors!


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