DuckMixer NEW VERSION!

 I ran out of DuckMixer front panels! I'm not sure how -- did I order fewer panels than PCBs? Maybe? But because of that, I embarked on ordering more of each!

Adding new features and tweaking footprints is a great thing to do when sending out for new PCBs, and the DuckMixer had holes for the jack LEDs that were just a bit too large for the 1206 LEDs, allowing them to slip through a bit. One of the jacks was flipped 180 degrees from where it was supposed to sit, making it press up against a potentiometer.

So I messed with all that.

I did some minor rerouting, added a spot for the serial number, tried to order the boards, and KABOOM the BOM and CPL don't match, try uploading them again, dummie, is what JLCPCB said to me (paraphrasing) so I spent a bunch of hours trying to sort that out... and failed.

Okay, thought this guy, I guess I'll start from a blank schematic, and build the project again, adding case jack headers (based on the Intellijel standard) for balanced audio out (BALANCED AUDIO!!!) and adjusting the balance (pan) pot curve because the "dead spot" is HUGE. I made the dead spot so large thinking about how an audio enthusiast would need a balance control to work, with a very gradual left/right adjustment near the center to allow for easy and subtle fine-tuning, but that's wrong for a synth-focused mixer. We want to be able to dial in a lot more hard-panning between the channels. So that's what I tweaked.

So anyway, expect this blog post to point to an Instructable for how to build this module even though I don't expect it to ever be DIY-friendly. DIY-possible, sure, but kinda DIY-hostile if I'm honest. Just too much stuff. Although I've built MUCH more difficult and large DIY projects, maybe it's just that I hate hate hate putting kits together. I'm convinced I'll mess up and people will get the wrong parts.

Okay, time to generate that QR code linking to this post, slap it on the PCB, and order!