Veils 2020 PCB, Version 11
Price: £14.99EU Customers, pay your local sales tax at the checkout, no extra customs charges on arrival, only on orders below €150 (about GBP £130), over €150 you pay the postman with an extra charge.
An amazing evolution of the classic quad VCA mixer, now available to DIY.
The new Veils has shrunk, 10HP this time, and it has sliders, and new offsets on every CV input which work together with the CV attenuators and exponential/linear response control to allow immense and subtle control over your VCA's modulation levels.
New opamps shave a bit off the signal to noise ratio and slightly lower the build cost, we're planning to carry both versions of Veils, some people like knobs, some like sliders, some will want both.
These super high quality PCB's are the Latest version 11 and made at a high end European factory! This version uses a high tech 4 layer pcb for improved grounding, cleaner power distribution and lower noise. Along with a full electrical test, our manufacturing partner uses an automatic optical inspection system to ensure all layers are completely true to the design files and beautifully aligned for trouble free operation, all in all, quite a substantial upgrade!
This version of Veils uses 0402 passives, so is not beginner friendly, more experienced builders will have an easy time, if they've built any 0402 modules already.
This module is easiest is to build using a stencil and solder paste, and reflowing with hot air or on a hot plate instead of hand soldering.
Strong magnification is almost essential when using 0402 parts, a digital microscope with a screen or usb model would be fine for placing parts on paste with tweezers, not such a good idea for soldering, the lag when the display updates can make a soldering iron dangerous, if the screen shows it in the wrong place. An optical microscope is better for hand soldering but not without it's hazards.
using 0603 on 0402 pads is also easier with stencilled paste than hand soldering, the gap between 0402 pads is very small so it's easier to bridge with excess solder or solder paste (stencils control the amount of paste deposited very well)
All that said, this is a very spaced out layout which should be easy for someone with experience to build.
Here's a Mouser Cart BOM for easy ordering of most parts and for costing your builds. Try ordering several projects at once for lowest prices.
At the moment most Texas Instruments parts are showing very long lead times at Mouser, but they are coming in and out of stock all the time very quickly, if you order as normal they will be sent separately as soon as they come in, this is much easier than waiting for them to come into stock.
Veils 2020 channels 1 & 3 distortion issue when used with SSI2164
This problem looks to be caused by two tiny unrouted traces which connect c22 and c23 to gnd, it is easy to fix on your pcb.
connect the gap between two pads in the picture below (red areas), this should connect c22 and c23 to gnd:
The cleanest way to do this is to carefully scrape the solder mask between the pads off and solder between them
people generally report this build working fine anyway when the V2164 is used, so if you don't want to scrape, use one of those instead, the SSI2164 is a much higher performance part however...
Veils needs 2 SSI2164 Quad VCA IC's
Mutable Instruments do not have time to support DIY builds, please contact me with support queries related to these PCB's.
Returns policy
If you're not completely satisfied, You can return these PCB's for any reason within 14 days of purchase for a full refund!