I finally built my Bleep Drum.

It took a while. The original audio jack was defective. So to change it out, I had to wire it (as I lack the tools or knowledge for removing solder from the board).

So it looks like crap. But it works. I may see if I can clean it up and make it look better. It didn’t help that months ago when I started working on it, not only did the audio jack suck, but I managed to lose two tiny capacitors in my garage. So it sat for a long time unfinished. I even lost the little bolts to fasten the top into the support legs.

What I’m saying it this: this has been the worst of the Bleep Labs projects I’ve built — and the fault really is mostly mine. On the bright side, the work I did today improved my soldering skills quite a bit. The Pico Paso and the Nebulophone turned out really well. I think I might have gotten in a bit of a rush on this months ago.

I have no idea if the MIDI jack works or not. Those are the two capacitors I lost, and I got the replacements about 3 months ago. So I don’t even know if I got the right ones in the right place. They are so damned small they really have no markings.

EDIT: been looking at methods of removing solder from the little holes in the board, so I can put the new audio jack on properly. Gonna give it a try. If I messed up the MIDI interface I’ll just order a new one – it isn’t expensive.

Here’s my first experiment.