XOR Ultra SiCk Anythig become of this? Musser?

[John Lyons]

Did anything ever become of this? It looked promising and ripe for tweaking...Just wondering if anybody took it further or has comments on a build that they did?

J Musser?

John

[jmusser]

I'm not sure if there's been any action on it. I figure if it had a sound sample, it would get more action, but I'd have to buy a bunch of stuff to be able to do that with. I believe there may have been one person to build it, and they weren't able to get some of the sounds out of it. If you were interested in building it, I could give you some pretty good approximations on settings of the pots and guitar, to get the tones I describe. I sent it to Charlie Barth over at Moosapotamus to work on when he gets time, because I consider him the "King Tweaker"  of the forum. Look at what he did with the Rattle Crow, when he tweaked it into the Dirty Bird! I'm not making up things that didn't happen with this effect, because I did get all these echoing tones that I described. How useful is it?  That's really up to the individual, but to date, I have not heard any of the other effects do what this thing does, and especially not with just a change in pick attack! It will go from one type of echo, to an intirely different type of echo by just how hard you play, so you could theoretically change echos with each pick stroke with some finesse. What other effect do you know of that does that? It's definitely not built to it's optimum potential, because I basically duplicated the same circuit 3 times. I'm sure values could be changed or components added to take it from good to great, but the root effect is sound. I'd sure like to see some of the forumites try this thing and give it some reviews of their own, because I feel that it's pretty unique. I haven't been in the effect scene as long as everybody else, so I may be sadly mistaken, but if some other effect does what the XORUS does, I'd sure love to hear it!

[Arn C.]

I built this right when it came on this site.  One thing I forgot is about the pick attack, I will pull it out tonight(as I am practicing for a benefit this Saturday) and give it a try again and try to post here tomorrow.  

Peace!
Arn C.

[jmusser]

I'd appreciate the feedback Arn C. If you would, go back and read my review on how I achieved the two different octave echos, with just pick attack. One has to be a feather touch, and the next one is more of normal playing. Play harder, and the echo will delay by quite a spread. Like I said, any help I can give you in finding those sweet spots, feel free to ask. I couldn't remember who it was that built it, but I knew there was one or two of you at the time.

[Arn C.]

Just got the past info you posted and am printing it out now.   I will give it a shot and report back.

Peace!
Arn C.

[bluesdevil]

Got the chip a few days ago and finally got it built last night!!!  The only problem I have is the volume pot isn't affecting the level and is just acting as another "sick" knob. ..... weird, because if I disconnect it's middle lug wire, the sound shuts off. Maybe a short somewhere else on my wiring or board.
     I was able to get thick and thin fuzzes with lots of sustain and various tonal colors, but nothing really weird or wacky.  After playing around a bit I got the "echo" jeff  mentioned above. It wasn't a repeated note , but a glitch kinda sound triggered whenever I hit  a one strike sharp staccato chord.
     Also some settings really are touch sensitive and actually sound a lot cooler when picked softly!!!
      If this circuit could be tuned to get  the maximum potential of a wider variety different sounds and with less knobs (if possible) it will be a killer fuzz circuit!!!  Looking forward to seeing what Charlie does with this jewel in the rough.

[bluesdevil]

Just plugged it back in after making my last post..... AND I missed out of a lot of stuff the first time around!!!  I rolled down the volume halfway on my guitar neck pickup and found a setting that gave weird chirps and octave up effects.  also with further experimenting I got the "echo" thing to produce more of deeper and a small bit of a longer tone than the initial glitch sound. Changed my mind: I love the sick range of fuzz and effects on this thing without more tweaking!!!!!  Hats off to all involved!!

[jmusser]

Hey Bluesdevil, glad you liked it! It will take some playing around with and adjusting before you find all the weirdness there is available. I haven't played around with it for awhile, and I'd have to work at it myself! I don't have mine boxed, and I really think the key is, to have this thing boxed, and all the pots numbered 1-10. Then, you could sit down with it, and get your settings down for where different tones are available. The guitar volume has an awful lot to do with it also. You get entirely different results with how it reacts when set between 5 and 10. When you have it set around half volume, is when you get lets say 1 octave down if you play very lightly. If you play normally, you'll get fundamental, with the 1st down octave echo, that will delay a partial second to several seconds, by just how hard the pick attack is. You seem to get the up ocatve right off, and that was my hardest tone to duplicate after I found it the first time. What is cool, is being able to play it normally in fundamental with the guitar volume wide open, and then if you want to do a solo, you could just roll your guitar volume to 5 or 6, and then get two totally different lead tones, by just using pick attack. This is really not a whole lot different than say using something like the SOU at that moment, because you would normaly have to roll the guitar volume down to make the octave shine for a solo, only now your getting variations by pick attack. I could see this going another step further. If you could find that in one setting for the 3rd pot, that you got down octave, and fundamental with down octave echo, and at another setting of the 3rd pot, you got mosquito fuzz and fundamental with mosquito echo, then you could measure the resistance of the 3rd pot at those areas, and sub fixed resistors. That way in the middle of the solo, you could foot switch between both sets of effects, because your guitar volume would already be set correctly. I just see a lot of potential here, for real diversity on the fly. I know that there is also first octave down, with second octave down echo in there too, that also changes delay times by pick attack. What's also neat, is that you can use it as a square wave or filtered square wave fuzz, because I believe pot two does a lot of the tone control. It will adjust to a Satisfaction type fuzz, and a very high pitched mosquito fuzz. Since it's root circuit is the Digital Octaver Fuzz, those aspects are there also, but it just does a lot more. I believe if you were to get comfortable using the dynamics of this thing, you' make some jaws drop in the audience, even if they were musicians! :shock:

[Arn C.]

jmusser:

I tried it out the other night and I must have something wrong.  Mine is very blatty sounding, not smooth at all.   I didn't try rolling back the guitar volume tho.  I will try that.  My guitar has all humbuckers, don't know if this makes a diffference.  Anyhow I will try it some more when I get the chance.  I have a gig Saturday, practice time....

Peace!
Arn C.

[ethrbunny]

<guilty>
I built this and while it was fun to experiment with I was unable to get anywhere near the variety of sounds that you listed. Two of the pots seemed to have almost no effect.

Its beastly hot here these days so Im not spending much time in the garage (my work space). When the elements are more forgiving I will go and debug my build. Im not enough of a tweaker (no meth reference intended) to be able to make circuitry changes to modify the sound so I won't be much help there.

Im sure the problems Im experiencing are all on my end. I'll report back as soon as I can.
</guilty>

[ethrbunny]

One question RE: tweaking - I had to use .0033 instead of .002. What effect will this have on the sound?

[bluesdevil]

Today I changed out the 100k volume pot with a 5k log and now there is control over the volume.  Also found a christmas tin to house it in and think I can round up some knobs.... hopefully won't have a hard time finding those weird sounding settings again so I can write 'em down. Will try to get up some sound clips when I do.
     Etherbunny: I'm not an expert, but I can't see using the .0033 caps would make much tonal difference .  Check to make sure your pots are wired correctly together..... hope you get it going!!!!

[ethrbunny]

Okies. I need to (re)check the wiring anyway.

I have all the bits to make mp3 samples.. just need to sit down and do it.  :?

[jmusser]

Well All, let me know how it turns out. I have not tried humbuckers only, although I have an Epiphone Flying V, I could try with it. If you end up not being able to find the different echos and all that, I can go back into research mode for awhile, and get down some data on what was adjusted where, to make the different tones. All of the pots make a difference in tone, but there may only be one of the other 3 that they are interactive with at any one time. I need to go back through some other notes that I have on a few of the adjustments. One thing you have to remember, is that if you play with a normal pick attack, you may not know that some of the tones are actually there at the same time, unless you play lightly, because you totally overwhem it by playing normally. It must have something to do with the amount of amplification you are causing off of the picups, in relationship to the bias of the transistor, that allows tone variety, with pick attack alone.

[John Lyons]

Finally got around to this one last night. It worked right away, first effect I plugged in and worked first time...Maybe I'm just getting better at my circuits...anyway!

I've only played through this for a day but here are my thoughts on the controls as they are stock, per the schematic:

"Retch" and "Hurl" knobs have the most effect on the sound. Between R and H knobs you can get everything from a thin nasal tone to a very thick and wooly big muff type tone. Pretty much all the sounds are heavy distortion and sqare wave type buzz saw sounds, Everything for screech to bassy and fat. All sounds are gated as well, some more some less depending on the settings.

The "Sick" and "Spew" knobs are mostly very subtle not noticable at times. They seems to control the high end, fizz and after effect sizzle...they also effect gating sometimes. On one setting they adjust the high end warble/wet sounding oscillation.

This is definetly an effect where you need to have a faceplate for your bread board or put the knobs in a box to see what you are doing in order to adjust the settings..as said above....

Anyone have any findings or mods they've done? I haven't fooled around with it as far as trying different parts vales etc. Still on the prototype  bread board, that'll be the next thing I do.

John

[jmusser]

Right now, I'm in the middle of "Hell Week" at our county fair. That's when we make biggest part of our money to support our high school marching band from selling concessions. I have to work two 12 hour nights, and then I'm back to the fair grounds for the worst and busiest two 16 hour days of the fair. Anyway, when I get settled down after this, I promise to spend some time with the XORUS, and get down some concrete settings on where you have to be adjusted on the various pots and guitar to get the tones I've talked about. I'll also see if there is a difference in playing humbuckers instead of single coils to get these effects. The first two pots, seem to handle the more subtle end of the spectrum (filtering the square wave, and adding or removing white noise (also up octave), where the next two effect pots control the down octaves and echos, plus the standard square wave, and high pitched "Satisfaction" tone. I may go ahead and try adding in the full wave rectification of the DOF, to make it easier to to come up with the up octave. That seems to be the toughest effect to duplicate of the ones that I've mentioned. I'm hoping that these aren't tones that can only be duplicated because I just happen to hit on the magic mixture of guitar, amp and components that are happy together. It's cool for me of course, but I sure wanted everyone to be able to experience this weirdness and variety for themselves. I honestly haven't heard anything like it to date!

[ethrbunny]

Id love to hear about mods to make 'sick' and 'spew' more responsive.

It would be worth boxing it up just to put those labels on it.  :roll:

[John Lyons]

Silly me!

I overlooked a connection that connects the wipers of Retch and spew...All the wipers are connected together on the 4 pots...

Now all the controls do something very noticeable. Of course my settings are now all thrown off so I'll have to start over writing them all down.

I added a tone control (mark hammers wonderfully simple tone control) and I used the Values he used except I put in a .05 cap. This really tones down some of the crazy earbleeding settings if you want to.

Need to try the diodes that the Digital Octaver Fuzz uses...as well as tweak it further possibly. It sounds good..very different and mostly for chordal stuff.

I'll be back with what I find out now that I have the circuit to a starting place again.

John

[Eirik]

Where can I find the schematic of this mysterious circuit? I would like to give it a try.

[Eirik]

Sorry!  I found it... searching is gold :roll: