CRAZY idea! why not?

[darron]

hey. I just had a very crazy thought. manufacturers make ICs with circuits in them to eliminate many components and massive circuit boards. how funny/cool would it be if a larger effect company could get their entire effect into a single IC? it may not be economically feasible, but imagine the bypass switch on board with a single IC with some pinouts going to the pots. if you can squeeze an entire opamp worth of components into a tiny SMD 5534 IC and still have fantastic quality, then I don't see why it couldn't be done. it wouldn't FEEL right, but it would look crazy.

any thoughts? tell me how stupid i am...

[Arno van der Heijden]

It's called DSP....

[R.G.]

It's simple enough. In fact, it's almost trivial, with only a few gotchas, those being that the range of resistances and capacitances available on a chip are limited, so it may not be possible to get exactly the same circuit.

It's just not economically reasonable, and that is almost as big an impediment as being impossible by the laws of physics.

IBM did something they called an "analog master slice" at one time. I doubt it's being done any more. This was a chip which was pre-laid-out with many transistors, resistors, on-chip caps, etc. that you would customize with a metal layer on top. The chips were economical because they would print the same chip many, many times and just leave off the last (top) layer of metal interconnecting them. These were stored under conditions where they could be run into the processing machine for a last layer of metal as needed. Kind of a programmable analog chip.

There is another company making a programmable analog chip, with on-board opamps. No resistors or caps, as I remember, but many opamps and other parts to interconnect.

Note that the overdrives with the CD4049 are only a few resistors away from being your effect-on-a-chip as it is.

[widdly]

You could hide all the electronics in the battery clip.  Then the pedal would just look like a bunch of wires.

[soulsonic]

THAT Corp. has some stuff that gets pretty close to that idea:  http://www.thatcorp.com/icprod.html

[gez]

You can still buy EQ chips, which only require a handful of components.  Not sure if they're still being manufactured, but they pop up in my suppliers' catalogues.

[MartyMart]

Dont forget the SSM2166 - pretty much a "complete" FX chip  !!
..... just add a dash of pots and a sprinkle of other parts

[darron]

i could imagine behringer adopting a new line like that though hehe. not practically. thanks for the links guys. they were interesting to see.

[boyersdad]

This would be the cats ass for in-guitar effects. Of imagine modding your Poly-800 or other synth with 10-11 of your favourite outboard effects, right in the empty space in the chassis!

[Jaicen_solo]

Favourite? Like anyone would be mental enough to own more than one!? Hehe.

Actually, i'd own two if I could find an EX800 cheaply enough, but I got my Poly800 for free, so I can't really complain!

[widdly]

Did you do the filter mods off the web?  It's nice to have a couple of knobs to tweak.  Mine looses all it's patches when it gets a midi song start message!  Kinda makes it a pain to sequence with.

[Jaicen_solo]

No, I never bothered for a couple of reasons. Mostly it's in really good condition, except for a scratch on the top panel. Secondly, I don't really use it enough to warrant the mod, since I have other synths that will do the job much better. And thirdly, because it messes with the patch settings, which is a PITA!

[Sir H C]

It is the fewest chips vs. flexibility problem.  As RG says, some companies do the metal mask variable ICs, here you could do something relatively cheaply, but to really get any fab to want to build your chip you have to be bringing them at least a million dollars in business (this number changes with fab as TSMC would be probably 10-20 million) for them to talk to you.  Then you have to get the IC designed (can't really just say you want a TL072 put in there with a 4049, someone has to actually design those bits) and this is about 50-500k depending on what you want in there, so now you have quite a lot of money tied up on the chip, so you better sell a lot of these.

In the end only if size is the overriding factor or the volume is such that cost savings of a penny a board are big money such chips are not feasible.

[puretube]

Get your Ana-chips made here!