Someone saw my brother running my press and peel blue pcb stuff through a laser printer at work. They asked him if I could build a flanger/delay pedal. I've only built two pedals and am working on a couple more, so obviously it's over my head. I was wondering if any of you have built such a monster or know of a commercial product like this.
As long as I'm on the subject of combining effects, I know skilled folks like some here could put two effects together into one box, but how exactly do you do this? Is it worth doing? Analogman's bi-compressor and HBE's Tramp come to mind.
It'd be a big box, but you could certainly put an UltraFlanger (or DEM) in a box with a PT-80 or Rebote...
Too much for me, but...
"-)
Many of A/DA's flagship products in the late 70's and early 80's were, in fact, exactly what you describe, combining flanger, chorus, and delay into one rackmount unit. The Electro-Harmonix Echgoflanger packed a flanger, chorus, and slapback echo into one pedal. The Midwest Analog Projects Analog Chorus Delay, which started out life as a Craig Anderton Guitar Player project article, is a similar sort of beast, as is the Scholz Rockman Delay unit, and numerous others. Check out the assorted modulation/delay pedals shown at http://modezero.com (click on the "gallery" link) and you'll see lots of examples, in some instances with shots of the board showing the chip-complement.
There is a difference, of course, between making a device which is convertible from, say, a flanger to a chorus, or chorus to delay, and a device which has both a chorus and delay. All that is required to make a flanger turn into a chorus or vice versa, is to dicker with a the LFO a bit, change the delay range (one component) and enable/disable the regeneration. Similarly, take a BBD capable of reasonable medium-length echo-type delays (e.g., an MN3005 or SAD4096), shift the clock/delay range by maybe a factor of 10 and tack on an LFO, and you have a chorus.
"All that is required" is a bit of an oversimplification, though, since every BBD will require filtering to reduce clock-based noise, and the filter parameters will depend on the delay-range selected.
As for generating the particular delay time needed to produce the given effect, you will need independent clock circuits if you intend to have simultaneous effects, or some sort of convertible arrangement of a single clock if you want to do fairly broad conversions. The E-H Echoflanger, for instance, used a pair of SAD1024 chips in series with a single clock feeding them. In the flanger or chorus setting, only one delay chip was used, and the clock signal adapted to use the LFO. In the echo setting, the second BBD was patched in and the clock signal altered. The Scholz Stereo Chorus Delay had both high capacity and low capacity delay chips on board, with independent clocking for each.
A note of caution. If you go the route of either routing a single clock all over the place, or having two independent high-frequency clocks driving independent effects, shielding of leads to controls and proper layout becomes super-critical. These things are noisy in the best of circumstances.
yeah, 2 clocks = RF skills required...
Sounds like he would be better off just getting the flanger he wants and the delay he wants and forget about one pedal for both. I'm sure some day someone will do it, but 2 pedals sounds more practical to me. Thanks guys.