hi guys,
i have built plenty of pedals in the past so i do know what i am doing to an extent :)
i took the latest and greatest schem for the brown source and made a pcb layout for it and then built it.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y278/veroboard/Lovetone%20Brown%20Sauce/Lovetone_BrownSource_SCHEM_V5.gif
volume works, tone works, but drive only gives a slight volume boost. very strange.
i read many posts about this pedal on the board and it seems no-one can get it to work, with several people saying it produces a slight volume boost at best.
can anyone confirm that they have built a brown source and it sounds like the one on lovetone.com?
i tried increasing the 47n cap to 4.7uf which was suggested by a board member, and does make the circuit distort, but it doesnt sound anything like the pedal on lovetone.com
is this schem a red herring?
any help greatly appreciated.
thanks
ulyssus
by the way im using a texas instruments RC4558P dual opamp. the schem says "dual-opamp, maybe 4558"
if i used a tl072 do you think it would make any difference?
cheers
ulysses
im also using an 18K resistor in position R13 and NOT 22K as a suggested substitution.
do people purposly post the wrong schem for copyright fear but leave hints about the correct parts to use??
thanks
ulysses
Just looking at the schematic, there's no reason it shouldn't work. The signal goes: emitter follower > inverting gain stage > tone controls > non-inverting gain stage > output
Audio probe the output of the 1st gain stage, what do you get?
hey cd
when i do that i still get the same output level as before. with the drive pot working, but the tone and vol pots + tone switch dont work.
i dont get any distortion at all, just a slight volume boost.
thanks
ulysses
hey! I built it a few weeks back and it works fine. Not really anything to great though I didnt think. Cheers.
hey alteredsounds,
would you mind posting the pcb design you used please?
also, can you tell me what types of caps you used for the different values? maybe a photo of your board? :D
cheers
ulysses
Looking at the schematic I can say the values indicated there make no sense:
1) R6: this 220 ohm resistor is too much of a load for the previous emitter follower stage.
2) C3-R6: Starts rolling bass frequencies below 15 kHz ! I would believe this better if the rolloff frequency were between 200 and 700 Hz, meaning C3 should be at least 1 uF.
3) The C5 cap in parallel with the gain pot and 1k resistor produce a high frequency rolloff that starts at 185 Hz. This should rather be near 5 kHz or higher, thus C5 should be better at 1 nF.
4) The output filter cap C13 combined with R14 produce a high frequency rolloff near 22 kHz, which is basically unnoticeable.
Points 1, 2 and 3 explain why you are having such a little gain.
All of the above indicate the component values are not making sense, or that I am missing completely the real operation of the circuit!
Remember: NET = not entirely true.
Thats the one with the rotary switch right? I did it from Torchy's layout and some info from some threads in here, not overally impressed though tbh
hey stm,
thanks for looking at it for me.
i increased c3 to 1uf and it does distort, unfortunatly the distortion sounded nothing like the demos on lovetone.com
i then replaced c5 with a 1n5 cap (i didnt have a 1n in my box of tricks) and it started to sound like a fuzz pedal instead of an overdrive pedal :) will try with a 1n later today.
what would you suggest i use in the place of R6?
thanks again for your help bro.
cheers
ulysses
> do people purposly post the wrong schem for copyright fear but leave hints about the correct parts to use??
In general I'd say no. When you trace a circuit from a photo it's sometimes hard to read the values because shadowing, jpeg artefacts, or other crud distorts the image or the colours. You see one thing but your engineering judgment tells you another - ussually you try to merge what you see and what makes sense to make a judgement. Often that is more accurate than what you see!
Another factor is that many boutique effects are poorly designed. Engineers would see a lot of these designs as "amature hacks". When you look at such circuits you thing "that's crap" but often it turns out to be what the actual circuit is. One example: stm is criticizing the 220R R6 value, from an engineering perspective this is rightly so (!!!), but I would not be surprised if it is that value.
Some History:
I know for a fact in this instance that "analogguru" did make an effort to get this schematic right. BTW analoguru's traces are more trustworthy than most - but I'm sure he will admit it's easy to make mistakes. Many people had input on this and the result wasn't convincing to analogguru (or myself). Mikeb had some PCB photos and analogguru forged the current schematic from those and the existing schematics. Mikeb pulled the pcb pic offer quite quickly and I never got to see them. At the time I wasn't entirely conviced the final schematic was correct (because some things don't look right, as stm has pointed out).
From memory here' what I thought:
- I have a suspicion there may be an issue with 33n caps vs 3n3 caps.
- R14 may well be 2.2k.
- R6 ?
- At one point I susected the switch contacts were out of whack ie. the contacts were interpreted wrongly during the trace.
hey george,
thanks for your reply.
i suspect that c5 needs to be 3n3 not 1n. when i use a 1n5 cap in its place, it sounds like a fuzz box. when i use a 12n (the next lowest cap in my box of spares) is sounds better than the 33n but still too muddy. becasue it was a public holiday today i couldnt go any buy the parts i needed.
i think the wiring diagram in the schem i used is incorrect. i can only get two noticable different sounds out of it. when the tone switch is set to off it passes what seems like the full tone (tone pot does not work when tone switch is set to off). when the tone switch is set to any of the three other settings i have control over the tone pot but all three tone switch settings sound the same.
i now have a copy of those pcb pics. c3 and c9 are different types of caps to the rest of them. which makes me think that c3 is definatly wrong.
will try and work out the switch wiring.
cheers
ulysses
The web is a funny place
Years ago(1999) a friend brought over a cheese source to be fixed (broken switches). He needed it back in a few hours. I traced the circuits in about a hour, I like to have more time to check.
When I posted about them I noted the schematic could have a problem. I never built a BS.
R.G. traced a difference in a big cheese. IIRC I asked if the diffferece might be real because the cheese and CS might have a small difference at the gain setting a work somewhat the same.
Then like the web does what it does well things get twisted with time.
Quote from: Gus on April 14, 2006, 07:57:37 AM
The web is a funny place.
IMO the crime is that there is not an archive of what happened in the mid-late 90's. New people come in and have no place to look to find out "who did what when" kind of info. Unless you were around & involved with this stuff then, you have no way of knowing. So things can get attributed to the wrong sources and etc. And as for me I regularly shoot myself in the foot taking stuff off my site, only to see it resurface later somewhere else or ideas from it come up with no attribution. It's a learning process, I guess...
Re. the schematic: I would isolate the follower and gain stage and get that working first. As drawn I don't see any big issues with it. I don't agree with STM that R6 is a problem at 220 ohm. It's not a shunt, it's a series resistor that determines the gain (along with R7/VR1) of the non-inv op amp stg. 33n may be excessive for C5 but with fuzz boxes there could be a method to the madness. Be careful with the rotary switch wiring though. That could be a source of confusion.
Doug
Quote from: Doug_H on April 14, 2006, 10:14:14 AM
IMO the crime is that there is not an archive of what happened in the mid-late 90's.
Good God. Has it really been that long? :icon_smile:
Great point.
after looking at the switch wiring i think it is actually correct, i now think that c8 c10 and c11 are wrong, or maybe just c10 and c11
from the schematic i linked to in my original post you can see that the switch switches between caps creating a low pass filter.
from what i can see it uses two caps and one resistor to create the low pass filter.
tone switch position 1 = 33n to 3k9 to ground
tone switch position 2 = 33n + 33n to 3k9 to ground
tone switch position 3 = 33n + 22n to 3k9 to ground
tone switch position 4 = 33n to 3k9 to ground (same as position 1 but enables tone pot)
position 1 does sound like position 4 when you play.
position 2 does sound like a low pass filter when you play and the tone pot works.
position 3 sounds the same as position3 when you play and the tone pot works.
could someone with a low pass calc figure out the freq's that are being passed so i can figure out the correct caps to use for c8 c10 and c11.
thanks
ulysses
i just had a thought. when c10 and c11 are in use via the tone switch (switch positions 2 & 3) , c13 also gets used when the tone switch is in positions 2 and 3.
any thoughts on a correct value for c13?
thanks for your help guys.
cheers
ulysses
Your comments agree with how I see the circuit working as it is drawn.
Position 1 and Position 4 should sound about the but there will be a level drop in position 4 (actually 3 on the schem numbers).
I bashed out some numbers for C7, C8, C10, C11 and to be honest they don't look "bad" as such. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they are correct, just that they are in a useable ball-park. The C10 and C11 values will only give a subtle change to the voicing, at a guess the subtle change is intentional. Given that the output LPF is also being switched the LPF should be contributing to a change in sound also, making the sound more different than just the change of C8, 10, 11 alone imply. The tone circuit is a mid-notch with a variable tilt between low and high (the amz site has some stuff on this if you want to look, don't know where abouts though). Looking closer at the circuit there is not mid-notch behaviour, only high/low tilt; in fact in position 2 there is a mid hump instead of a notch.
It's not possible to speculate the correct values through calculations. All I can say is:
- if you make any of the treble caps (C8, C10, C11) smaller you will get more of a mid notch
- if you make C7 larger you will get more of a mid-notch.
- if you space the treble cap combinations wider you will hear more difference.
- if R14 or C13 were correct perhaps you don't need to change C7, C8, C10, C11.
C13 is hard to judge. It could be anything from it's current value upto 330nF or so. Have you confirmed R14's value from the photo's? that would be a better part to vary.
thanks again for your reply george.
i increased c13 to 100n which changed the high pass from 22khz to around 7khz which took out the opamp 'sting' (square distortion) but didnt make it sound much better :)
unfortunatly noone knows the correct input gain/distortion part of the circuit. the way its written up in various schems it only gives a volume boost. increasing c3 makes it distort, but even with the tone section bypassed it sounds like any other shitty opamp distortion.
i think im going to give up on this one untill someone comes up with a schem that sounds like the demos on lovetone.com
untill then ill just have to crank up my jtm45 despite my wife and kid.
thanks again to everyone who chipped in.
ulysses.
anyone found any correct values of components yet?
Quotei think im going to give up on this one untill someone comes up with a schem that sounds like the demos on lovetone.com
Just out of curiosity, how do we know the demos are from a Brownsource, or any other specific pedal for that matter?
:)
I built a working Brown Source from the PDF document Nelson posted here.
Here are my thoughts:
The sound clip on lovetone is pretty wild, a lot of tone and many cool sounds. I do not think that the sounds there are from a brown source through a clean amp at all! Take away the wah and an already overdriven amp and you get what the BS really sounds like...
The sounds I get are pretty much mild overdrive and a somewhat flexible tone control with a rotary to switch caps...basically thin and thick sounds at the twist of a tone knob.
Through my blackface Fender twin reverb the Brown source sounds mediocre at best. Static/Fizzle on top of soft picked notes and not too much mojo at all. With a boost (micro amp) in front of the BS it comes alive and sounds a lot better, or at least more "rock" and sustain.
This leads me to believe that the clips on lovetone were through a loud mildly distorted amp with some output tube distortions already going on.
I tried it through a tube marshal type amp I made with a little grit already going on and it sounded a lot better. Like the clips on lovetone?...not really! But it did sound nice... I was expecting something a lot better, kind of a bummer. You be the judge.
Here are a couple sound clips I made. www.mrdwab.com/john/soundclipspage.html
John
I borrowed a cheese source a few months back to play with. I wish I had taken the time to trace the board.
I think the source is a good overdrive but by no means is it over the top by any definition. The clip may have other things on it.
Oddly enough, i liked the source without any of the rotary positions. Just bypassing it all together so maybe I'll build one without the rotary swithc and see if I'm successfull
Scott
Isn't the Big Cheese the same ( esentially) as the Great Cheddar at GEO or GGG?
I didn't think the clips of the Big Cheese were all that great compared to the Brown Source. But who knows...the BS seems to be verified as the per the original and is sounds unlike the clips on Lovetones site... Bah!!!!!!!!!!
John
FWIW My friend that had the cheese source also had a Klon. The klon and the brown source only sounded good into certain amps and at certain volumes. They were OK but both were sold. It has been years but IIRC the klon and source sounded very good with a strat and old deluxe. Now the big cheese is just crazy and fun use that with a meatball etc in or out of the effects loop.
I have seen and heard fixed(switches)a number of lovetone effects ring stinger, meatball, CS, doppelgänger, wobulator.
They are all good BUT you need to learn how to set them up for the sound you want there are a lot of controls and a lot of interactions.
Quote from: Basicaudio on October 19, 2006, 09:39:21 PM
I built a working Brown Source from the PDF document Nelson posted here.
Here are my thoughts:
The sound clip on lovetone is pretty wild, a lot of tone and many cool sounds. I do not think that the sounds there are from a brown source through a clean amp at all! Take away the wah and an already overdriven amp and you get what the BS really sounds like...
The sounds I get are pretty much mild overdrive and a somewhat flexible tone control with a rotary to switch caps...basically thin and thick sounds at the twist of a tone knob.
Through my blackface Fender twin reverb the Brown source sounds mediocre at best. Static/Fizzle on top of soft picked notes and not too much mojo at all. With a boost (micro amp) in front of the BS it comes alive and sounds a lot better, or at least more "rock" and sustain.
This leads me to believe that the clips on lovetone were through a loud mildly distorted amp with some output tube distortions already going on.
I tried it through a tube marshal type amp I made with a little grit already going on and it sounded a lot better. Like the clips on lovetone?...not really! But it did sound nice... I was expecting something a lot better, kind of a bummer. You be the judge.
Here are a couple sound clips I made. www.mrdwab.com/john/soundclipspage.html
John
I've also built this up using Nelsons PDF layout. I couldn't agree more with what you said. Fizzy over the top of soft playing - not alot of gain at all. It's a good pedal - not great! A clean boost or my TS-9 in front of it and it becomes a different animal. I also was underwhelmed by it. Oh well - building one is a heck of alot cheaper then buying one!
I'm going to try a few different cliping arangements and see what I can come up with. Jfets, LEDS, Germaniums, Maybe a combo...
If I can get rid of the Fizz on top of the clean/soft played notes I'll be happy enough with this one.
It's nothing like the clips that made me want to build it but still a nice one.
Any other opinions on this circuit?
John
Quote from: Basicaudio on October 20, 2006, 10:11:28 PM
I'm going to try a few different cliping arangements and see what I can come up with. Jfets, LEDS, Germaniums, Maybe a combo...
If I can get rid of the Fizz on top of the clean/soft played notes I'll be happy enough with this one.
It's nothing like the clips that made me want to build it but still a nice one.
Any other opinions on this circuit?
John
What about switching out the gain pot for a b50k?
I did a lot of "hacking and tweaking" on the Brown Source, whilst trying to figure out the circuit
with Torchy a few months ago. ( kind of a "Franken-source" !! )
We got very close, then Nelson produced the PDF, so I got a "worker" out of two circuits.
IMO, it's an OK blend of OD/Fuzz, with the cap switching etc, NOT a world-beater though !.
A decent cap switched FF, or an RM Mongoose with cap switch would be much better .
I have since dismantled it and used the parts for other stuff .
MM.
The schem posted here is definitly wrong (output wiring on IC1b, w this wiring the unit sounds like piss).
Maybe the original last version had a mistake in the board layout, all earlier versions have the correct layout on IC1b.
On the earlier versions the output is connected to pin 7 of IC1b. With this wiring you get the sound from the sound samples.
JHS
JHS
The PDF Nelson made has the Output on pin 7.
I played through my BS build tonight after changing the Gain pot to 50K. With the rotary possitions 1-3 the circuit motorboats at a very low frequency until you turn down the gain (or turn the tone towards the thinner setting) on position 4 the motorboating isn't there. Sounds pretty good.
Any idea how to cut out the motorboating? Is it just a matter of lowering the 4.7uf cap? before the tone control?
John
Maybe Nelson made an update of his pdf, in my pdf (schem of V5-unit) the 4,7uF output cap is connected to the inverting input of IC U1B and the 3,9k.
I've noticed that the 4,7uF is connected to pin 2 in the board layout and I think it is wrong too, the 4,7uF must be connected to pin 1 for correct action and sound like in the V1-V4 units. IMHO, too wire the output to the inverting input of an opamp won't make much sense.
JHS
I'm pretty sure that Nelson's layout corresponds to 100% to the original V5 because some time ago I had a look at the pics Nelson was working from and every connection can be clearly seen. There is a minor bug in the schem that Nelson obviously didn't have the time to change (the part of the rotary switch that switches in the tone control is reversed. in position 1 the tone control is bypassed in the layout while in the schem it is in pos 4).
However, the layout is functionally identical to v5.
Since JHS mentioned that in previous versions v1-v4 the output cap is connected to the output of the opamp stage my question is: might it be possible that the dual opamp in v5 does not have standard pinout?? Don't know if this would make any sense.
Can anyone else back up JHS's claims here? It would make sense that the output should be taken from pin 1 of U1b...
Before I get out the dremel and cut traces I'd like to hear from someone else.
JHS if you are out there... Should pin 1 connect to the output cap and so on? What about the 22K between pins 1 and 2?
John
"search" is yer friend... :icon_wink:
Quote from: Basicaudio on October 26, 2006, 03:35:03 PM
Can anyone else back up JHS's claims here? It would make sense that the output should be taken from pin 1 of U1b...
Before I get out the dremel and cut traces I'd like to hear from someone else.
JHS if you are out there... Should pin 1 connect to the output cap and so on? What about the 22K between pins 1 and 2?
John
I'm also interested in knowing this. I've built this one also - and it just doesn't seem right. I've used the search and it's turned up nada regarding this issue.
OK - I searched FOR YOU... (http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=47681.msg352117#msg352117)
btw: can anybody imagine, what non-linking to schemos,
and do-the-searching for others
costs others???
:icon_wink: :icon_wink:
(p.s.: I won`t do the scrolling within a thread, for others...)
BTW: I never expected too much from this circuit, looking at the schemos,
and evaluating the components` values...
:icon_eek:
All in all rely on your own ears and decide yourself what sounds best.
Anubics posted a correct schem of the BS-V5 to the German forum a year ago (w the 4,7uF output cap connected to the out of U1B).
Every one in the German forum who built or breadboarded the BS agreed that the 4,7uF must be connected to pin 7 or 1, depending on the used layout and I can confirm this.
One thing is unknown yet, the type and the manufacturer of the electrolytic caps. The quality of those coupling caps have a big influence on the sound. Good audio electrolytic w plain foil sounded best to my ears, w cheap rough foil types the BS sucked and sounded thin and liveless.
JHS
QuoteAnubics posted a correct schem of the BS-V5 to the German forum a year ago (w the 4,7uF output cap connected to the out of U1B).
Anubics' schem was also done from V5 pics (he was so kind to send me the pics). However, some of the connections were hidden by wires. Therefore, the wiring of the output opamp stage was done assuming a "normal" opamp stage.
IC1b is the recovery stage for the tonestack, the 3,9k sets the center frequency for the mids the 330k the input impedance, a commen design used in a lot of stompboxes.
If the output is connected to the inv. input the BS sounds overcompressed, thin and really weird w no crunch, useless for me. If the output is connected to the opamp out you get a good crunchy overdrive/distortion, so I'll go w Anubic's schem.
JHS
I've just checked over my BS build, after re-connecting jacks / pots and the battery clip !
I built mine as a "scratch vero" during the time with Torchy, trying to figure it out, so it was
mostly laid up like the V5 schem.
Nelsons later PDF fixed my front end wire up & gain pot, but I still have my recovery/output
wired as the V5, so can confirm that my 4u7 is wired off the output pin 7 ( in my layout ) to
the 220r etc .
This all works fine, I have a good amount of gain etc.
It still doesn't set my world on fire, but that's just my opinion, NOT the fact that it isn't working
correctly !!
I have much better OD's, so I'll be "taking back" the parts again !
MM.
I build Nelsons pdf design after several attempts at other versions and was happy at the time to have a functioning pedal. Much like the above comments mine sat there for a while before slowly being pulled apart for other effects. Nelson had a great point when mentioning that a jfet booster before the bs really brings up the quality of the sound. I have a feeling that the design of both the big cheese and this pedal tries to cover too much ground and unfortunately does so in a in a mediocre fashion. Other effects may only generate one kind of sound but do it really well. This is obviously a subjective opinion. Having said that I pulled some cool sixties sounds out of it with a little tweaking!
No OD or distortion is perfect.
If you optimize a FX for a vint. Strat it often sound not that good with a Les Paul or high gain Strat .
If it's optimized for a vint. Marshall it often will not work as good with a BF Fender.
If you clone a FX from a schem, often the part manufacturers and specifications or chip types are unknown and using parts from other manufactures can change the sound dramatically. Resistors are the only exception.
I spent most of the time not on building a FX but finding the right trannie, IC or electrolytic cap for a design or on finetuning the sound with small trimcaps.
JHS