I think I will take my Brontoboost out tonight on the gig. Gotta find a center positive adapter or use a battery!
Anyone herad from Joe?!
He's off the map as far as I can tell.
Non responsive to all my communications :(
hmmm I might not be able to use it. If I turn the treble control to the right, I get massive hiss. I need to open it up. It's practically all white noise.
I don't see it. I can't figure out what is hissing. If I turn the tone to treble boost, then from what I can determine, I have a 2N3906 buffer (no gain), into a highpass filter->output stage (which is a Ge transistor boost). However the way it is hissing, it's almost like the 2N3906 is doing the hissing. It does not boost though. The only thing I can imagine is that at some point the pedal was reversed biased and per R.G.'s article, the buffer is now noisy?????
AFAIK it has always been run on batteries.
http://sounds.ampage.org/files/BRONTOschemV3.0.gif
R.G. or anyone else - if a transistor is reverse biased, is the hiss enough to cause this buffer to become a hiss generator? What I am asking is since it doesn't add gain (although the next stage does), can it hiss enough to cause this?
audio probe I guess.....
Quote from: John Lyons on January 21, 2010, 01:47:14 PM
Anyone herad from Joe?!
He's off the map as far as I can tell.
Non responsive to all my communications :(
Hi John,
Looks to still be active at youtube, have you tried contacting him there? http://www.youtube.com/user/joegagan
Take care,
dave
Just tried...we'll see.
thanks Dave
hi guys. i talked to john l, just now, he told me about this thread.
aron, the most common cause for hiss in those brontoboosts was the germanium tranny being bad. i would try replacing that first to see if that cures it. for your raplacement trans, the higher the gain the better for the bronto.
i would also be curious to see if your reversing the power supply theory ends up being a factor.
nice to see the site is still alive and going great!
Cool thanks. It's just weird that I don't hear the hiss when the tone knob is to the "left" as in full frequency response mode.
Hope you are doing fine!
Aron
Funny, Aron... You got me curious about trying mine again. But the DC jack apparently only works with "-9v". And I don't have any 9v batteries lying around anymore. I guess that must be a milestone of some sort... :icon_wink:
I'm going to give it a try when I get a battery again.
I just fixed it. It was the ge transistor. I have tons if npn ge, but very little pnp. I found an old small bear one and it worked. The holes in the pcb are really small. I used a socket so I can swap it out later.
that is good news. hi doug!
Now all I have to do is go to the flea market and get a few DC adapters for use with positive ground pedals.
aron, i remember you had a lot of npn germaniums a long time ago.
i found a stash at the local surplus house ( every once in while a new box emerges from their depths in the back) of AC187s, npnge. they test out pretty good.
i am curious to see if you can get anything useful out of the bronto. it is sort of the opposite of your taste as i recall. as a fuzz it is quite compressed and mushy ( which i like). as a boost ,it works well. but it does not have enough of it's own smooth gain like we are used to with a tubescreamer to do a mainstream rock distortion on its own. it is like a boost or fuzz for grungers.
let me know what you find, please.
I liked it but it was too bright to use last night. I need to make the pedal that I've been thinking about for years. It's a pedal that will work for all fuzzes etc...
Yes, I do have some of those NPN Ge left. I would have to change the circuit and I didn't want to do that. Easier to buy a single adapter for it.
yeah, that was the prob with that pedal. it worked great for me in my live rig because i would leave it on all the time. usually use two, one for fuzzy and one for bluesy boost. so my tone controls on the amp were set accordingly. hence the later tone dog mod that allowed tailoring of the high end at two points in the circuit.
but in defense of the original design, i really like that full spectrum signal hitting the preamp tubes. it gives a clarity when turning down the guitar ( or using your fingers with a lighter touch) that gives a very wide clean to dirty range in a natural way. many people have told me that the bronto is the most touch reactive pedal they have used.
I like that full spectrum too, I have a Shaka Pedal that does clean to overdrive really well. I can pretty much play the entire night with it on. So it's a similar thing, it's just that lately if I do play some funky stuff, I've been getting into a little more highs. The pedal does sound good now, the treble boost is working too.
oh yeah, i remember the shaka series. which version are you using?
also, a video i did yesterday to illustrate some of how i use it: pardon the camera mic, i think i blew the diaphragm!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcU59u18f44
Very close to the Shaka HV but I've been modding it for myself for years. I have two of them. One has stacked ICs and mostly filtering changes. The other has variable bias of the FET.
Hey Joe, how's it going?
I remember talking to you on the phone one time and you mentioned some issues with people using bright caps on their guitar volume pots. That may be the reason the BB seems so bright to some. I use bright caps too and have noticed it as well.
If you want to try a "full spectrum" boost give a Unidrive a try some time. I built a little custom version of that for myself and it is pretty amazing- cleans up real well too - the kind of thing you can leave on all the time. It has 35db of gain and will basically destroy the input stage of my amp if I turn it up all the way (not really, but the blocking distortion gets so bad it is unusable). I usually run it at about 50% and it sounds pretty cool.
In my case, the volume was maxxed, it's the fuzz that's a little to bright for me. I like a little more treble roll-off on the fuzz due to the brighter setup of my amp.
As for the unidrive, is that the univox version? This one?
http://www.univox.org/pics/schematics/unidrive.gif
doug, good memory. it seems that most new guitars sold these days have treble bleed caps.
i recall looking at the unidrive a long time ago, thinking it was cool design. never built it tho. was that the magic jimmy page box? or am i confusing it with a colorsound box?
aron, what kind of pickups are you using these days? last i recall, you liked kinmans?
Quote from: aron on January 24, 2010, 03:15:33 PM
As for the unidrive, is that the univox version? This one?
http://www.univox.org/pics/schematics/unidrive.gif
Yeah, that's it. I'll have to find the schematic for the way I did it. I did it as a one knob booster and changed the gain control to adjust the resistance of the NFB loop, so it works more like a "gain" control instead of a "volume" control. Fixed the input impedance too, but I don't remember the value offhand.
Quote from: joegagan on January 24, 2010, 03:21:13 PM
i recall looking at the unidrive a long time ago, thinking it was cool design. never built it tho. was that the magic jimmy page box?
It was supposedly the one he used for LZ IV but I don't keep up. I have a jpg of some ad copy with him using it.
Edit: Here's a couple unidrive ads:
http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=42108&g2_serialNumber=1 (http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=42108&g2_serialNumber=1)
http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=42111&g2_serialNumber=1 (http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=42111&g2_serialNumber=1)
I'm using "fusion" type pickups now. It's a DSV (double screw type vintage humbucker) at neck, V60LP (single coil middle) and an SSH - I think it's a hi-gain humbucker for bridge. It's a strat-like guitar though.
Is that a fuzz face type circuit on the front with a buffer on the back end??? Looks like there's a feedback loop too.
Sort of a fuzz face with heavy feedback. But it sounds nothing like a fuzz face. It just sounds like a booster with a lot of gain that slams the front of your amp.
yeah. i always thought it was designed during the fuzzface heyday, they started with a fuyzzface but toned down the gain and put a buffer on the out. whatever works!
Quote from: aron on January 24, 2010, 05:04:36 PM
I'm using "fusion" type pickups now. It's a DSV (double screw type vintage humbucker) at neck, V60LP (single coil middle) and an SSH - I think it's a hi-gain humbucker for bridge. It's a strat-like guitar though.
cool , i sure would like to hear your fusioney shred again, recent example, do you have anything posted?
I will find something and let you know.
Aron
I finally got a 9V battery and tried out the Brontoboost last week for the first time in a long time.
I really love this thing, quirky in some ways but very "organic" and "earthy" in a way that's a lot of fun to play. For me, it works much better with single coils than humbuckers. With the PAFs in my Hamer it was a little too heavy and overloaded sounding. But with the single coil bridge pup in my strat it was darn near perfect. I'm not completely sold on the treble boosting properties with the tone control above 12:00. But below that setting, it's just a whole lot of fun. I could squeeze out all kinds of harmonics and feedbacky stuff while controlling the reaction with pick pressure.
As I mentioned earllier in this old thread- I think the bright cap on my guitar volume makes this too bright when turning the guitar volume down. I have noticed a similar, if not as extreme and more manageable, reaction with Gus's NPN Boost. I'm not sure what causes this and wonder if it could be tweaked a little. I originally thought it might be an input impedance issue, but the NPN Boost Zin is in the stratosphere while the Brontoboost is a more typical value, around 300K or so.
Would be fun to try to tweak this a little for my guitar volume w/bright cap setup. I'd use it a whole lot more then. Because a big part of the attraction of this is using the guitar volume to control it and dial up a wide variety of sounds.
thank you so much doug. your findings echo my own about that pedal. i use almost exclusively single coils, so go figure.
i have the answer for your treble bleed cap. adjustable bleed cap- i have had this setup for 5 years, the studio and stage usage is incredible. like having a passive eq on the guitar ( as long as you don't mind 90% volume or less).
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/mo2/poy1.jpg?)
add- the schem does not show the tone control, which is key to the setup. tone control, std wiring, 250k, .047 to ground.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvPVlV1JfZk
Thanks Joe, I think you posted this a long time ago but I don't remember.
I might give this a try on my squire strat, as I don't mind hacking it up to try things. I've already rewired it once for a master volume, master tone, and series blend (bridge and neck) setup. Sometimes I really like the treble leak and sometimes I don't.
Edit: BTW, I modded the tone control to use a .01u instead of the stock .047u. Have you ever tried this? When you turn the tone all the way down it sounds like a "stuck wah"- very resonant. I find the tone control much more usable now and love turning it down to get that sound. (Nice Roy Buchanon trick in the video BTW... :icon_wink:)
yes doug, you probably have seen it before. i post it twice a year here, whenever i get half an excuse :icon_wink:
i will try the .01 trick as well.
buchanan? hell-yeah!!! another great one gone...