dod fx68 super stereo chorus help/mod!!!?

Started by doug deeper, January 29, 2004, 09:30:54 PM

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doug deeper

ok so i got this pedal on ebay expecting it to be a bit less "tastfull"...
but its just subtle all the time....any one have any advice on how i can mod it to get some gross pitch modulation....like very....untastfull???
thanks alot,
doug

Mark Hammer

It would sure be a lot easier with schematic in hand, but here goes.

You indicate wanting "gross pitch modulation".  That suggests two things to me.  One the range of delay time is so narrow and generally too short such that even the widest width settings do not sufficiently disrupt the pitch.  Two, the width of sweep may well be less than what the unit, and the LFO in particular, is capable of.

Altering the delay range to make the same width of sweep produce more discernible pitch deviations is easy.  Find the low-value cap beside the MN3102 clock driver you'll likely find in there (I'm assuming this is an all-analog BBD-based unit), and make it bigger.  The delay range will shift by an amount proportional to the change in capacitance.  If the cap is currently 220pf, changing it to 470pf will increase the overall range of delay times by a little more than double.  The same proportional change in sample-in/sample-out rate at short delays produces less apparent pitch distortion than comparable amounts of proportional sample-rate changes at longer delays.  

Of course the second half of being able to produce unsettling amounts of wobbliness is to identify the point where dry and wet get mixed together before the output and lift the dry connection so you get only wet for a vibrato effect.  BE FOREWARNED, though.  The overwhelming majority of manufacturers who use electronic switching employ a "bypass" scheme involving a single FET that cancels the wet signal when you want no effect.  If you arrange for the pedal to yield a wet-only signal for vibrato, stepping on the footswitch to bypass it will instantly get you dead silence (plus whatever residual hiss the pedal makes).  There arer ways around this but we'll leave discussion of that for another time.  There is a lengthy posting of mine in the archives about how to adapt the flip-flop circuit in such pedals to permit usable effect-bypass in these instances.

The second strategic path is to follow the width control, both forward and backward fromthe pot, and see if there are any components which constrain how much of the LFO signal actually makes it to the MN3102 clock driver.  

Simple illustrative case:  The rate at which an LFO sweeps is often set by the joint action of a cap in the integrator half of the circuit, and a series resistance to the input of that integrator.  To set the overall range of possible sweep frequencies, you'll usually see a fixed resistor in series with a pot.  The fixed resistor value sets the fastest speed (i.e., minimum charge-up time for the cap), and the pot (as variable series resistor) sets the max charge-up time.  If you wanted to expand the range of sweep frequencies, you could: a) change the cap value, b) reduce the fixed resistor to set max speed a little higher, c) increase the pot value to set min speed a little lower.

Similarly, when pots are used as voltage dividers, designers will often stick fixed resistors in series with either the input or ground lug (or both) to shape what the minimum and maximum amounts of attenuation are that the pot can produce.  The Big Muff Pi includes a 100R resistor on the ground side of the "Sustain" pot so that even when you turn it down all the way there is always a little signal sneaking through.  Perhaps DOD employed somethng similar to keep a lid on sweep width and tame it.

Just some ideas.  Undoubtedly someone else will have more insight into the pedal.

doug deeper

ok...so this unit uses a mn3101 clock driver....
is it the cap between pins 5 and 7 i would replace???
thanks alot for the help as of now....   :]
doug

doug deeper

ok...so this unit uses a mn3101 clock driver....
is it the cap between pins 5 and 7 i would replace???
thanks alot for the help as of now....   :]
doug

doug deeper

ok....i put a 330pf cap in parallel....and i did the trick....sound fantastic...(to by ears :])
thanks alot....
doug

Mark Hammer

Yup, that's it.  I figured if it was an analog chorus it would use either a 3102 or 3101, since those are the only clock drivers Matsushita made for BBDs.  It is very very very rare that such a cap would be 1000pf or greater, so if it is something in the 680pf or less range, that's your baby.  If you want to experiment, you can simply identify the pins on the solder side of the board and tack on other cap values in parallel with the existing one.  If you intend to do a lot of experimenting, it might be best to solder some clipped component leads to those solder pads and tack the parallel caps on to the free ends of those, just so you don't keep heating and reheating the pads themselves.