i've got an Arion Octaver and a Chili Dog i'm willing to butcher for the purposes of this experiment. i'm guessing the Arion would be the best candidate, tho. without benefit of schems, is there any guidance you guys can give me in my quest for the glitchiest possible tracking??

tia,
ian

To mess with tracking accuracy/glitchiness, you need to first understand what gets in the way of accurate tracking, and then do the complete opposite.

Tracking accuracy is a function of setting a trigger threshold and frequency band that neatly distinguishes between deliberate input signals and superfluous noise.  If you can identify where the voltage divider is that sets the level threshold and set it for a lower threshold, that ought to produce "suboctaves" of nonmusical sounds like finger movements or pick-on-string friction.  Roll off the low end feeding the trigger/sensing circuit so that no self-respecting note-fundamental falls within the critical passband, and that should also make suboctaves more a product of non-musical things.

If you want to get wild n' wacky, patch in a tremolo or some other modulated effect between the input to the octave box and the note-detector circuit so that the note keeps falling below and approaching the critical threshold.  Alternatively, if you have a compressor with a "bad" envelope-detection circuit and poorly selected time constants (i.e., lotsa envelope ripple), patching that in the signal path will result in poor tracking as the tracking circuit catches then loses the ideal level.

Point me to the schematic and I'll happily identify the exact point of insertion for you.

Okay, here is the true wackiness....but you must be this tall to enter (and probably this high as well  :wink: ).  Who says that the note has to keep being divided by 2 or 4?  Howzabout you take a 4017 and use that for the dividing, except that another clocked circuit keeps switching between, say, the divide-by-2 and divide by 5 (or 3) outputs of the 4017.  You'd have something that simply couldn't make up its mind WHAT it was dividing the note by.  Of course whether any would want to listen to that is another matter.

thanks for the prompt reply, mark! it will take me some time to digest all that info.

in the meantime i'll look for a schem. i also like the idea of a different chip in there. i'll open up the Arion tonight and see what's doin' -- maybe drop in a socket and start experimenting.

cheers!

ian

In a much more simple way, it might be fun to audio-probe it, particularly at the divider outputs, just to see what's goin on in that thing.

-Colin

Bypass the lowpass filtering, that way there'll be more chance that harmonics will occasionally trigger the octave rather than the fundamental (note will alternate between fundamental and octave down).

...or you could put the guitar on a stand and hit it around the twelth fret with a bicycle chain...  :lol:

Quote from: Ge_Whiz...or you could put the guitar on a stand and hit it around the twelth fret with a bicycle chain...  :lol:

that doesn't work nearly as well as you might expect. i've tried..... :-/