easy pedal smooth mod

[aron]

Anyway, hey guys, Ryan asked that his account be deleted. We should all think about how we treat new members. Some of them are very enthusiastic at the beginning, posting a lot etc... Usually things stabilize, but maybe we can all start thinking about what would happen if we were new - how would we like to be treated?

Thanks,

Aron

[R O Tiree]

yes exactly Derringer, the inductance value is what matters,

DC coil resistance is also important in order to do the maths properly.

i have no idea why you seem to think there is some major design flaw behind this,

Derringer never questioned this - I did.

its simply a signal chain, the capacitor in the schematic was clearly from the effects output, you remove the 1/4'' jacks wiring from the output cpacitor, from the output cap one of the primary leads from the choke/output tansformer is then soldered, the other primary lead from the tranny carries on to 1/4'' jack's + terminal, that simple,

Yes, we can all read a schem. Ta.

as for a crossover resistor?- its a simple high reduction modification.

Pardon? Do you mean high-pass filter? So, not a "high reduction modification" at all, then... more of a "low reduction modification"... That said, one very often tries to minimise any frequency spectrum modification at that stage of the circuit. The output cap is used to strip out DC bias and the pull-down resistor prevents popping when you engage/dis-engage. That's why we use an apparently absurd circuit fragment to terminate these circuits. Carfeful choice of cap and resistor and the corner freq goes way down, making it, as far as guitar/bass freqs are concerned, an all-pass filter. A purist might phrase that as "ensuring that the stop-band is below all frequencies of interest". Forgive me if you already know this, but you don't seem to understand or to be able to use commonly understood terms and concepts.

As for an op amp simulation?? how in gods name is that a simple alernative?

Who said anything about "simulation"? I'm talking about a simple opamp circuit, tried, trusted and with known and repeatable input and output impedances that won't unduly affect or be affected by whatever else you choose to put either before or after it. If you are looking for saturation, as I said, and you ignored, then you just won't get any out of a tiny little signal coming out of a 9VDC pedal pushing out a few mW into a chuffin' great choke or Tx primary designed for a 5W tube amp.

more room for a board, more components, and the wiring is 10x the complexity

The whole opamp circuit only takes up about 0.5 square inches of board space and weighs a few grammes, costing a few pennies. Compare with a large, heavy lump of iron, wrapped in thousands of turns of expensive copper wire, a significant proportion of which you're not actually using, as jdansti alluded to, and leaving far less room in the enclosure. 4 wires - In, Out, V+ and GND - if you're doing it as a daughter board... zero extra wires if you incorporate this at the design stage on the PCB. Hardly 10x the wiring, is it? Try a maximum of 2x, minimum of 0x?

i dont go quiet man, i dont live on my computer,

145 posts in 15 days... opinions might vary on that latter point, mate. By "quiet" I mean a refusal to address direct questions that you either will not or cannot answer.

and i have already exsplained how this inductor works,

No, you haven't.

it shifts frequency,

No, it doesn't. You get a bit of phase shift outwith the pass-band. Well inside 90 degrees, nowhere near 180.

it inverts your pedals output signal,

No, it doesn't. A Tx output is inverted wrt the input, but you're not using it as a transformer, are you? You are only using one half.

the waveform entering the inductor is reversed,

No, it isn't.

then reproduced backwards apon exit.

No, it isn't.

an electrical engineering degree would tell you that

No, it wouldn't. It would tell me that input and output are pretty much in phase (within a few degrees plus or minus) throughout the pass-band. Outwith the pass-band, at low freqs, output leads input and, at high freqs, output lags input.

Six factual errors in one, admittedly, long and rambling collection of clauses. Eleven, if you include the whole sentence from "how in gods name is that a simple alernative?" to the end of the post. Fourteen in total.

Oh... he's gone...

[mistahead]

As one of the people who was "abrasive" early on I agree that it was a bit much shit given to one person, trial by fire would be an understatement - I had made apologies to him (and started some interesting chats) via private message.

If you look through his posting history he actually took almost all "advice" about his discourse on board, there should have been a point where others were backing off too despite any early roughness.

Of course I'm just another noob around here making less intelligent suggestions, offering less to the community overall, and ocassionally trolling a point across - I appreciate that help and knowledge I've picked up here but who am I to say any more than that really.

Group-think @#$%ing up crowd-sourcing knowledge in action, shame.

[aron]

I think Ryan, could have just said - here's a circuit I like. I used this brand transformer. Works great for me. I post this in the spirit of sharing.
Done.

Then do what I do - "I have no idea why it works - but it does work well for me".

[mistahead]

Yeah "almost all 'advice'"...


I live here in constant hope that someone with more of a clue can tell me why thinks work... how things work... where babies come from... where babies go when I leave them out at night...

I swear garden gnomes must be involved in stealing them, but I can't keep them inside if I want to get sleep... any thoughts?

[Tony Forestiere]

I think Ryan, could have just said - here's a circuit I like. I used this brand transformer. Works great for me. I post this in the spirit of sharing.
Done.

Then do what I do - "I have no idea why it works - but it does work well for me".

@Ryan;
Think about the above  quote. Especially the second sentence. We could be intrigued by your experiments. Don't blow smoke. Share them with the disclaimer:

"I hooked this $#!t up, and it sounds COOL! Here is the picture of the breadboard. Here are some sound-clips. I don't know what I did, but it's cool. Does someone want to help me figure out what I've stumbled upon".

[induction]

I'm sorry I teased him. I wasn't trying to insult him, and I didn't think an innocent time-travel joke would be the thing that sent him over the edge. But I admit my joke was at his expense, and that's the sort of thing I ought to keep to myself.  God knows I'm no electronics genius.

Ryan, if you're still reading, I apologize for being rude.

[R O Tiree]

Lest we get too maudlin about this, let's look at his behaviour as well...

His opening post was all, "Hey look at me! I've invented stuff that's never been done before!"

His designs were all at best adaptations of existing circuits and trampling well-established companies' treadmarks is a bit dim.

When challenged, even mildly, he resorted to abuse. Calling armdnrdy a troll on only his third day here was... ill-advised? Larry wasn't alone, by any means. He was very rude to theehman in his 3rd ever post. And so it went on.

He sucked up shamelessly to anyone who bought his line of BS, abused anyone who didn't.

He dodged difficult questions repeatedly, or provided explanations worthy of the worst excesses of a booteek pedal hacker, displaying his lack of even basic knowledge at every turn. "Voltage flows from <x> to <y>" is one such pearl of wisdom. Or contributing to a thread about a tube power amp and wittering on about the flow of "negative electrons"... no, really? (His emphasis, BTW, not mine.) If one is going to make fairly outrageous claims without either the chops to back it up or the honesty to say that you haven't got a clue what's going on, then getting owned is par for the course in even as gently anarchic a forum as this one. Imagine the reception he'd get at "the other forum"?

He dodged requests to post sound clips repeatedly, claiming lack of resources.

He seemed unable to distinguish between posters. For example, in this thread, he accused Derringer of something I had done. Didn't bother apologising.

I could go on, but it's boring. The fact is, I know this guy. He made our lives an utter misery a few years ago on another forum I'm a member of. He hasn't changed at all. All the same self-destructive behaviour patterns, which I clocked fairly quickly this time around. Persecution complex, ad-hominem attacks, evasion, BS, self-justification, etc. He exited the first time with exactly the same whinging to the mods that we were all being ratbags and that he wanted to be deleted.

He came back. Three more times. He tried to register a fifth username, but all the IPs he'd been logged as active upon previously were blocked, followed shortly thereafter by the one he'd just re-registered from. Bottom line? That forum has never recovered.

So, feel sorry for him if you wish, but not from any misplaced feeling that we collectively hounded him out. Feeling put upon would appear to be what gets him out of bed in the morning.

[mistahead]

I'm a professional in my other hat, and my real name and email address are here and accessible.

While I'm not ashamed of a bit of trolling or shit stirring being associated with my name (hell I do that in job interviews) and feel no regret for "advising" him in a public thread how I felt he was doing a piss poor job of running a business I think that the summary of why some were rubbed the wrong way that we are now looking over might have had more effect earlier. I don't feel that we rose above the Internet average (as a community), myself included.

That all said and done there seems to be more to this than humble I could detect...

Ah we'll back to trying to get Vox to send me free toys to mod and show off here!

[DougH]

For what it's worth, I think R O's questions were all very reasonable and could not be characterized as an attack in any way. Some of the other piling on is a different story.

In any case this is an old story, and we've seen it and other variations played out here many times before.

Enthusiastic kid decides to go into business, creates a facebook page, and then comes in here with his business name on his handle and schematics to share his ideas he's all excited about. Since he hasn't seen them anywhere else in the 5 minutes he's been doing this (or maybe the 5 minutes he's actually researched to see if anyone else was doing it), he assumes they are his original ideas and claims them. It's no big deal. People do this all the time. When I started, I came up with a lot of stuff on my own independently that I later found out had existed for decades.

But as Aron implied, a little humility on his part would have gone a long way. He's "selling" himself via his ideas and attempting to impress with some spin instead of just sharing the ideas. That sort of approach works with consumer forums like The Gear Page, but this is a tech forum and it is the wrong audience for it. I suspect that's the primary mistake he's made here- simply the wrong approach.

But anyway, I think if he could back down the ego a notch, be willing to actually converse and accept advice, he could learn a lot here and end up being an asset. Saw a photo of him on FB building an amp and from what I could tell it looks like he does nice work.

Look at it this way- at least he's not starting up a business and coming over here to do his "R&D" work, asking what kind of transistors to use in a Fuzz Face for example (which I've seen before from other start ups). The kid's percolating with ideas right now, even if they're not completely original, that's always a good thing.

[Striker Amplification]

Lest we get too maudlin about this, let's look at his behaviour as well...

His opening post was all, "Hey look at me! I've invented stuff that's never been done before!"

His designs were all at best adaptations of existing circuits and trampling well-established companies' treadmarks is a bit dim.

When challenged, even mildly, he resorted to abuse. Calling armdnrdy a troll on only his third day here was... ill-advised? Larry wasn't alone, by any means. He was very rude to theehman in his 3rd ever post. And so it went on.

He sucked up shamelessly to anyone who bought his line of BS, abused anyone who didn't.

He dodged difficult questions repeatedly, or provided explanations worthy of the worst excesses of a booteek pedal hacker, displaying his lack of even basic knowledge at every turn. "Voltage flows from <x> to <y>" is one such pearl of wisdom. Or contributing to a thread about a tube power amp and wittering on about the flow of "negative electrons"... no, really? (His emphasis, BTW, not mine.) If one is going to make fairly outrageous claims without either the chops to back it up or the honesty to say that you haven't got a clue what's going on, then getting owned is par for the course in even as gently anarchic a forum as this one. Imagine the reception he'd get at "the other forum"?

He dodged requests to post sound clips repeatedly, claiming lack of resources.

He seemed unable to distinguish between posters. For example, in this thread, he accused Derringer of something I had done. Didn't bother apologising.

I could go on, but it's boring. The fact is, I know this guy. He made our lives an utter misery a few years ago on another forum I'm a member of. He hasn't changed at all. All the same self-destructive behaviour patterns, which I clocked fairly quickly this time around. Persecution complex, ad-hominem attacks, evasion, BS, self-justification, etc. He exited the first time with exactly the same whinging to the mods that we were all being ratbags and that he wanted to be deleted.

He came back. Three more times. He tried to register a fifth username, but all the IPs he'd been logged as active upon previously were blocked, followed shortly thereafter by the one he'd just re-registered from. Bottom line? That forum has never recovered.

So, feel sorry for him if you wish, but not from any misplaced feeling that we collectively hounded him out. Feeling put upon would appear to be what gets him out of bed in the morning.

I have never been on another forum and or a forum before this one , i have no idea who you are-
and just to let you know, any pedal produced now adays is another VARIATION of another, its all been done before, so dont think that what your doing is new either, at least im taking the time to build my own VARIATION of the said circuit. Just like amplifiers we all build the same designs we, we just change our component layout. I can only wish that you learn HALF of what the INTERNET has......oh, he's gone...............

[armdnrdy]

I have to agree 100% with R O Tiree!

Ryan's first post was "LOOK AT ME!"
"I AM A BUSINESS OWNER, BUILDER, DESIGNER, BLA, BLA, BLA!"
"I AM HERE TO SAVE THE WORLD WITH MY DESIGNS!"
"I'LL POST FIVE DESIGNS THAT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR FIVE YEARS!"

Really? five years?

Five years to come up with a treble booster, an overdrive pedal which incorporates a tube, a mod which throws an inductor in the tail end of a circuit, etc?

If these "designs" took five years to come up with, and these were the ideas that were supposed to keep us hanging on the edge of our seats, then Ryan.......you have delusions of grandeur!

At one point, a few days into your membership here, I questioned your statement/excuse you gave about your "not sleeping for 3 days" or whatever length of time it was.

I was "pounced" upon and was sent two PM's by you. You looked at my information, saw that I am 50 years old, and commented on my age in a personal attack as if my age were a handicap!

Ryan......someday......maybe someday, you will see just how ridiculous that was! That was a sure sign of immaturity and a sign of someone that lacks respect and self discipline!

Now Ryan, you claim to have a business, STRIKER AMPLIFICATION correct?

A few days after you landed here, I looked up striker amplification on the web.

There wasn't much to see. I found a facebook page that you started a few years ago which was last updated about a year ago.
There were no pictures, no sound samples, no links to any of the previous, and no product.

This is the last update on the Striker Amplification facebook page:

Striker Amplification
June 29, 2012
Pictures of available products coming soon! This site is under construction at the moment so please be patient!

Now Ryan, as a business owner (Industrial electrical contractor/engineer) I know that it takes a bit more than to put up a facebook page and tell the world that you have a company to actually operate one!

I think that a better dialog from you would include the phrases, "wanting to start a company" and "idea to start a company."

On the originality of your designs:

To make the statement "never been done before" at your age/experience showcases a great amount of naivety on your part.

Early on, I noticed that the schematics that you posted were taken from different sources, then "doctored" by you.

Some schematics that you posted displayed European resistor symbols while others utilized the "zig zag" American symbol.

To validate my observation, various forum members posted previously published versions of your "never been done before designs"

Ryan....it seems to me (and many others in this community) that you are trying way too hard to stand out, to be the "man", to have everyone's respect.

Respect is something that's truly earned and not bartered for with old rehashed ideas. You don't demand respect!

There are many members on this site that have never designed a thing in their residency here but have earned respect through their willingness to try to help people and their overall good nature.

One word of advice:

If you come out guns blazing, shooting sparks and fire,
Don't be surprised if you get a little water thrown on you!

[Jdansti]

This is a neutral statement: Isn't it time to put this thread out of its misery?

[aron]

Yes. As per Ryan's request, I shut down his account.

[pinkjimiphoton]

it's a real @#$%ing bummer the way the whole thing went down.

yes, he was %^&*y... but he was (to me) trying to get people to figure stuff out instead of just posting it.

some of the sh!t he posted even *I* understood. if an idiot like me can figure it out...

but this trolling stuff has to stop. if this forum is gonna go like that, and deal with bullshit by being @$$807E$ instead of more tolerant, i personally am outta here.

this place isn't hcef... and the trolling going on was kinda over the top.



please.... lets be cool to each other we all are on the same page.

[Jdansti]

Amen brother Jimi.

Arguing facts = cool

Acting like 3rd graders = not cool

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks jon
>>>>>pink jimi, MOTO   

i hope the guy comes back, and learns something. he seemed to have a lot of spirit and enthusiasm, and i wish him well.

now... that said... stompboxes.

you want a high input impedance so you don't load down the signal too much, right?
AND you want a lo z out to drive the next stage well, right?

you wanna block dc from your output, and pass the ac on as audio signal to whatever's next in line, right?

seems to me, using one of them radio shack OT's may not be too bad of a way to use as an output stage.

you could drive the livin' snots out of it and get a nice warm distortion i bet, i bet a LOUD fuzz into the primary of one and the secondary driving the output of the effect would sound great.

ryan was doing it more like a choke, but i gotta wonder if the transformer sounds good like that... and i bet it does. is 8r too low of an impedance to drive a following stage?

what if ya wired the output of the effect to the primary, wired the 8r output to another identical transformer's secondary, and stepped it back up to 1k?

i mean, c'mon, the f@<kin' tranformers are 3 bux. THREE BUX.  my bobtavia sounds great with the diodes lifted... very warm, brown, toneful fuzzy overdrive.

how much are most of us willing to spank down on some nos nk275's or something? or "mojo" opamps? sh!t like that?

i don't think he was that outta line in this thread.

i think he was a dick for attacking forumites as he did, and i told him so.

maybe he was a troll, playing. maybe not. i'm no judge. i'm a hack.
anyways...

see, some of us people i think try to think of components almost like individual effects that you can generically use to create larger pallets and more colors.

you start to think of the tone of certain kinds of components in certain kinds of settings, where chicklets sound better than ceramics, or certain gain ranges etc etc... at least i do.
some of us know nothing at all about it. but we're still looking to find sounds and stuff. experimenting...hacking... molesting electrons. making holes and electrons flow in opposite directions under the influence of filtering and humondo amounts of amplification designed to totally @#$% up what ever the electrons were suPOSed to be doing.. lol

i mean, to me, chicklets are more woody and organic sounding, ceramics are more cheeky and bright and ringy, monolithic ceramics even more so, maybe even slightly microphonic, mica caps cleaner and reedier maybe.... eric johnson claims he can hear a difference in polarity of his guitar cable for god's sake,  and i AGREE with him on that.. flipping the phase of a wire definitely seems to sound different, try it. it's subtle, but it's there. it's all about tone, and rules of physics, and using them to abuse them to make our geetars sound like demons chanting yoy, right?

with the transistors he specced in one of his designs, IF you used them horible nec germaniums, i can guarantee they ALL have enough leakage to make that kind of circuit work. he didn't say ANY ge... he specified some of the worst on the planet... but in the right aplication, they can sound great.

i built a perc tonite with a ge pnp mp25 tophat with an hfe of 49 and a bc457 with a gain of almost 400 and it sounded great. leaky germs can rule sometimes. <btw, just make all the caps in a perc closest standard values, and it sounds great, use the consensus schem but simplify it... you won't be sorry... i built two tonite, one with a pair of 500k trimmers in series (i didn't have a 1m trimmer) on the b and c of the npn instead of the 750k resistor,  and the c to ground 91k resistor replaced with a 100k trimmer.... and setting the resistances to 750k and 91k didn't make any perceptible difference in tone between those settings and the 100k and 1 meg resistors ... but i digress)

i actually understood some of the guys postings. ME. and i regularly shake my head pretending to understand shit that's light years from my understanding, hoping to glean a tidbit towards understanding so i can hopefully apply it someday. i mean, if i could figure it out, why couldn't other folks?
i've seen other people do the same thing... let people figure it out, then give the answers. people already knew the answers. they wanted him to testify what peeps already knew.
well, as someone else said, maybe he didn't have the explanation. you don't have to be an EE to build a fuzzbox, or a tube amp. you don't need to do anything more than take a modular approach and thru trial and error create things without having a clue what the fu<k you're doing. i do it all the time. sometimes it even sounds good.

is that always a bad thing? i don't know.

ball-breaking is cool. it's fun, it's funny, we all do it from time to time, but this was getting ugly. at least imnsho.

i think there's a good chance we all have learned something here.

i know i have.

i love you crazy bastiges. rock on.

if he comes back, maybe we can start with the shoe on the other foot, and deal with each other with some mutual respect for our colleagues in stomboxology.

peace.

[earthtonesaudio]

Jimi you know the top hat transistors are the most sophisticated sounding, while the TO-220 packages are basically sporting mullets and can't be trusted to borrow your truck.

[pinkjimiphoton]

and the ones with the red dots make strong men weep and women go bow-legged.

i checked his facebook, sent him a request. he has some nice amps he's built, but jesus guys, people were pigpiling on a @#$%ing
KID!!

have we devo'd to the point where we chase off the very guys we need to pick up the torch and carry on?

imho, yes, he made some political/social/ethical faux pas.

but we're older and wiser, and maybe shoulda taken a more nurturing approach.

i admit, first thing i thought was "troll" too. til i started realizing this guy meant no harm and was learning more here than he came to the table with.

enough.

btw... them tantalums don't like children, so be extra careful around 'em

[artifus]

http://remember-beherenow.tumblr.com/