How to make a pedal MORE noisy?

[Purplebuttcheese]

I know how to make a pedal less noisy. But I'm not sure how to make it MORE noisy. Cap? Resistor? Diode? Not sure how to execute this. A customer of mine is really into noise pedals and the pedal I made for him was "too clear" and wanted it "more noisy". He basically wanted a switch to keep the pedal as is but when he flips it it'll make more noise (static, a TINY bit of distortion, or the guitar signal sounding more..... Rusty?). If it helps any; it's a digital delay.

[EBK]

Ceramic caps
Carbon film resistors
Longer wires
Bigger resistors in the signal path

[LightSoundGeometry]

tell him to get a strat with single coils

[rutabaga bob]

At one time, I was planning how to do the same thing for an effect one of my kids wanted...never assembled it as he was happy with the glitchiness of the Fuzz Factory I made him.  The plan involved blending a zener diode white-noise circuit into the signal path just after the regular fuzz effect.  I might have to go back and tinker with that again, just to see if it works.

Edit: play the strat under fluorescent lights, too.

[PRR]

Cascade two sections of TL072 with gain=100 each stage. You get around 20mV wide-band hiss, which when mixed will be audible. Need more to cover mix-loss, up the gain of both stages. Want more annoying, cut bass and extreme highs with the usual tricks. For random grunge in a circuit which overloads, low-pass at 80Hz and shove huge level into the input. Subsonics will blip the circuit to distortion.

[mth5044]

Check out the wind machine on this forum.

Also, is it possible he wants it to sound more analog/BBD? Maybe try adding some filtering / low pass

[ElectricDruid]

There are kind-of three different things you mention there:

1) Noise/Hiss
You could actually generate this and add it in. Either with a high-gain op-amp like Paul suggested or a single-transistor noise source.

2) Static
This is the hard one, I reckon. Some random staticky clicks and pops isn't going to be easy to fake. If I was doing it, I'd program up a random static generator on a PIC, but I can't imagine a *simple* way with analog.

3) Lo-fi sound
You can get this by limiting the frequency range of the guitar with filters, so that you get that "on a cheap radio/on the telephone" sound. Coupled with running it through the cheapest, nastiest old transistor you can find from a broken toy, you'll be pretty close.

Perhaps you could achieve both (1) and (2) by getting one of those single-chip FM receivers and then running it not-tuned and/or without an arial. That'd get some interesting random noise into the circuit.

HTH,
Tom

[anotherjim]

Digital Delay?
Somewhere there is low pass filtering going in and out of the delay. Remove the filtering -  it will be grungy.

[merlinb]

Put resistance in series with the signal. The bigger the resistance, the more of them, the greater the noise. A 1M series resistor at the input should do the trick!

[EBK]

Also, is it possible he wants it to sound more analog/BBD? Maybe try adding some filtering / low pass

+1
On this topic, read through the PT-80 doc for a decent explanation of how to make a digital delay sound more analog:
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/pt80techinfo.pdf

[digi2t]

Ceramic caps
Carbon film resistors
Longer wires
Bigger resistors in the signal path

 

(Schumann Two Face Fuzz... in case you were wondering.)

[rutabaga bob]

Mmmm!  Spaghetti for dinner, honey?

[diegocw]

i just tried this with what I had on my breadboard.

A Transistor noise generator with 2 gain stages -> into a Guitar Pickup Simulator with Tone control rolled off (Low pass Filter) -> into a simple Fuzz face (Fuzz knob at 100%)
It does make a cool sounding noise. With the LPF you can dial some crackling sounds.
note: the Gating effect from the Fuzz Face Bias has a great impact on the crackling sounds.
Definitely an overkill for what you are looking for, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

Diego

[GibsonGM]

Ceramic caps
Carbon film resistors
Longer wires
Bigger resistors in the signal path

 

(Schumann Two Face Fuzz... in case you were wondering.)

Has the insurance claim been approved yet??

[digi2t]

It got lost inside the pedal. Haven't recovered it yet.

[ElectricDruid]

Ok, I got inspired by this thread and got somewhat carried away. Here's my take on it. I call it Hiss, Crackle and Pop because that's what it's made of:

http://electricdruid.net/adding-vintage-hiss-crackle-and-pop/

If you just want to cut to the chase and hear it, here it is; the three elements separately, then the mix.

http://electricdruid.net/sounds/HissCracklePop.mp3

Enjoy!
Tom

[EBK]

Tom, that reminds me of my high voltage prank from yesterday. 

Very cool sound you've made.  I have no particular use for it, but seeing (and hearing) it actually created makes me happy. 

[ashcat_lt]

Is it maybe worth adding noises to the power supply rather than the signal itself?

[Ripdivot]

I would try starving the voltage supply to the pedal.