EasyVibe Question

[Bill_F]

God the EasyVibe up and running. By far the most difficult build yet. That PCB from Geofex is packed tightly! But it fired right up.

Got a couple of questions.

1. What is the best way to adjust the trimmer.
2. I remember somebody complaining about the lack of bass. Did anybody figure out a good mod for this.
3. I was listening to JohnM soundclips and the phaser mod sounded great. Is this just switching in .01 caps in place of the .22 and 470pf caps?

Thanks,
Bill

[Hal]

cool beans dude :-D

I just got my parts, and plan to be building over thanksgiving, as long as I can get to my dad's office to print the PnP on a laser...Any tips you have, I'd like to know too :-D

[MarkB]

I etched a board for this a WHILE ago - finally gonna try to get around to building it (I think I have most of the parts here... maybe.. I hope)

How do you like yours, Bill?

[Bill_F]

any tips you have

Use a small soldering tip. I don't know what layout your using but if its the one from Geofex it is tight. I thought for sure I would have some problems with solder bridges etc. But it fired up first time. The only unusual thing is the LED/LDR combinations (never done that before!). I put the LDR in shrink wrap first and shrunk it down just enough to be snug. Then put the LED in and shrunk it the rest of the way. No problem.  If your using the layout from Geofex it doesn't show the orientation of the four LED's that couple with the LDR's. With the wires at the top, the negative side goes to the left.

How do you like yours, Bill?

I like it a lot! I have a Voodoo Labs Microvibe that I've never been that happy with. I think this is better. I played with it for about 30 minutes last night and the more I played the more I liked it. Definitely worth your time to build it.

I definitely want to do the chorus mod. I was also thinking about putting in a rotary switch to switch in different resistors in place of the trimmer inside. Might make it a bit more versatile. Has anyone tried this? Is it overkill?

I've just etched a board for the Meteor hopefully in the next week or so I can get to that.  Might be a nice distortion to put in front of the EasyVibe.  

[MarkB]

I'm not too worried about tight layouts - I've built a few of the Tonepad layouts which are PLENTY tight!!

"-)

[Bill_F]

I'm not too worried about tight layouts - I've built a few of the Tonepad layouts which are PLENTY tight!!

Yeah I built the Small Clone from Tonepad. When that worked I knew I was man enough for the EasyVibe.

[MarkB]

After Dave's raving review about the Clone - that's on my list to build now...
"-)

[Bill_F]

After Dave's raving review about the Clone - that's on my list to build now...

The Small Clone is awesome. I actually built it for my wife. She was using a Boss chorus but I never liked the way it sounded. The Small clone just blows it away, so lush and warm. I've just ordered the parts to build another one FOR ME THIS TIME! But first Doug's Meteor!

Bill

[MarkB]

your WIFE plays, too!?

man... and I thought my wife was cool for being a huge football fan.
"-)

[george]

2. I remember somebody complaining about the lack of bass. Did anybody figure out a good mod for this.

Try increasing the input cap from 1 nF (.001uF) to 10 (.01uF) or even 100 (0.1uF)

I think I have 0.047 uF in mine - it matches the bypass bass response nicely (at least on my setup)

hth

[JohnM]

1. What is the best way to adjust the trimmer.
2. I remember somebody complaining about the lack of bass. Did anybody figure out a good mod for this.
3. I was listening to JohnM soundclips and the phaser mod sounded great. Is this just switching in .01 caps in place of the .22 and 470pf caps?

Thanks,
Bill

1.  By ear, I think.  Mine is set for LED max brightness, but I used the LED/LDRs from Small Bear.
2.  I haven't tried the input cap mod, but (related to 1. above) I noticed a "thinning" out of tone when LEDs were not set for max brightness.  Again, just my ears - I don't really know why or if it's true...
3. That's what I did.  I tried switching the other 2 but I couldn't hear much difference.

One other fun thing I did was to put in a 3pdt(?) on-off-on toggle to switch from rate pot to a foot pedal input.  It works, plus there's an interesting side-effect - when you switch to the "off" position the rate change freezes in place.  I thought that was cool.  Needless to say, there are alot of wires going everywhere in my box!

I never tried a Univibe-type effect before the Easyvibe.  It's sort of ridiculous that after 20+ years of noodling around on guitar that I finally discovered how much I love the Univibe thing.  (Duh!)  -John

[Bill_F]

your WIFE plays, too!?

man... and I thought my wife was cool for being a huge football fan.
"-)

Yeah! She's really good too! Excellent rythm guitarist. Only thing, it doubles the work load of building boxes. While I'm building the meteor FOR ME I'm also building her a compressor, The Q&D from AMZ. Then I'm waiting on the parts for her Analog delay (the one over at GGG) to arrive. That build looks a bit radical. Why can't she just be happy with a Fuzz Face?  Women!

[Bill_F]

Thanks John.

1.  By ear, I think.  Mine is set for LED max brightness, but I used the LED/LDRs from Small Bear.
2.  I haven't tried the input cap mod, but (related to 1. above) I noticed a "thinning" out of tone when LEDs were not set for max brightness.  Again, just my ears - I don't really know why or if it's true...
3. That's what I did.  I tried switching the other 2 but I couldn't hear much difference.

From #2 above. I guess it's better to set it and leave it. Do you find that the same setting is optimum for both the Vibe and the Phaser?

From #3 above. I listened to your sound clip on the phaser and it sounded really nice. Did you also put in the vibe/chorus switch that is on the schematic? Or did you replace that with switching out the .22 and 470pf with an .01. I guess my question is, Is there one or two switches now?  

One other fun thing I did was to put in a 3pdt(?) on-off-on toggle to switch from rate pot to a foot pedal input.  It works, plus there's an interesting side-effect - when you switch to the "off" position the rate change freezes in place.  I thought that was cool.  Needless to say, there are alot of wires going everywhere in my box!

That sounds great. Is it an easy mod? Also, what kind of footpedal are you using with that. Is it just a volume pedal or more like an expression pedal?

[Bill_F]

Try increasing the input cap from 1 nF (.001uF) to 10 (.01uF) or even 100 (0.1uF)

I think I have 0.047 uF in mine - it matches the bypass bass response nicely (at least on my setup)

hth

Thanks George,

I think I'll take out the input cap and put in some sockets so I can play around with it a bit.

[JohnM]

From #2 above. I guess it's better to set it and leave it. Do you find that the same setting is optimum for both the Vibe and the Phaser?

Yes. I didn't think it was necessary to experiment.  In changing from vibe to phaser, I have to tweek the rate and depth pots slightly to get the effect just right.

From #3 above. I listened to your sound clip on the phaser and it sounded really nice. Did you also put in the vibe/chorus switch that is on the schematic? Or did you replace that with switching out the .22 and 470pf with an .01. I guess my question is, Is there one or two switches now?  

I have 3 switches: vibe/chorus, vibe/phaser, rate pot to foot pedal.

That sounds great. Is it an easy mod? Also, what kind of footpedal are you using with that. Is it just a volume pedal or more like an expression pedal?

Sure, it just gets messy with the wires. You also have to use a plastic expression pedal input jack (or insulate it).  The pedal is a Yamaha FC7 expression pedal.  I don't really use it that much - it was more about my curiousity to see if it would work.
-John