Guitar ring modulator

[John Egerton]

I've heard that combining a distortion pedal with a ring modulator can give some really cool results for playing with on stage...
I was wondering if anyon reccomended a circuit that I should try...

Thanks you guys..

John

[el duderino]

what about the Green Ringer i havnt made it but it sound like it could be the answer to what you are looking for a distortion with subtle ring mod check it out its on the archive here>>>>>>>>

eamonn.

[petemoore]

Green Ringer...very cool...Simplest Ring Mod schematic I've seen.
 No pots !
  Yupp very interesting tones with 'something like a Fuzz in front of it.
 EZ build, IIRC matching the diodes, caps and 'mirror' resistors closely is supposed to help the ring tone be cleaner or more pronounced.
 I believe those resistors are the two 22k and 68k...just around or past the diodes. Try to match the Rvalue of the 22k's and the 68'ks.
 The diodes can be checked for matching them with the DMM's diode setting....look for two diodes that have the closest match.

[el duderino]

sorry bout before i was suposed to write green ringer but instead i wrote little gem..........weird!.............. any how i edited it out! :lol:

[Mark Hammer]

I've heard that combining a distortion pedal with a ring modulator can give some really cool results for playing with on stage...

Yes and no.

Ring modulators, like many devices, can "behave better" when fed a steady signal level, and the compression produced by distortion pedals is squarely in that camp.

At the same time, many forget that ring modulators don't "know" what note you're playing.  All they know is what comes in the Y and the X axis and they sum and difference all frequency content strolling in those doors.  Quite often the spectral content of the on-board (or external) oscillator can be tame and reasonable, but the spectral content of the signal to be modulated may be a little TOO hairy and broad.  

If one wishes to use a ring modulator to produce atonal "washes" that are more like cymbals than rubber bands, then certainly fuzz away.  The sum and difference of a harmonically rich input signal and a modulating oscillator will provide a vast array of output frequencies (many probably beyond the frequency range of the amp speakers).

If the desire is to have something more like a rubber band tone that retains a vaguely or marginally pitched quality, the input signal has to have some lowpass filtering so that the sums and differences aren't all over the map. An unadulterated Fuzz Face or just about any 3-knobber with the tone control maxed is likely going to produce output content that will simply obscure what the rest of your bandmates are doing.  Trust me, there is no monitor-level adjustment in the world that can correct that.  If you want something to render you completely out of sync with everyone else, this would probably be it.  If the input signal has some reasonable rolloff of treble content, though, (which could be EITHER in the distortion itself, OR built into the input path of the RM - and in fact, treble cut is a great feature to have on a ring modulator), then you cut down on the buzziness and chaos, while still retaining much of the RM character and an ability to still hear stuff.  At that point the fuzz shifts the balance of lower order harmonics so that maybe you hear more modulation of the 3rd or 4th harmonic than you might have without the distortion.  Plus, as noted, you get the more consistent level of those harmonics across the lifespan of the note which can make the RM effect more robust, as opposed to getting something that sounds RM-ish at the start of the notes but retreats quickly.

Want something mucho wacky?  Run you fuzzed instrument into a delay line, feed the delay-only output to a RM with a short delay and then mix the two.  Double-tracking from outer space, baby.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

On my commercial Blue Ringer ring modulator, I have a wet/dry blend control, so you can have either total ring modulated madness, or just an edge added to the straight signal.

[sir_modulus]

I don't think the green ringer is a "ring" modualtor as it has no diode ring. But just a little something to think about, right under the 3080 at Small bear Elec is a ring modulator IC. Just one Ic for an entire effect that isn't digital............. BTW: Green ringer is listed as octave @ GGG (general guitar gadgets)

[Mark Hammer]

Well, let's put a stop to a couple of common misconceptions right here and now before they go too much further.

1) There ARE no "ring modulator" chips.  There are balanced modulator chips whose capabilities are very compatible with what a decent RM wants, but to the best of my knowledge there are no chips designed expressly for ring modulation.

2) Correct.  The Green Ringer is NOT a ring modulator.  It is a bare bones octave-up box.  One of the properties of octave-up boxes is that they can inadvertently produce "sidebands" that are sums and differences; especially when you bend strings.  JC Maillet is much better at explaining the math and engineering of it than I am, but I think you'll find that just about any analog octave-up unit WILL give you "rubber band" tones upon request.  The Green Ringer just seems to have the sort of design that generates sidebands with a little more predictability than it generates octaves.

Paul,
The wet/dry blend is a smart idea.  I guess the thing to be concerned about is that the wet part is not so brash and chaotic that you have to fade it way into the background to have any semblance of quasi-pitched quality.  If one uses a barely audio modulation (e.g., oscillator set to <40hz) and steeply lowpass filters the input signal, you can get away with using 100% wet and still make it sound like you're playing an instrument.

[petemoore]

Can A Ring Mod be built using a 3080?

[Zero the hero]

Yes, check John Hollis' Ring frobnicator at Geofex.
The problem with this unit is carrier suppress when not playing.
I've built it with and it caused me lots of problems: carrier wave was very audible in the output even when I was playing my guitar out loud.