(Almost) finished my first original pedal!

[ExpAnonColin]

Still gotta add a low cut and a high cut, but the "parallel universe" is finally in a case and working well.  It's a dual LM386 oscillating, very high gain, distortion/fuzz.  Produces white noise and square waves, lots of gain, etc...  2 gain stages, each with "voltage starves" a la the fuzz factory, and there's a "loop" to go between the two if you want to put anything in between.  Very simple design, there's more knobs than components.  Here's the outside:

Excuse the gigantic image size...


The knobs are as follows: Level gain stage 1, gain gain stage 1, voltage starve gain stage 1, voltage starve "trim" gain stage 1...  then 2 below it.  The voltage starve is a 5k and the trim is a 1k... the trim goes right after the starve in the circuit, so if you want you can resist tthe 9v battery up to 6k.. or not at all.  The two holes are for the low and high cut in the near future... and then there's going to be an overall output knob, too.  The loop outputs are switching jacks, so when nothing's plugged in it ignores the loop.  Stomp switch coming soon !

And the very messy inside:



For this pedal, just to try it out, I used 22 gage wire... I'm still trying to decide if it's better or worse.  It's nice to be able to wire them in any which way you want and make them stay there, but it's hard to wrap.  Clearly I still need more organization

I'll be posting schematics on the website soon...  And selling kits, probably, for about $50.

Comments are appreciated

-Colin

[Mike Nichting]

Looks very cool~!!
Is that foil inside?? If so what for?? The box is metal right??

 Soundclips would be very cool :wink:

 Best of luck to ya"

Mike Nichting

[ExpAnonColin]

Looks very cool~!!
Is that foil inside?? If so what for?? The box is metal right??

 Soundclips would be very cool :wink:

 Best of luck to ya"

Mike Nichting

Thanks.  The foil is because it's a plastic box... aluminum foil helps keep the hiss and radio stations out of the pedal.  I hate hate hate hate drilling, and plastic boxes make it easier... as long as I'm not dealing with picky customers plastic is fine for me.

I have a LOT of soundclips on the net.  

Here's one where it self oscillates, and slowly raises in pitch...  all by itself, no knobs are being moved (until the end)
http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/paralleluniverse/soundclips/selfselfoscillate.mp3

Messing around with the knobs to get a lot of the various distortion tone sout of it...  http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/paralleluniverse/soundclips/demo.mp3

Some of the odder stuff it can do: http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/paralleluniverse/soundclips/drumbeatsetc.mp3

And finally, this is with a circuit bent MM4 in the "between gain stage" loop: http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/paralleluniverse/soundclips/mm4inloop.mp3

I can't wait to put more pedals before it and more in the loop, to.  Imagine what a distortion would do... or a Frostwave resonator.

I'm really proud of the pedal, but it's so incredibly simple I can't really brag about it

-Colin

[Mike Nichting]

That is very cool~!!
Good job. Hey ZVEX has a few pedals with a very low part count but they just out and out rock~!! :-) I think it is a cool pedal with a lot of possiblilties.
Hey at least you have the balls to put a design out there for all of us to enjoy. You have my respect.

best of luck,
Mike nichting

[Peter Snowberg]

:shock:  

That's totally out of control.      

I chuckled several times listening to those noises. You have my respect too.

-Peter


PS: The high end almost blew me out of the water. If I had that pedal I think I would try some small caps to shunt some the extreme highs to ground.

I love entropy.

[ExpAnonColin]

:shock:  

That's totally out of control.      

I chuckled several times listening to those noises. You have my respect too.

-Peter

PS: The high end almost blew me out of the water. If I had that pedal I think I would try some small caps to shunt some the extreme highs to ground.

I love entropy.

Thanks, I'm planning on adding a high and low cut knob (that's what the extra 2 holes are for) for just that... sometimes the highs get obnoxious.

-Colin

[ExpAnonColin]

That is very cool~!!
Good job. Hey ZVEX has a few pedals with a very low part count but they just out and out rock~!! :-) I think it is a cool pedal with a lot of possiblilties.
Hey at least you have the balls to put a design out there for all of us to enjoy. You have my respect.

best of luck,
Mike nichting

Thanks a lot.  Z vex is a really brilliant guy... he didn't "give" me the idea for voltage starving, but after I had started trying it to try to get octaving, he told me it was used in the fuzz factory.  Was I not supposed to tell you guys that?  Surely you knew that's what the stab knob was...  you can't say I copied him, though, because he doesnt know how to use op-amps .  

-Colin

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Now that's the kind of pedal I like!! The trick will be making several the same, if loose capacitances are forming an important part of the circuit (not that I know whether this is the case).

[Marcos - Munky]

Sounds very cool! When you draw a schematic, please tell me.

[ExpAnonColin]

Now that's the kind of pedal I like!! The trick will be making several the same, if loose capacitances are forming an important part of the circuit (not that I know whether this is the case).

Nope, loose caps aren't doing anything... it's basically just the 2 op amps, LM386's.  I could make many of these the same, the hard part would be getting them to sound exactly the same... although it can generally be said that the noises it can make are low gain distortion, white noise, high gain distortion of varying frequency qualities, clicks, tremolo, self oscillation, and octave... and any combonation of the listed.

Schematic... I'll try to get it up tonite.  Got to transfer it from notebook paper to computer

-Colin

[Peter Snowberg]

I'll bet if you mush the wires around a bit and close the box back up it will have slightly different noise and different self-oscillation. High gain circuits have tons of parasitic pickup capability. Careful placement of components for parasitic coupling is one of the things the magic amp gurus do to achieve ultimate tone. Some wires get run parallel while others cross at 90 degress or close to it.

My guess is that wired that way you will never have two that will sound exactly the same . You have entropy designed into it by construction and as well the entropy is shaped and filtered by the builder for more variation! Ultimately personalized!

-Peter

[ExpAnonColin]

I'll bet if you mush the wires around a bit and close the box back up it will have slightly different noise and different self-oscillation. High gain circuits have tons of parasitic pickup capability. Careful placement of components for parasitic coupling is one of the things the magic amp gurus do to achieve ultimate tone. Some wires get run parallel while others cross at 90 degress or close to it.

My guess is that wired that way you will never have two that will sound exactly the same . You have entropy designed into it by construction and as well the entropy is shaped and filtered by the builder for more variation! Ultimately personalized!

-Peter

Of course, of course...  I suppose if anyone wanted to mass produce this they'd send it off to asia to get it mass produced in machines.  That'd add quite a bit more control.
I DO know, though, that taking out the battery and then putting it back in maintains the sound.
BUT, the battery... oh god, different brands make so much difference, and how long it's been in there does too.

-Colin

[ExpAnonColin]

Schematic!  Hooray!  It's just a "gain stage", because that's all you need.  If you honestly need help with the low/high cut and the output volume knob... PM me or something.  



This is one gain stage, you can have as many as you want.  The 2 extra jacks on the pedal are a "loop": basically, they are wired as such:
2 mono switching jacks.  The output from stage 1 is wired to the "hot" on the first jack, and the other side of the jack switch is wired to the jack switch on the other mono jack... the "hot" terminal on the second jack is wired back to the PCB to the second gain stage.

Enjoy! Let me know if there are any mistakes and if you build it.

-Colin[/img]

[Marcos - Munky]

Thanks for the schematic, but I didn't understand some things:
1- the - side of the 205uF cap goes to the last stage, and the + side goes to output, right?
2- I didn't understand the loop part, could you draw it?
3- could you draw the low/high cut too?

[ExpAnonColin]

Thanks for the schematic, but I didn't understand some things:
1- the - side of the 205uF cap goes to the last stage, and the + side goes to output, right?
2- I didn't understand the loop part, could you draw it?
3- could you draw the low/high cut too?

1-Yes.
2- Well, have you ever used a switching mono jack?  It's really simple, just think about it.  When the chord is "in" the switch is disabled, when there's no chord in it it's connected.  It's a mono jack with a switch built in... So, what I did was, I connected the output of one stage to the "hot" (you know, normal mono non-groud terminal) of the "send" jack.  Then, I connected the send jack's switch (the one that is connected to the hot terminal depending on if there's input) to the other switch on the return jack, and the hot terminal on the return jack to the next gain stage.  SO, when there's nothing in there, the switch is closed and thusly it travels from the first gain stage to the switch terminal to the switch terminal on the retun jack to the hot terminal on the return jack to the gain stage... but when there's input the switch is not connected, and instead it ends up just going right in the loop.
3- The high and low cut are just the one's on aron nelson's page:
Add a lowpass filter

A lot of distortions don't have tone controls. Here is an easy lowpass filter you can add. It will reduce your output a little but if your distortion pedal has lots of gain, this shouldn't be a big problem. If you think about it, this can go right on the lugs of the output volume pot. Use a small trimmer mounted on the lugs of the output pot along with the capacitor.



Add a low cut filter

Here's an interesting one to try, put a low cut if your distortion  has too much bass.

The pot value is 500K.




There you go.

-Colin

[Marcos - Munky]

Thanks, Colin. Now I understand the switch and low/high cut.