EH Talking Pedal, possible pot?

[B Tremblay]

Thanks!  After comparing the two dirty clips, I can hear what you're describing.

I wonder if an appropriately sized resistor could be placed in parallel with the LDR to make the aperture cutting easier.  For example, place an 8k2 in parallel with the LDR for TP2 and just cut the window for the LDR sensor area at the toe down position.  The heel resistance would be set very close to the resistor value since the dark resistance is usually super high.  A 5k6 resistor could be used for TP1.  The LEDs could then be run a little bit less bright since we would want a bit more than 1k minimum resistance when adding the parallel resistance.

I was thinking that some sort of lubricant would be the next step.  I don't want to have to take it apart as it is pretty inconvenient to get a wrench in to hold the inner nut while turning the screw.

[Ronan]

Thats a very good idea, I think its definitely worth trying. If you have wires connected to TP1 and TP2, you could put the resistors between the wires and ground. I hope to build another TP soon and will try that.

I was thinking that some sort of lubricant would be the next step.  I don't want to have to take it apart as it is pretty inconvenient to get a wrench in to hold the inner nut while turning the screw.

Another way to pull it apart is undo the nuts holding in the PCB and then undo the nuts under the PCB that hold the pedal mounting brackets to the main housing, then the whole pedal and brackets assembly is released. Its not real easy to get back together again, I did it on one pedal as it had a spring in there which I took out, but it might be easier than what you are thinking of doing.

I've been breadboarding the Talk-a-lizer (Dino's cross between a colorsound vocalizer and a talking pedal) to see if I can get a talking pedal sound using a dual pot. The advantage would be not having to cut a card, and being able to use a standard wah shell. I wasn't able to replicate the talking pedal sound using a dual pot, but did succeed in getting some convincing vowel sounds by using a dual 10K log pot with the talk-a-lizer schematic with talking pedal component values in the filters. I will try to get a soundclip of it this weekend if anyone is interested. The difficult part is to get some sound over the usable rotation of the pot, with 20K lin and 10K lin the sound effect was based mainly in one half of the rotation with the other half not doing much. The 10K log was an improvement. The use of LED/LDR's in the Morley shell gives the advantage of being able to adjust the taper and total resistance for each filter. I guess everyone has their own favorite sound that they like to hear, so its difficult to know what is the "best" way to do these pedals.

[pinkjimiphoton]

hi guys, i know i'm dumb and all, but what are the tp for?

is the led on the circuit board supposed to go to the footswitch, or to an led?

i'm enough of a newb where i need a little guidance i guess.

i have the board populated, except the 500r trimmer which either i forgot to order from tayda, or they dropped the ball on.

gonna go try and get one at rat shack, may have to go with a 1k trimmer i guess.

what's the final consensus on led's? does color/size/luminosity matter?

be back shortly with parts, gonna start wiring later today.

that said,

i built madbean's take on the diphonizer, the "honey dripper"...this is in some ways the best of the formant pedals, but the
"depth" pot REALLY needs to be under treadle control...it sounds amazing, very extremely mouthy and very clear vowels...if ya turn the depth pot.

otherwise, it really depends on the frequency your're playing as to how well it tracks with the vowels.

gonna add an isolated TRS 1/4 inch jack so i can plug an external expression pedal to it. due to the compact layout of brian's pedal, it just won't work in a wah shell with the 4 way switch. i may try and mount it in another pedal i got with a wah pedal on it, it's roomie enough to be doable.

anyways...

thanks, will check in later.

happy pesto building...lol

[digi2t]

Hey bro,

TP's are test points for measuring the LDR resistance. Measure TP to ground. What I did was to solder in two different color leads, long enough to feed them out of the battery compartment door. Different colors, so you know which TP you're on. That way, you can adjust your card, then throw the cover on, and then measure the resistance sweeps. Saves you from having to turn off all the lights to do readings (light affecting the LDR's).

Hint: Keep the foam that seals around the battery box, it helps seal out light.

I just slipped some heatshrink over the ends when I was done, and coiled them into the case when I was done.

Cheers bro 
Dino

[pinkjimiphoton]

cool, gotcha....hate to have to keep taling it apart!!

thanks bro!

it's a bitch getting the treadle off and on right..the one i got on evil bay was missing the bolts, so i called morley, and they sent me some...10 bux well spent.

gonna get to it shortly, and see if i can make the beast move...stay tuned! ;

[B Tremblay]

it's a bitch getting the treadle off and on right..the one i got on evil bay was missing the bolts, so i called morley, and they sent me some...10 bux well spent.

No joke!  I took my treadle off to put in some washers in an effort to cure squeaking.  It worked, thankfully, because I'd hate to have to take it off again!

[Ronan]

>>is the led on the circuit board supposed to go to the footswitch, or to an led?

That little LED by itself, you can run wires from there to an LED to indicate FX on or FX off, or, if you don't want an LED indicator, just solder an LED straight into the PCB, it needs to be in the circuit or the pedal won't work. Just beside it, you see 2 holes labeled SW1c, run wires from these to your footswitch to turn the effect on and off. Or, you could just jumper a wire across those 2 holes and the LED's will all run all the time. It was just an idea to save a little battery power, turning off all three LED's when the effect is off.

A 1K trimmer should be fine. Good luck.

Brian, you put washers in there? Nylon, steel, can you elaborate, because my bro-in-law has the prototype pictured near the beginning of this thread, and he is now telling me it squeaks!

[joegagan]

I like pedal with olive oil and garlic

[pinkjimiphoton]

and lotsa pine nuts!! pesto rules.

man, this is gonna look really farkin' weird tomorrow, all the pesto jokes...

peeps are gonna be like

wellp guys, it's done, it up and running. i did NOT change out the stock morley card!

works really well. i bought one of them black plastic soaked notebook things in case i need to make one, but figured what the heck,
and gave it a try. VERY vocal, very gargley.

i used one 1n34 and one 1n914 for the clipper, and 4.7 and 1.8n caps in parallel for the 6.8n's, which i thought i had but apparently spaced.

i also could only get a different kind of 500r trimmer, one of the round ones. it's all good, seems to talk the best full up...thinking of maybe trying the 1k pot in it's place, it seems the brighter the led's, the higher the formant's trajectory.

fwiw, i also used bone-stock cheapo red 5mm led's (and a nice blue ultrabright for the bypass)...i figured when this thing was made, i'm sure they didn't spend a lot of time tuning it in...reading the thread again made me figure it would probably work without too much trouble, they were gonna pump these puppies out faster than a stoner eats a brownie. if the cuts would work for a morley vol, wah, or fuzz wah (which is what mine could be built as) it should be pretty good, and i'm a weirdo that actually LIKES the feel of a morley better than a crybaby, tho i'm more used to crybabies since selling the last old silver power wah fuzz volume thing.

had a REAL hard time mounting the treadle...i found a trick, put the heel down, and you can just barely get in there with a 3/8ths box wrench thru the much wider toe section...not a lot of room to work, but ya can just barely get in there.


took a couple obligatory crappy phone pics of the guts and the finished pedal... it sounds great, stupid pedal tricks installments coming...i've been lazy...

THANK YOU IAN, DINO AND BRIAN FOR ALL YOU DID TO MAKE THIS PROJECT HAPPEN!!

finished pedal:



guts one



guts closer...again, sorry, crappy phone shots:




also, took the ground lug of the pcb and connected it to the upper left pcb mounting nut. that is the earth ground for the whole pedal, the jacks i used are isolated from ground. this also connects to the pcb's audio in when the effect is bypassed.

wired it standard, so the neg of the power supply went to the ring of the input jack...ran a jumper from sleeve connection to output jack sleeve and sleeve connection of input jack goes to the - battery connection on the pcb. turns it on only when the input jack is plugged in. it's probably the cleanest wiring i've ever done...the only place ground connects is below that nut, everything else is floating.

anyways...again, thanks guys!!

i'll post clip tomorrow if i can, let me know what ya think...if it isn't vocal enough, then i may try cutting the card for it.

peace

hey, if it's squeaking, try spraying a little silicon lube in there, it really seemed to help mine. also make sure the dang thing is tite...if the screw/locknut aren't tite, it'll slop around and make noise.

[Ronan]

I'm really glad to see you got it going Jimi, puts a big smile on my face   

>> i also could only get a different kind of 500r trimmer, one of the round ones. it's all good, seems to talk the best full up...thinking of maybe trying the 1k pot in it's place, it seems the brighter the led's, the higher the formant's trajectory.

Yeah, the brighter the LED's go, the higher in frequency the formants go. But a 1K trimmer won't do any better than a 500R because you need less resistance, not more, to make the LED's brighter. To get brighter, you could either nudge the LED's closer to the LDR's, or you could change out the 220R resistor under the LDR leads for 100R (or tack another 220R across the existing 220R, maybe underneath the PCB to save disturbing the LDR's). The way I see it with a blue indicator LED in there, you proly got 7mA flowing through the 2 red LED's with the 500R pot set for max brightness. Most LED's will take 20mA, so with a 100R (or 2 x 220R) resistor you will get around 15mA, and if that's too bright, you can wind it back with the 500R trimpot.

Nice wiring too, very neat...

[B Tremblay]

I cut four washers from the polyester-ish fabric of a CD sleeve, the kind that are in zippered carrying cases for your car.  I reckoned that would be reasonably durable and slippery.  I haven't played too much since their installation, but they quieted the squeak.

[pinkjimiphoton]

I'm really glad to see you got it going Jimi, puts a big smile on my face   

>> i also could only get a different kind of 500r trimmer, one of the round ones. it's all good, seems to talk the best full up...thinking of maybe trying the 1k pot in it's place, it seems the brighter the led's, the higher the formant's trajectory.

Yeah, the brighter the LED's go, the higher in frequency the formants go. But a 1K trimmer won't do any better than a 500R because you need less resistance, not more, to make the LED's brighter. To get brighter, you could either nudge the LED's closer to the LDR's, or you could change out the 220R resistor under the LDR leads for 100R (or tack another 220R across the existing 220R, maybe underneath the PCB to save disturbing the LDR's). The way I see it with a blue indicator LED in there, you proly got 7mA flowing through the 2 red LED's with the 500R pot set for max brightness. Most LED's will take 20mA, so with a 100R (or 2 x 220R) resistor you will get around 15mA, and if that's too bright, you can wind it back with the 500R trimpot.

Nice wiring too, very neat...

thanks brother..

i will try tacking another 220r resistor on there, and see what it does. it's pretty good already, sounds like a wah into a vocalizer...about 2/3rds of the way into the sweep it literally gargles, and it seems to hit o e a... can almost sound like oh yeah! waiting for my girl and our roomate to get up so i can fire it up loud.

i should have realized the pot wouldn't help by going bigger...my brain death!! i still, for some reason, end up thinking tubes with gain structures, where the higher resistance usually is more gain. i just built yet another 386 fuzz that had that issue...i tried various pots, 1k was perfect for the gain sweep.

<read that: IDIOT>

lol..

it sounds ALOT like the diphonizer,the only real dif is the treadle vs the envelope follower. i PREFER the treadle. i may try them together and see how it sounds, if for nothing else, i can a/b/c/d the talking pesto, the diphonizer, the colorsound vocalizer and the ludwig phase II  to make comparisons easier!

that may be a cool idea!!

again, thanks so much for an awesome project, the great advice, and kind words. peace!

[pinkjimiphoton]

I cut four washers from the polyester-ish fabric of a CD sleeve, the kind that are in zippered carrying cases for your car.  I reckoned that would be reasonably durable and slippery.  I haven't played too much since their installation, but they quieted the squeak.

man, brian, i'm glad that worked out for you, cuz i don't relish ever having to take that apart again...what a PIA!!!

that said, do any of you guys know where i may be able to cop the pin a crybaby rocks on?

i have two spare crybaby shells, one was completely dissassembled...

rock on!

[digi2t]

Just out of curiousity ('cuz I hear you guys bitchin' 'bout it), did you guys take the pedal off every time you modded your cards? If so, there's no need to. With a small pair of long nose pliers, and a long thin Philips screwdriver, you can just pop the card on and off from the bottom of the pedal. There is a small hole on the side of the treadle for the screwdriver to line up with the screw that holds the card. When you put the card in (with the treadle on), use the pliers to hold the screw, get the screwdriver in, and then just screw it into place. No need to mess with the treadle. Magnetic screwdriver works great too.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i saw that dino, but didn't have the right screwdriver to get it in there...all mine were too fat.

i HAD to assemble mine, the one i bought on ebay was complete except for the bolt assemblies the treadle rides on.

and it was a bitch...i have fat fingers, so i had to reach in with needlenose pliers and lasso the bolt with the lock, washer and lock nut.
and them big plastic sumbeechez? that took some playing with, too.

i don't envy brian having to deal with that.

spray silicon seemed to work for me...i've got it pretty tite, too.

gonna try and go for a stupid pedal trick video in a little bit...gotta do it when i won't annoy somebody.

[B Tremblay]

I was able to change the card by using a skinny screwdriver and tweezers to steady the screw.  The only time I took off the treadle was for installing those washers.

If I had silicone lube, I would have used it.  I once worked for a photographer that used it for some of his camera and lighting stands.  Slippery stuff!

[pinkjimiphoton]

the only prob with the silicon lube first, is it gets all over everything, and i mean EVERYTHING!! hard to get off then, too!
but it is slippery as heck; i like to mix it with powdered graphite. did it to my strat probably a decade ago, and the stuff is STILL on there.

[pinkjimiphoton]

here ya go...it sounds a little better in the room than it does on this video unfortunately

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=96855.0

[petey twofinger]

whats your mic set up for video ?

i found that to be frustrating for quite a while . using in cam mics and such . having to upload the video from the camera card to the pc ...

i got a deal on a hi def web cam and also picked up an tube mp for cheap . now i got a vocal condenser mic in the room , with a comp. /  eq /gate i had  going straight to the pc . it did run me some $$ but i really like it , it looks and sounds so much better , less work too . still have to figure out the lighting , i think mine are a lil harsh looking . some one said i need a diy diffuser ( smokey plexi glass w/ a lamp behind it? )

that may be a little too hollywood . i draw the line at make up . but i do change shirts when i shoot more than one in a setting . "wardrobe !"

[pinkjimiphoton]

this is just the "mic array" in my laptop. i like it cuz it doesn't really let me color the sound at all, my ears are kinda shot so it's easy for me to "addaliddle" here and there till it all
sounds like poo dipped in more poo.

i do have a presonus firepod on my music computer, but i haven't even fired that thing up in over a year now. just can't seem to get the inspiration together.



too addicted to fuzz. who has time for sex, drugs, rocknroll?

just gimme a breadboard, an overflowing box of junk and components, and leave me alone to work on my studio tan.