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SteveG View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 26 2015 at 10:11
Originally posted by Dayvenkirq Dayvenkirq wrote:

^ I suppose only you know what happens if you fiddle around with the breadboard ... and how to fiddle with it.
If you think so, that's fine with me.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 26 2015 at 10:14
^ What I meant was that I've never seen anything like this before. I thought if you made it, you'd know how the breadboard works. What chips does it come with (if at all)?

Edited by Dayvenkirq - August 26 2015 at 10:15
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 26 2015 at 10:22
^My apologies Andrey. The breadboard and other goodies were taken from something that should not have been 'borrowed from', so I can't say more. That's the problem with a lot of DIY stuff, you can do yourself in if you're not careful. Oh, and as I said, it didn't sound the way we thought it would! LOL

Edited by SteveG - August 26 2015 at 10:24
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 26 2015 at 14:12
I love homemade music stuff.   Tinkering, toiling, experimenting like a mad scientist, it's the best way to learn about not just sounds but electrical too.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 26 2015 at 14:35
Fiddling around with stuff is the most fun. When I was a kid, I plugged a cheap electric guitar into a reel to reel tape recorder that contained an amp/speaker unit, that I found in the trash. It made me sound like Hendrix for a few minutes before it started blowing vacuum tubes. It actually made tuba sounds before it finally died, but it started my fascination with tech tools. And reel to reel tape recorders!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 26 2015 at 16:30
I have a bunch of schematics off the internet that should be well worth putting together. I've bought most or all of the materials too in some cases. There's a lot of DIY how-to instruction on the internet too. I don't have a good work area where I currently live, though, so I'm biding my time a little. I mainly have other people's DIY stuff I've gotten over the years. I've used ring modulators to get latency-free synth sounds for years now. I split and buffer the signal, then use one or more harmonizers to add in harmonics. The commercial ring mods are dead set on supplying an oscillator with them, so I've had to find people over time who make their own DIY ring mods with two inputs and no oscillator. I have a few of them now, and one or two kits to make them when I get around to it. It's a really simple circuit. Even I can say that.

There's a really cool mod for the Boss OC-2 Octave Divider on the net (YouTube). One of these days I'll try to do the mod myself, but I was able to commission someone else to do one for me, and it's become one of my pride and joys. It's latency-free also (because there's no PV conversion). Basically what happens if you bypass the part of the circuit that filters the sound, you get an Atari Punk square wave sound out of it. There's another schematic out there too called a Synth Box, which is based on one of the other octave dividers. I think it was a Rocktron or something. The upshot is I suspect this might be a property of octave dividers generally, which means we could have had monophonic square wave synth sounds from guitars back as early as the 60s! Who knows what could've happened from there. Once you have an acceptable square wave, there are ample harmonics present so that you can filter out some of those harmonics and get other types of wave forms (schematics currently available on the net).

Edited by HackettFan - August 26 2015 at 16:38
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2015 at 22:49
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:


Fiddling around with stuff is the most fun. When I was a kid, I plugged a cheap electric guitar into a reel to reel tape recorder that contained an amp/speaker unit, that I found in the trash. It made me sound like Hendrix for a few minutes before it started blowing vacuum tubes. It actually made tuba sounds before it finally died, but it started my fascination with tech tools. And reel to reel tape recorders!
Back in my twenties I tried putting a kazoo on the end of the tube coming off a talk box. It didn't make any sound, so I constricted the opening coming out of the kazoo by covering it with some tape. It sounded quite nice. It had a nice tone. Then after a little bit I realized that all I was listening to was distortion.. Not much ground broken there.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2015 at 23:29
Talkboxes are so stuck in their time--  do they still make 'em?


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2015 at 23:31
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Yeah Boss DS1 is awful.   I've heard good things about the Ibanez "Tube Screamer" but never used one.
Yeah, the DS-1 can work for tones that are meant to sound gross. I know it's used in garage rock and was used in grunge. Something can also be said for the fact that almost every guitarist has owned one. But for most practical uses, it hurts more than it helps. HackettFan pointed out that the synth mods sound bad. There are simpler mid-boost mods that make it sound much better. 

Tube Screamers are good. In addition, there are lots of Screamer clones on the market that provide some differences. There's also the famed/highly-priced Klon Centaur. Electroharmonix has a clone of that called the Soul Food, and I would definitely recommend it. Perhaps over a screamer-style pedal. On bass, I use a Bass Soul Food for my less overdriven tone and the Way Huge Green Rhino (a higher gain screamer clone) for more gain. Alone, I can't really the Green Rhino to sound good, but with the Soul Food underneath it sounds great. I've yet to get one for guitar although I've used my friend's numerous times. The Green Rhino sounds fine on my guitar because my guitar is darker and hotter, but I'd like to have a similar setup for guitar. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 03 2015 at 00:36
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Talkboxes are so stuck in their time--  do they still make 'em?


They do indeed. There's one from MXR and two different kinds from Rocktron. They're not a complicated mechanism. A horn driver is the main element. Kind of fun to use. They lead one off into using microphones and such that are not in the typical guitar signal path.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 03 2015 at 02:14
They are fun, I just can't stop hearing Frampton doing 'Show Me the Way' when I think of one






Edited by Atavachron - September 03 2015 at 02:21
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 03 2015 at 23:48
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

They are fun, I just can't stop hearing Frampton doing 'Show Me the Way' when I think of one

Indeed, and it's hard to do much different sounding than that, but then again, I haven't tried in quite awhile. David Gilmour used it somewhere on Animals, I recall. I think that's what made me go find one. I don't remember which song. I haven't listened to that in quite awhile. I wonder hypothetically what a talk box & vocoder duet would sound like ...hmm. Either really good or really bad, I imagine.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 04 2015 at 00:03
Jeff Beck had a talkie phase in the 70s--  oh yeah and Joe Walsh too

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 04 2015 at 00:20
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Jeff Beck had a talkie phase in the 70s--  oh yeah and Joe Walsh too

. That's right! I always liked Joe Walsh. Delighted still more when I found out we were both born in the same town. I can't think of any others who've used it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 04 2015 at 00:34
Oh I'm sure quite a few did, but the thrill was gone

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 04 2015 at 00:41
Jerry Cantrell almost brought it back in the early 90's with man in the box, that song was pretty popular. It was probably the first time i realized i was hearing one, but i agree they've had there day.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 04 2015 at 15:21
^I agree that there time is up! The only time a talk box sounded good was when the player was using it in tandem with a wah pedal like Frampton did (on Show Me The Way) and was not actually talking but making throaty vocal sounds or just vocalizing a melody. They constantly keep resurfacing on some new band's albums, unfortunately. 

Edited by SteveG - September 04 2015 at 15:56
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 12 2015 at 15:10
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

^I agree that there time is up! The only time a talk box sounded good was when the player was using it in tandem with a wah pedal like Frampton did (on Show Me The Way) and was not actually talking but making throaty vocal sounds or just vocalizing a melody. They constantly keep resurfacing on some new band's albums, unfortunately. 
Ah, the sounds of the 70s: talk boxes and cow bells!
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 13 2015 at 14:21
^Just as I remembered. Confused The only good thing about them is they gave the guitarist a splitting headache after about 4 songs! LOL
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 14 2015 at 02:23
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Does anyone have DIY effects?
A few.  My fave is a replica of Jim Dunlop's Fuzz Face that I made using some germanium transistors I 'found' in my box of assorted bits

Fuzz Face Circuit Diagram
(this is an example circuit from the web, I don't have an image of the cct I actually used)

As with a lot of distortion effects it's good because the circuit is essentially bad (it has poor gain, loads the guitar pickups quite badly, has a dreadful frequency response, and most importantly is non-linear in that it clips the signal asymmetrically which produces a characteristic set of harmonics that you don't get with symmetrical distortion).

This tread details an infinity sustainer mod to a cheap guitar I did a while back.
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

This is a homemade oscillator/synth unit I cobbled together with a friend:
Sounds very 'squelchy', so it's not used much. LOL
  
Like Andrey I was curious about the breadboard Wink I've breadboarded a lot of different guitar effects circuits but few of them ever got made into usable pedals.

My bug-bear is those industrial stomp switches, I've used them and still have a bag-full I bought cheaply from Proops on Tottenham Court Road many (many) years ago but they are too strong and hurt your feet unless you're wearing heavy work boots. I've since gone over to using Cherry™ keyboard switch with latch circuit similar to those used by Ibanez and Danelectro (among others)


Edited by Dean - September 14 2015 at 02:25
What?
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