Tube circuit to give sharp decay/minimize sustain?

8/3/2000 2:07 PM

jon

Tube circuit to give sharp decay/minimize sustain? Hi   This question may be more suitable for the effects board, but here goes...     I'd like to make a tube circuit kill the note very shortly after it's sounded, kinda like an automatic mute, for a staccato decay. I guess what I'm after is the opposite of sustain. I need the initial sharp attact, though.     Following a typical tube voltage amplifier stage, I've used all sorts of different solid state diodes, and LED's in reverse parallel pairing to ground, still get some "growl" as the note decays. I guess what's happening is that they're "gating" the signal, only allowing signals above a threshold to make it to the next stage. The decay envelope is close but the waveform's changed significantly. I'm looking for less harmonic distortion, more of the normal guitar tone. I guess the envelope would be like what you get when hitting a Fender-Rhodes electric piano key without the sustain pedal on.     Any better ways to approach this? I've tried a single-shot tube multivibrator scheme, so far the results have beeen pretty nasty.   thanx, Jon