Suggestions for a Effect-of-the-month Club?

 :

10/28/1999 5:19 PM

R.G.

Suggestions for a Effect-of-the-month Club? I've been prodded to set up an "effect of the month club" kind of deal; a new toner package and/or PCB to build every so often. The idea is that subscribers get a new effect to build at intervals, and a mailing list or area to discuss the effects, and at a reduced price from the normal prices.     Anybody got suggestions, comments, etc. for this?     The suggestions I've had so far are:   - make it every other month for time to build and assimilate   - make it two levels, either toner sheets for people who want lowest cost or ready to solder PCB for people who hate etching and drilling   - make it alternate between vintage effects, new/different designs, and conceptual/teaching designs   - make a private discussion area for subscribers to hash over the designs, with public posting of the info later.     Got more ideas?

 

10/28/1999 6:28 PM

Mark Hammer

Interesting idea although I would prefer to recommend things that decrease your burden, rather than increase it.     That being said, in the interests of turning such a venture into something a bit more unique, I would suggest that any boards be explicitly directed at modding and component variations. So lotsa pads for jumpers and component-switching, pads for bigger and littler caps and parallel caps, slots for jumpering with dip sockets or motherboard-style jumpers, and so on. In other words, it should encourage experimentation in addition to being able to reproduce a standard known effect. My sense is that anything which is tinker-friendly is bound to encourage more discourse, more learning, and more serendipity. No secret that my model here is PAiA. The downer is that such boards may not always fit the beloved 1590BB very well, but what the hey. I suppose you could always put out a toner sheet with two versions of the same thing: the futzing around version (with the extra pads), and the I-know-what-I-want version with fewer pads but a more manageable footprint. Unless the project is huge, the standard PnP sheet should accommodate 2 of each.     As well, if this would be something which would benefit by having an ongoing audience, attention to standards is a good idea. So, everything has appropriate input and output impedances, compatible signal levels, and the same power supply will work for everything.     Want ideas for a project? After seeing responses to Thmas Jensen's posting about effects placement order, it occurred to me that a solid-state "order swapper" would be nice. Placing effect A in front of B, and then flipping their order, is awkward to do in foot-switchable fashion. Accommodating 2 inputs and 2 outputs requires more poles than a standard footswitch can deliver (even the Fulltone variety). The standard 1590BB should have room for 6 jacks (in/out for two FX loops, plus overall in/out) a stompswitch , board and battery, if carefully planned. This would also allow A/B-ng of wah-fuzz and EQ-fuzz combinations. Then everyone could sample the delights thereof via instant comparison.

 

10/28/1999 7:10 PM

R.G.

Thanks for the thoughts and concern. I'm actually considering doing this as a partial replacement for some other things, so it may work out.     I like the idea of the double versions - a version for mods and experimentation and a version for neat packaging. It crossed my mind that I might also do a layout for perfboard as well, just to encourage that.     Good comment on the standards as well.     Order-flipper, huh? Hmmmm... OK, ya need a couple of CMOS switches, and some ... yah, OK, that'll work...

 

10/28/1999 8:09 PM

Mark Hammer

Okay, while you're digging around in your CMOS box, get out a 4017 for the next one in line: an analog programmer. There was something like this in POLYPHONY, but it was never really applied to its fullest.     The idea is something like this...     A counter lets you step through a fixed number of "programs" (with accompanying indicator LED, natch), using a momentary footswitch. Each step through the counting cycle activates a different set of CMOS switches (4016 or 4066, etc.). The switches could be connected to duplicate pots or to FX ins/outs. So, "program" 1, 2, 3, and 4 could be alternate values of drive, tone and volume pots (a little like the Tech 21 Tri-OD), or they could be combinations of FX, whatever the user wants.     The easiest application would likely be for op-amp-based FX since many of the parameters can be tweaked using SPST switching schemes (e.g., different gain-setting resistors, different frequency-limiting caps, different diode combos, etc.). Deluxe programmable TS-9 anyone?     I think it goes without saying that we,re well out of 9v battery territory here.

 

10/29/1999 10:30 AM

GFR

I've always wanted to do a "MIDI controller" for analog FX. That is you hook your pedals to this box, and use a midi pedalboard or midi sequencer to select "preset" combinations of pedals. Of course it would be able to control amp channel switching too. Now Mark just remembered one more feature it could have: fx order changing. What about being able to put things in parallel or in stereo? If you think about the hardware it's not so complicated, just a cheap microcontroller (a 8031 would do it), a "telephone" like keypad for programming, some kind of display, maybe 7-segment LED and some analog switches or relays. The most complicated is developing the software and burning the EPROM (few DIYer's would be able to burn it), but if it is a kit one could sell pre-burned EPROMs with the "firmware".

 

10/29/1999 1:05 PM

R.G.

Omni-switch My "day job" is managing hardware/software development projects, so this kind of suggestion comes very naturally.     It sounds pretty simple to say "MIDI controlled, effects order switcher", and it could probably be done. However, the problem is this - what technology do you use to do the switching?     I did mess with making an any-to-any switch a ways back. The switch network needed to be able to electronically switch any of N effects into any order has to be able to do any permutation of effects, and so its size is proportional to N factorial (N*(N-1)*(N-2)*...*(2)*(1) also represented as N!     N! gets huge quickly - for N=5, N!=120. That's just the number of permutations. You actually need 2*logN times that number of interchange-switches to route the network between the first level order changers, so the number of order changers needed is at least 2*(LogN)*N! if I'm remembering my math right.     If you pick the simplest and cheapest order exchanger, two CD4053 CMOS multiplexors, you have to have 344 CD4053's to be able to route the signals of five pedals in any order. The controller is trivial compared to the switch network, although I've learned to be shy of calling anything a "simple matter of programming".     From there we go to parallel and stereo...     I think that just the switching network complexity means that order changers must be limited to two or perhaps three items at most.     It *is* easy to do a MIDI bypass box, if all you want to do is cut FX into or out of a fixed order chain. There you only need one bypass per effect, and you can easily make it remotely programmable, assuming a microcontroller, of course.

 

10/29/1999 3:17 PM

GFR

Let's take a "patch bay" approach. Say you've got 5 fx that you wish to put in any order. You would need six "nodes" or "busses":     1) input node of the pedalboard - that's where the input of the fx that is selected as "1st" is connected to the guitar.     2) node where the output of the fx that is selected as "1st" connects to the input of fx selected as "2nd".     3) node where the output of the fx that is selected as "2nd" connects to the input of fx selected as "3rd".     4) node where the output of the fx that is selected as "3rd" connects to the input of fx selected as "4th".     5) node where the output of the fx that is selected as "4th" connects to the input of fx selected as "5t".     6) output node of the pedalboard - that's where the output of the fx that is selected as "5th" is connected to the amp.     Now you need to be able to connect the input of any of your 5 pedals to any of the nodes 1) to 5), and you need to be able to connect the output of any of your 5 pedals to any of the nodes 2) to 6). To do so you need 5 switches for each input and 5 switches for each output, or 10 switches for each pedal. This gives 50 switches.     You would also want 5 more switches so that you can short any node to the next - so that you don't need to use all the 5 fx at the same time!     That's 2*N^2+N switches.     This gives 55 switches for arranging 5 fx in any order. You would need 14 CD4066.     It's not a small number but it's more manageable than the your numbers.     The stereo thing would double the number of switches. Parallel connection can make the combinations explode, unless you limit the number of fx that can be put on parallel, and/or limit the "parallel capabillity" for just one or two fx positions.     quote: "The controller is trivial compared to the switch network, although I've learned to be shy of calling anything a "simple matter of programming"."     I agree. While the actual control of the switches may not be very hard, there's a lot of labour to develop a user interface where one can edit, save and recall preset combinations of fx using a numeric keypad and a LED or LCD display. And it would be hard to debug - you would need to use a good software emulator of the controller you're using, to burn a few EPROMs and to spend a lot of time with a logic analyser.

 

Page 1 of 3

Next>

Last Page>>