Monday, 22 April 2024

Capitalist Death Cult Just. Give. Up. V2

 Another contribution by Chris. This time he made some improvements and addons on a rare and wild Death by Audio circuit. Tone houndz...stay away!

 Chris says:

I don't know if this warrants its own post but I wanted to show it to you anyway since I was the one who verified your purple card drawing.

Since I built that up I wasn't happy with the bleed through in bypass that sometimes happens with the LM567. So I used the old "millennium bypass" trick of adding a mosfet to handle the LED switching so that you can use only a DPDT for true bypass with an indicator light. THEN I used the now-vacant set of poles on a 3PDT to connect/disconnect the power supply to the LM567 when the circuit is bypassed. So NO NOISE! I also added the master volume, because if ANY circuit needs it, it is this loud beast. Then I put the frequency pot (which I cut down to 10k) on a switched expression jack so that you can get foot-controlled crazy pitch-wah sounds with a standard TRS expression pedal like an inexpensive m-audio or nektar controller. Anything more than 15-20k of resistance for the frequency control just takes you into slower and slower chopped/tremolo territory. And the 10k pot still allows for some of that in the toe up/CCW position and all of the pitch control as you turn the knob up/put the treadle down.
 
 I added a toggle to change the resistance on the frequency sweep - this allows for a low range and high range mode on the frequency. Since most expression pedals have 10k pots, I wanted to keep the frequency pot at 10k too so that the sweep matches whether you are using the knob or an exp pedal.
 

 


7 comments:

  1. I've never heard of this bypass before. I have a project that needs this very solution. But if I'm looking at this right, don't you need a second diode from gate to ground?

    http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/millenium/milckt3.gif

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    1. I just used the tagboard blog layout, which was posted about 10 years ago, I think - it is just a DPDT, a mosfet, a single diode, an LED and a CLR.

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    2. Wow, super nice mods.. would it be possible, for you or Chris to share this schematic ! Cheers

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    3. I actually do not have a schematic for this one. Anders drew one from a trace he did of one of the purple business card PCBs. All my mods were done from his drawing.

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  2. Just boxed one up and everything is working as expected. Built the original purple business card layout as well and the mods really kick it up a notch.
    Don't know if I messed something up or if it's the layout, but my potis are all working the wrong way. As it's all about noise it doesn't matter anyway. Justr wanted to mention it.
    The expression-input is really useful and makes this beast actually kind of playable. Choppy tremolo, squeaking ringmod-sounds or a totally messed up wah. It's all in there. Thanks alot! :)

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    1. I'm so stoked to hear that you dig the mods I came up with for this all ready bonkers circuit! As far as the pots working in reverse - I don't know what to tell you as I've built 3-4 of these for friends and the gain and volume get louder as you turn them clockwise, and the frequency pitch goes up when you turn it in that direction as well... I'm not worried about it if you aren't, tho.

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    2. Pretty sure I messed up the lug-numbering. But nothing to worry bout. :)

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