Warden (Delegate Boneyard Edition) strange behavior on bass

[nate433]

I build a warden for a friend and he's having some weird issues. It seems to work fine if he's playing regularly, but times where there's a lot of space in between notes or after taking a break he gets this issue:

"If I stop playing for a bit while the pedal is on, the initial attack of the first note I play is loud and often distorted. Then then compression then kicks in and everything sounds normal. This is with the attack at about 10-11, ratio at 11-12, release at 2, level at 2, tone at 2-3, sustain at 2-3, though I believe I've gotten the same thing with other settings."

He's playing it on bass if that makes a difference. I've inspected all the parts and i didn't use the wrong value anywhere. None of the capacitors look visually damaged or swollen, but replacing those was my next thought. Verified the LDR is hitting the correct range in light and dark.

I've looked through the other threads and can't find one with a similar issue. Any ideas? My first thought was to replace a few of the capacitors in case one of them is like storing too much charge or something like that...Mostly a shot in the dark though just going off of basic knowledge that capacitors build up and release idk

Thank you!

 

[BuddytheReow]

I specifically built this for my bass and had the exact same issue. It was the boneyard version. The first note is loud and distorted, but just for a hot second. I haven't tried it on guitar. Fooling around with the knobs fixed it. Or not. Either way, I don't have that issue anymore and didn't need to resolder anything. I also didn't know what half the knobs did at the time. Try adjusting the attack and ratio knobs a bit. Compressors always elude me since they're one of those "is it on?" type of effects. From what I've heard from the guys herel, this pedal is more subtle than other compressors.

 

[Fama]

If the pedal is working correctly, it sounds like the attack lets the transient of the first note through, while the release and sustain controls are high enough that the compressor doesn't fully reset with any following note.


(just in case you're not familiar with what a bass note waveform looks, this is for a double bass but a normal bass should be about similar, the spiky part is the transient - with a finger the transient will be a bit softer compared to the rest of the note, and with a pick it will be spikier)

I would either a.) decrease attack, so the transient of the first note is also compressed - since the compressor doesn't fully reset when playing normally, the attack setting shouldn't affect those notes too much, so it mostly just affects the first note.

Alternatively I would try lowering the level so that the transient of the first note is not loud and distorted, and then decreasing the ratio so that the compressed parts are a bit louder in return.

That is if the pedal doesn't have any build issues, but tbh I think the potential explanation would fit quite well, so I would definitely try this first.

Edit: And obviously I don't know if when you turn the "Attack" control up, if that means the attack is longer or shorter, or what exactly it means, for example. So whether you need to turn the pot left or right, I can't know for sure.

 

[mjh36]

I was going to ask about this exact topic. I'm using it just on guitar so far. But I have the same experience. If I don't play for a few seconds the next initial attack distorts somewhat. Then play resumes as normal. Pretty sure this is even with a full compression setting for fast attack, slow release, and no clean blend/ratio.

I had the same problem as far as settings and what does what. Here's the description I got from EQD and after fiddling it seems to match what the pedal does. Basically most compression is Attack 0, Ratio 10, Release 10.

1. Tone: This pedal was designed to slightly color your tone, and the coloration can be dialed-in to your taste. Counterclockwise is treble cut, clockwise is treble boost. The tone is nearly flat around 11 o’clock.
2. Attack: This controls how quickly the compressor reacts and starts leveling the signal. All the way counterclockwise is a fast, nearly immediate reaction. Turning the attack clockwise slows the reaction time.
3. Release: This controls how long it takes the signal to raise back up to the level determined by the Sustain and Ratio settings. All the way counterclockwise is a fast release and the release time slows as you turn it clockwise.
4. Level: This controls the overall output and is affected by the Sustain and Ratio settings. There is no specific unity setting; adjust to taste when you find your perfect compression setting.
5. Ratio: This determines how much the gain reduction affects the signal. All the way up is full compression and the compression is reduced as you turn this counterclockwise which allows more of the boosted, less-compressed signal to come through. There are no defined ratios here.
6. Sustain: This is the heart of The Warden. It controls how hot the signal is, which changes the dynamics of the compression. The Warden is a feedback-style compressor; the hotter the signal, the more active the compression. Very little Sustain= very little compression, less active Attack and Release and a cooler signal. Max Sustain= heavy compression, longer sustain, hotter signal and more lively Attack and Release.

 

[psicobam]

Hi everyone!

I'm coming back to this because I got the same problem on my build and I didn't find any solution in any post.

Like @mjh36, even when I set the atack to the shorter setting, I get the first note very loud that's why I don't think I can avoid this problem finding the correct setting for every pot.

Also, I can see that when I'm not playing but with the pedal on, the signal noise starts getting louder and louder, and right after playing something, the noise is gone and few seconds later, it starts to increase again. It seems like is compressing more and more when there is no signal coming from the guitar and when the signal hits, you have this loud note and after that everything starts to work as usual.

So, did you find a permanent solution for that?

Can be a slow response from the LED or the LDR the cause of this issue?

Maybe @Chuck D. Bones can give us some light to solve the problem

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

[junker]

The problem is that the release-time in that pedal does not work as it should. I never got this problem solved:

Delegate (The Warden) Compressor too slow release

Hello, Anyone else experienced very slow release-times in this compressor? Seems to be around 5 seconds in the CCW-position... (propably should be more in the milliseconds-range so its really off by quite a bit) and closer to 10 sec in the CW position. Photoresistor distance from the LED seems...

forum.pedalpcb.com

Seen so many posts about this that maybe its possible that this problem is in every build, but not everybody knows how a compressor *should* work?

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

You need to have an LDR that is fast and has a huge resistance range for best performance.

Too much light from the LED will cause the LDR to react slowly to the note decay. DO NOT use a super-bright LED. DO NOT put the LDR right up against the LED.

This DID NOT work well. White LED was too bright and LDR was too close.



This DOES work well. The green LED is not nearly as bright as the white LED above and the LDR is 4 or 5 mm away from the LED.



Does turning down the Volume knob your bass help? Its possible that your bass's output is too high for this pedal.

Start with these knob settings:
SUSTAIN = 0
RATIO = 10
ATTACK = 10
RELEASE = 0
TONE = 5
LEVEL = 3

If you can't get a good sound with these settings, something is wrong with the build. Gradually increase the SUSTAIN and see if you get compression. Also take notice of whether the note decay is smooth.

 

[fontoponto]

You could also put s piece of paper between the LED and the LDR. Xenotron hack

 

[junker]

I just tested this with a normal green LED installed and still could not get it to work as it should. You can test the behaviuor just by looking at the LED; starting from silence and if you play, say, 2 notes per second repeatedly, you can see the LED gets normal brightness only on the very first note, after that it never does "recover" even on the fastest release-setting (LED only barely lights up). Meaning that the release-time is greatly too slow. Then you can test playing like one note every 5 seconds and then you can see the LED getting full brightness on every beginning of a note (and see how slowly it dims out between the notes).

Typical SLOW release time in a compressor would be for example 100 milliseconds, here we have it being multiple seconds - on the fastest setting.

To my understanding just that visible behaviuor of the LED tells that at least the LDR is not the root of the problem - and propably also not the LED (because ultra bright clear white vs. standard green LED did not make that big of a difference) , but something else that controls the timing?

 

[jimilee]

Have I already asked if you’re testing it in the dark?

 

[junker]

Yes. And the amount of ambient light would not affect the LED behaviour, wouldn´t it?

Also I think its possible that LDR works correctly, because after silence compressor catches the transient of the first note about right and compression also fades (but too slowly). It´s just that the timing is wrong.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

It would affect the LED because any light landing on the LDR lowers the gain, which lowers the signal level to the detector, which lowers the LED current. When you disturb one thing in a feedback loop, it usually disturbs everything else in the loop.

The only way to properly test an optical compressor is with the LDR shielded from all stray light. Even a tiny amount of light will throw everything off.

 

[junker]

btw, I found good decription of the problem from another forum, someone describes it quite well here:

"
I'm having difficulty finding what's wrong with mine, please could anyone help?
Tone works OK. Ratio works OK. I can see that the LED in my shrink-tube vactrol lights up with my playing, but the problem is it ramps back down suuuper slowly. Like after the first compression squish, I have to not play anything for 3 full seconds for the LED to dim back down and for the squish to "recharge" if you see what I mean. The Release pot changes this slightly but not nearly enough. Cheers in advance to anyone who can help!!"

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

That behavior could be normal, depending on ALL of the knob settings, input level, etc.