p_wats
Well-known member
I built a few of these old Roboto boards years ago now. I always liked the idea of the pedal, but never really used it much. Part of that is possibly just how unwieldy this can be in terms of noise, etc. while also sounding pretty dull in terms of tone.
I read that changing/removing the 470pf cap can open up the treble, but it also makes it much noisier.
After a few days of beating my head against a wall with this and asking around (everyone seems to agree DBA pedals can be a bit janky and the HT8950 chip in general isn't the greatest) I decided to look up simple noise gates instead. Turns out there's a really tiny one that seems to do the job!
I found this circuit with a few layout options: http://guitar-fx-layouts.42897.x6.nabble.com/1-Knob-Noise-Gate-td16440.html
After breadboarding it I'm not sure that it SHOULD work as well as it does and seems a bit temperamental (I went with 2n3904s instead of BC109s. YMMV). It doesn't work super well on its own and seems to need a strong signal, so I didn't make it switchable. Thankfully the Robot has more than enough gain on tap and the two work well together! The trimmer makes more sense to me than a pot too, as it is more of a "set and forget control".
This also let me experiment more with the 470pf---as you can see below the socket is completely empty right now, as that is full gnarly treble.
Will this make me use this pedal more? Probably not, but at least I can say I went the extra mile before velcro-ing it back to the wall. Ha.
(The gutshot makes it seem like the noise gate is perilously close to the switch/circuit board, but I can assure you there is foam beneath it and nothing is touching!)
I read that changing/removing the 470pf cap can open up the treble, but it also makes it much noisier.
After a few days of beating my head against a wall with this and asking around (everyone seems to agree DBA pedals can be a bit janky and the HT8950 chip in general isn't the greatest) I decided to look up simple noise gates instead. Turns out there's a really tiny one that seems to do the job!
I found this circuit with a few layout options: http://guitar-fx-layouts.42897.x6.nabble.com/1-Knob-Noise-Gate-td16440.html
After breadboarding it I'm not sure that it SHOULD work as well as it does and seems a bit temperamental (I went with 2n3904s instead of BC109s. YMMV). It doesn't work super well on its own and seems to need a strong signal, so I didn't make it switchable. Thankfully the Robot has more than enough gain on tap and the two work well together! The trimmer makes more sense to me than a pot too, as it is more of a "set and forget control".
This also let me experiment more with the 470pf---as you can see below the socket is completely empty right now, as that is full gnarly treble.
Will this make me use this pedal more? Probably not, but at least I can say I went the extra mile before velcro-ing it back to the wall. Ha.
(The gutshot makes it seem like the noise gate is perilously close to the switch/circuit board, but I can assure you there is foam beneath it and nothing is touching!)
