mybud
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I breadboarded this last September, according to my notes, but couldn't get it to work at the time. I built it from @bean's original 2016 schematic.
Futzed about with it yesterday and found it functional but squealing to beat the band. At least the level pot seemed to work but obviously unuseable as it stood. Last night I double-checked the components and found a 6k8 sneakily masquerading as a 68k MFR.
Corrected this and resumed double-checking this morning to find an off-by-one error which effectively disconnected one end of the vactrol (NSL-32 in this case) from opamp 1 (LF353 as called for). Fixed that. Finally, the output stage revealed that I'd inadvertently connected the 1uF output cap to the bias voltage. Backtracking with an audio probe revealed this particular problem. Replaced the output cap and voilà, it works.
My only standard of comparison is UA's plugin and it sounds more or less comparable. The analogue version I built adds a nice sheen to the sound and the limiting is evident (gain reduces as the pot's advanced, which one might expect). It has plenty of makeup gain available and does nice things to both guitar and bass.
Haven't decided whether or not to make a standalone or combo version (with some neutral-ish preamp, perhaps) or exactly the best spot for it in my signal chain, hence not housed yet. But I'm glad to have put last year's failed attempt to rest and to have a functional and very nice-sounding limiter at hand.
Thanks for reading as ever and wish you every success with your projects.
Futzed about with it yesterday and found it functional but squealing to beat the band. At least the level pot seemed to work but obviously unuseable as it stood. Last night I double-checked the components and found a 6k8 sneakily masquerading as a 68k MFR.
Corrected this and resumed double-checking this morning to find an off-by-one error which effectively disconnected one end of the vactrol (NSL-32 in this case) from opamp 1 (LF353 as called for). Fixed that. Finally, the output stage revealed that I'd inadvertently connected the 1uF output cap to the bias voltage. Backtracking with an audio probe revealed this particular problem. Replaced the output cap and voilà, it works.
My only standard of comparison is UA's plugin and it sounds more or less comparable. The analogue version I built adds a nice sheen to the sound and the limiting is evident (gain reduces as the pot's advanced, which one might expect). It has plenty of makeup gain available and does nice things to both guitar and bass.
Haven't decided whether or not to make a standalone or combo version (with some neutral-ish preamp, perhaps) or exactly the best spot for it in my signal chain, hence not housed yet. But I'm glad to have put last year's failed attempt to rest and to have a functional and very nice-sounding limiter at hand.
Thanks for reading as ever and wish you every success with your projects.