You can put those on top but it will be more of a blink show than a lighting spectacular!
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Better BASS Guitar FUZZ?
- Thread starter Euphoric Guitars
- Start date
Feral Feline
Well-known member
My Filigree Siberian Hamster's LEDs light up great, too bad I didn't put them on the outside of the pedal.
Eric, there are many factors that determine how much bass is perceived to get through a circuit. Remember I mentioned the 1n input cap for Orman's Booster and it sounds fine on bass.
If a circuit has a huge input cap and let lots of bass into the circuit, that doesn't mean the bass doesn't get killed elsewhere further downstream 10uF is 100 x bigger than 100nF (100nF=0.1uF). I think I've got my math right this time.
I can't think of a specific example at the moment, but some circuits will have seemingly good bass response, looking at the caps in the signal path, let's say 1uF, Fet followed by 1uF an op-amp and then suddenly there's a bottleneck of 47nF...
If you enlarge that 47nF to 1uF so it's like all the other caps in the signal path you might just send your sound into mudsville, or get unwanted harsh distortion (let's say it's NOT a distortion pedal, but modulation). You've upset the balance of the circuit. The 47n was used to control the amount of bass the next downstream component receives so that it doesn't oversaturate it, it's a bit of circuit or a component that cannot handle too much bass.
By manipulating the bass content at various points in the circuit, we can get a desirable sound that still has plenty of bass content. If you reduce bass somewhere, you can somewhat compensate later by boosting the bass and lowering the treble and mids = perceived bassy sounding pedal. Because you've reduced the mids and treble to emphasize the bass more, you'll now have to pump up the overall volume of the entire signal. Ahh what's that you hear now? HHHHSSSSSSSSS. With all that EQ monkeying and then boosting the overall output you've just boosted the noise floor of the pedal, too.
A common tactic to keep a low noise floor in some circuits is to boost the treble big time at the beginning of the circuit, do with the signal whatever is to be done, then REDUCE the treble before letting the signal out of the circuit into the wild. This bump and reduction helps keep the noise floor down.
Back to your Bigger Muff. As I mentioned before, the huge caps would lead you to believe the Bigger Muff is going to sound great on bass, but there are choke points for bass throughout the middle of the circuit. So just having huge in/out caps isn't going to give you bass. For a fun experiment, with the stock Bigger Muff circuit, swap out JUST the input and output 10u caps for the Green Russian's 100n. I bet it sounds like an icepick through the forehead. Those huge in/out caps are needed just to keep the pedal out of the dog zone.
Have you tried any of the mods I suggested on your Bigger Muff?
Especially those puny 47p caps. OUCH! For the love of Bass, Parallel some 470p on to the 47p!
However, that may have been what the designer of the pedal was going for, a certain flavour or texture of sound.
Another possibility is Mike Matthews got a deal on 10uF caps (or 47p) and had to figure out a way to use them up. Tweak the circuit until it's acceptable with the available components and then send it out to market...
Eric, there are many factors that determine how much bass is perceived to get through a circuit. Remember I mentioned the 1n input cap for Orman's Booster and it sounds fine on bass.
If a circuit has a huge input cap and let lots of bass into the circuit, that doesn't mean the bass doesn't get killed elsewhere further downstream 10uF is 100 x bigger than 100nF (100nF=0.1uF). I think I've got my math right this time.
I can't think of a specific example at the moment, but some circuits will have seemingly good bass response, looking at the caps in the signal path, let's say 1uF, Fet followed by 1uF an op-amp and then suddenly there's a bottleneck of 47nF...
If you enlarge that 47nF to 1uF so it's like all the other caps in the signal path you might just send your sound into mudsville, or get unwanted harsh distortion (let's say it's NOT a distortion pedal, but modulation). You've upset the balance of the circuit. The 47n was used to control the amount of bass the next downstream component receives so that it doesn't oversaturate it, it's a bit of circuit or a component that cannot handle too much bass.
By manipulating the bass content at various points in the circuit, we can get a desirable sound that still has plenty of bass content. If you reduce bass somewhere, you can somewhat compensate later by boosting the bass and lowering the treble and mids = perceived bassy sounding pedal. Because you've reduced the mids and treble to emphasize the bass more, you'll now have to pump up the overall volume of the entire signal. Ahh what's that you hear now? HHHHSSSSSSSSS. With all that EQ monkeying and then boosting the overall output you've just boosted the noise floor of the pedal, too.
A common tactic to keep a low noise floor in some circuits is to boost the treble big time at the beginning of the circuit, do with the signal whatever is to be done, then REDUCE the treble before letting the signal out of the circuit into the wild. This bump and reduction helps keep the noise floor down.
Back to your Bigger Muff. As I mentioned before, the huge caps would lead you to believe the Bigger Muff is going to sound great on bass, but there are choke points for bass throughout the middle of the circuit. So just having huge in/out caps isn't going to give you bass. For a fun experiment, with the stock Bigger Muff circuit, swap out JUST the input and output 10u caps for the Green Russian's 100n. I bet it sounds like an icepick through the forehead. Those huge in/out caps are needed just to keep the pedal out of the dog zone.
Have you tried any of the mods I suggested on your Bigger Muff?
Especially those puny 47p caps. OUCH! For the love of Bass, Parallel some 470p on to the 47p!
However, that may have been what the designer of the pedal was going for, a certain flavour or texture of sound.
Another possibility is Mike Matthews got a deal on 10uF caps (or 47p) and had to figure out a way to use them up. Tweak the circuit until it's acceptable with the available components and then send it out to market...
Euphoric Guitars
Member
What is the purpose of LEDs as part of the circuit if not to tell us the pedal is on or off when we hit the footswitch?
Euphoric Guitars
Member
I have not yet. I'm waiting for the parts to come in. Well I'm waiting to get the order to be approved with Tayda. For some reason I can't get the order to send on their website.
Really great info up there. "I bet it sounds like an icepick through the forehead." ouch.
Really great info up there. "I bet it sounds like an icepick through the forehead." ouch.
giovanni
Well-known member
LEDs are light emitting diodes. So they behave like diodes and can be used to clip the signal in dirt circuits, much like you would use a diode. The tonal difference depends on the voltage and construction of the LED. On top of that, the LEDs will light up when the voltage going through them exceeds the diode voltage, so they will flicker as you play harder.
Feral Feline
Well-known member
Eric, I found some more info about the Bigger Muff... https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=110776.0
Some guy named BuGG built one in the above linked thread...
Some guy named BuGG built one in the above linked thread...
Danbieranowski
Well-known member
The Two Sticks of Derm sounds really good on bass. Just sayin'.
Jump to :22 of this video to hear it.
Jump to :22 of this video to hear it.
Robert
Reverse Engineer
The Bigger Muff was a crazy prototype contraption that was used by Korn, Sepultura, and Vanilla Ice (yes, really).
It was basically a Big Muff with a +200VDC tube gain stage hacked in. It screamed, oscillated, motorboated, and caused all sorts of chaos.
If you don't know you want it, you probably don't want it.
The "Bigger Muffin" variation in the Muffin build docs lists the component values for the "Muff" portion of the Bigger Muff.... No tube stage.
It was basically a Big Muff with a +200VDC tube gain stage hacked in. It screamed, oscillated, motorboated, and caused all sorts of chaos.
If you don't know you want it, you probably don't want it.
The "Bigger Muffin" variation in the Muffin build docs lists the component values for the "Muff" portion of the Bigger Muff.... No tube stage.
Latepass but I’ve only just now been looking into this widow maker of a pedal attached to a piece of plywood… is that tube stage worth adding? Does it add anything that a clean boost before or after just the muff portion can’t?
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