Electrovibe

And the money shot. I got the knobs in from SmallBear today (and if you've been noticing a delay in shipping lately due to staffing and Covid, it's pretty much gone and service is very fast). This thing is sick.
 

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Thanks folks. This is a really special one for me in that it duplicates both the coolest parts, and the short comings of the original. I think it would be hard to do one without the other in terms of being legit.

I'm building the other board I got for a buddy of mine so I'll get a bit more detailed on this one. I need to bone up on the tech dissection from GEO to see if I'm missing anything.

Is this the be all end all Univibe? Maybe. But I'd bet no two vibes sound the same and with a half dozen under my belt none of them sound the same either. It's like building Fuzz Faces. This one doesn't cut corners or introduce much in terms of progress. It simply displays what the original was/is. I'll detail any differences on the second version. I'm interested to see how this pans out.
 
Here's the revised (new LED's) first one and the buddy-build. Fancy light shield and shielded cable don't seem to make any difference at all, nor does making sure the transistors are all in range of each other. For the record I found it easier to dial in the sound if there was some distance between the LDR's and the lamp. You can drive the lamp a little bit brighter and have a bit more range on the Bias trimmer.
 

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Excellent and thanks for the details on lamp ldr placement and stuff.
As I have never had the chance to play an original, what do you mean exactly with 'coolest parts and shortcomings of original'; would love to hear your take on that a bit more in detail. You mentioned noise being an issue?
 
I might diddle with this a bit. My assumption is that the unity or even slight volume drop matches the original to my recollection. It doesn't bother me but it would be cool to have a bit more umph. Vibes round out the top end a bit so there is a perceived level difference as well.
 
Bi-color would be slick. Let me know how the R4 mod works for you. I'd be concerned with clipping but then again that might add some cool character too. Looking forward to seeing what you do.
 
The design originally had a 2-color LED but there was no obvious indication of which color corresponded to which Speed control, so it was scrapped.

It'll be a little tricky to use the Speed breakout board. The lug you'll need to use is tied to another one, but it'd be fairly easy to wire it up without the breakout board.
 
Big Monk said:
Understood. Just out of curiosity, what was the trouble with how the indication worked out? Wouldn't you just assume a color for each speed control, i.e. Speed 1 = Red and Speed 2 = Blue?
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Sure, but it was just as easy to assume LED On = Speed 1, LED Off = Speed 2. It seemed more obvious that the LED near the Speed 1 knob being lit indicated that it was the active control.

Two colors looks cool, it just didn't offer any more clarity as to which mode was selected. If I had it to do over again I'd probably leave the bi-color LED pads in place and let the builder decide.

If you're going to use the breakout board you might consider just cutting the jumper trace, then you can solder all of the lugs and add your jumper wire.
 
cooder said:
Excellent and thanks for the details on lamp ldr placement and stuff.
As I have never had the chance to play an original, what do you mean exactly with 'coolest parts and shortcomings of original'; would love to hear your take on that a bit more in detail. You mentioned noise being an issue?
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Thanks Cooder. The original, besides being the size of a loaf of bread, had a slight drop in volume. I think because it had a tendancy to drop a tiny bit off the top and the bottom frequencies it was likely more of a perceived volume loss. The pedal was a bit hissy, although hardly a deal breaker. I always liked it early in the signal chain so that it became a bit more evil sounding than "effect-y". The coolest part was that the LFO was kinda lumpy in a way that I haven't heard many clones capture.

That's not to say that the more modern versions aren't cool, just in a different way. I've enjoyed Bean's Harbinger series as well as a few commercially available pedals.

After doing a bit of reading on the originals I realized that mine was the first gen Unicord version. I always thought it was Univox. I guess they were only made for a short time before Shin-Ei started making them.
 
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