DGWVI
Well-known member
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A nifty Dynamic envelope Filter designed by Boss in the 80s. I kinda went into this blind - I've never played an original, and don't remember ever watching any demos. But, I'm glad I took the chance, as this one surprised me.
Stock, it's pretty damned nice. Well thought out, simple controls and modes. My favorite part of this design is how they handled the up/down sweep- a lot of filters that offer a direction mode require quite a bit of tweaking between the two, but this one really doesn't. The response between the two is incredibly well balanced, and is what I focused my mod on.
All values are left stock, but I skipped the Manual mode and Expression inputs in lieu of a Direction footswitch. For this, I used a 4pdt with one pole handling the direction, one swapping out the Cutoff Frequency, one engaging a Decay timing resistor and toggle switch, and the last as an LED indicator for each direction.
For the decay time, I opted for a toggle that adds a resistor in parallel with C16- 68k for the Down Sweep, and 33k for the Up Sweep. I chose this over a pot for simplicity- there was a bit too much interplay with the Decay, Cutoff, and Sens pots and it convoluted things. The switches allow for a drastic change in response while avoiding being fiddly in regard to the Cutoff and Sens. Stock, it's got a nice, smooth sweep with almost no gurgling, the resistors bring that down to quick stabs
The only other thing I added was a switched jack to input a Trigger signal. This is inserted between the second stage and the negative leg of C11
I really can't overstate how fond of this circuit I am. Even without the breakout mods, I was wanting to put this on my board immediately upon testing. It's ridiculously smooth but present and not as overbearing as something like the Agent 00Funk, and it has some of the best picking response I've ever played.
I really have to give Boss kudos for the design, and I'm kinda perplexed it hasn't been brought back. Highly recommended for anyone that loves filters, especially LPFs.
The VCA chip is an obsolete Mitsubishi deal, but I think it's absolutely worth hunting down for this. Luckily, Lectric offers the option of including a tested sample with the boards
Stock, it's pretty damned nice. Well thought out, simple controls and modes. My favorite part of this design is how they handled the up/down sweep- a lot of filters that offer a direction mode require quite a bit of tweaking between the two, but this one really doesn't. The response between the two is incredibly well balanced, and is what I focused my mod on.
All values are left stock, but I skipped the Manual mode and Expression inputs in lieu of a Direction footswitch. For this, I used a 4pdt with one pole handling the direction, one swapping out the Cutoff Frequency, one engaging a Decay timing resistor and toggle switch, and the last as an LED indicator for each direction.
For the decay time, I opted for a toggle that adds a resistor in parallel with C16- 68k for the Down Sweep, and 33k for the Up Sweep. I chose this over a pot for simplicity- there was a bit too much interplay with the Decay, Cutoff, and Sens pots and it convoluted things. The switches allow for a drastic change in response while avoiding being fiddly in regard to the Cutoff and Sens. Stock, it's got a nice, smooth sweep with almost no gurgling, the resistors bring that down to quick stabs
The only other thing I added was a switched jack to input a Trigger signal. This is inserted between the second stage and the negative leg of C11
I really can't overstate how fond of this circuit I am. Even without the breakout mods, I was wanting to put this on my board immediately upon testing. It's ridiculously smooth but present and not as overbearing as something like the Agent 00Funk, and it has some of the best picking response I've ever played.
I really have to give Boss kudos for the design, and I'm kinda perplexed it hasn't been brought back. Highly recommended for anyone that loves filters, especially LPFs.
The VCA chip is an obsolete Mitsubishi deal, but I think it's absolutely worth hunting down for this. Luckily, Lectric offers the option of including a tested sample with the boards
