okstateblues
Active member
Has anybody built the mammal and felt it lacked low end? Is there any way to increase the bass in this circuit?
Mammal bass response
- Thread starter okstateblues
- Start date
The bass knob on that one targets low mids rather than full lows. RC filter calculation on R4 and C5 (when bass knob is maxed) shows it’s still cutting frequencies below 412hz.
Increasing C5 would help, 2.2uF gets you down to 88Hz which is most of a guitars range, could go 4.7u just to be sure
Increasing C5 would help, 2.2uF gets you down to 88Hz which is most of a guitars range, could go 4.7u just to be sure
Actually one of the reasons I always liked the Mammal was because of it's ample but tight low end. It worked well with my gear. Now I have found others which do it a bit better but still, I haven't found it lacking in the sound, but I do in the amount of punchiness in that low end.
Phi1's advice is right, but I would hesitate to go much lower than 1µF because from experience it just gets boomy and lacking in definition much below that - although with your gear it may be ok.
One pedal I built recently which really does have a tight, punchy low-end is the XB-BB boost. With Chuck's help I swapped R16 from 4K7 to 1K to extend the bass range a bit and it helped reduce the "boxiness" of the sound and really helped the punchiness of the low end. Using four clipping diodes rather than just the two helped by making it less compressed and more like the Mammal - In fact I used the 2x 1N4001 and 2x 1N4148 setup of the Mammal and it sounds great.
Phi1's advice is right, but I would hesitate to go much lower than 1µF because from experience it just gets boomy and lacking in definition much below that - although with your gear it may be ok.
One pedal I built recently which really does have a tight, punchy low-end is the XB-BB boost. With Chuck's help I swapped R16 from 4K7 to 1K to extend the bass range a bit and it helped reduce the "boxiness" of the sound and really helped the punchiness of the low end. Using four clipping diodes rather than just the two helped by making it less compressed and more like the Mammal - In fact I used the 2x 1N4001 and 2x 1N4148 setup of the Mammal and it sounds great.
Chuck D. Bones
Circuit Wizard
I agree with Hamish, it's a fine line between enough bass and too much bass.
