Meatball Madness!

[Feral Feline]

Let's talk about that Lovetone circuit so many adore, and some revile —

Whether you have an OG Lovetone Meatball, McMeat, Meaty Balls, MeatSphere, Rissole, Spectron, an other flesh&muscle orb, or just love the circuit...

For all you Meatball afficionados — who's using the expression jacks?
Which expression-jack do you use more, the INTENSITY or the DECAY?
Regardless of which you use more, which expression jack do you think is more useful to have (if only one)?
IF you were to give up one of the expression jacks, which one?

I've got the Aion Spectron board, I was thinking of having one expression jack and a toggle to switch between INTENSITY and DECAY.
That would free up a topjack-space for moving the EXTERNAL TRIGGER jack from the side up to the top.


After years of random research I've come across people who've added

an "external" LFO;​

longer decay mod;​

light-jack (LDR expression);​

FX-loop buffer;​

buffered bypass so whatever is in the FX loop can be used even with the Meatball's filter "OFF";​

phase inversion for LP and HP modes so the BLEND works no matter what;​

modded COLOUR range;​

compensated frequency response to better balance UP/DOWN modes;​

independent outs for dry and the three filter options;​

Moog mod, of course;​

boost...​

and...​

What else y'all got?


Oh, and about those expression jacks... Anyone?!


Let it rain...

 

[Feral Feline]

1590XX Thread 'Aionfx spectron/meatball'

Aug 8, 2025

Verified. Leds are for 3mm no bezel.

https://drill.taydakits.com/box-designs/new?public_key=RGlsTEVJbXQyNEtDWDE2VCtJK051UT09Cg==

• Audandash
• Replies: 0
• Forum: Tayda Electronics Drill Templates

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Thread 'Aion Spectron(Lovetone Meatball)'

Jul 4, 2024

This one was kind of fun and kind of annoying. I mostly did it because it looked like a crazy build, I don't see myself using it very often, maybe for weird song intros, or trying to pretend I can play like Zappa(I can't). I've seen complaints about the build docs in other build reports, mostly drill dimensions being off and things like that, so I used @flemming 's Tayda drill file here and it worked perfectly. I also used @fydo 's Illustrator template which was also perfect. Many thanks to both users for sharing the resources, definitely made things easier on my...

• pingpongcomputer
• Replies: 12
• Forum: Build Reports

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Thread 'Meatballs are the best pizza topping. Fight me! (Aion Lovetone Meatball)'

May 16, 2024

Here is the 2nd of my four planned Lovetone builds. I’m not entirely happy with how the jack situation went… the jacks I normally use for input and output would not fit, the expression and loop jacks needed to be turned on their side… I accidentally drilled the trigger jack in wrong spot (thank god for Bondo)… my wiring ended up being messier than I like… all in all it was kind of like putting a ship model in a bottle.

That all said, it worked straight away and sounds great, the exterior looks good to me, and I'm never going to open it again anyway haha.


...

• Hal Harvey
• Replies: 2
• Forum: Build Reports

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DEMO Thread 'Aion's Redshift and Spectron (EHX Small Stone and Lovetone Meatball)'

Feb 19, 2024

I built these effects sometime ago, in 2021.

Hopefully, they could be some interesting examples about what is possible to do when a pedal builder has "no artwork skills".

The idea for the art design came to me while i was shopping at the local grocery store. I saw two big packs of rice, one with an elephant, one with a dragon printed on the plastic packaging.

I thought it would be interesting to try and put these on an enclosure, so i bought both packs, and put all the rice in some other empty boxes.

After building the redshift, i painted the enclosure with a full white acrylic paint...

• eh là bas ma
• Replies: 8
• Forum: Build Reports

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Thread '[AionFX Spectron] Meatball Mountain'

Sep 26, 2022

Hello fellow builders!
This is one I've wanted to build for quite a while. It's often ranked near or at the top of lists of the best envelope filters. I had a bunch of obstacles during the build but it all worked out fine - and maybe have an idea for a useful mod!

Here it is:






So, why the weird name? When I showed my wife a picture of the original Meatball, she thought the white envelope graphic on it looked like a stylized mountain. Since then I've had the name "Meatball Mountain" stuck in my head, so I decided to roll with it. This enclosure was among the...

• fydo
• Replies: 13
• Forum: Build Reports

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https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/behringer-serving-up-meatballs.27838/#post-369302

 

[Feral Feline]

Nobody is using the expression jacks on their Meatballs?

 

[jcpst]

I’ll report back later. I keep forgetting to add the few parts I need to my shopping list. I’m definitely a user/abuser of expression jacks.

 

[RyanGLopez]

I’ll report back later. I keep forgetting to add the few parts I need to my shopping list. I’m definitely a user/abuser of expression jacks.
View attachment 112157 geometry dash scratch

Haha, the expressive jacks really need to be working at full capacity in setups like this. Thank you!

 

[fydo]

I'm ashamed to admit, I've actually never used the expression jacks on mine. That's more to do with a lack of an expression pedal though!

At the risk of derailing this thread, do you have any recommendations?

 

[Feral Feline]

From what I've read:

MISSION ENGINEERING, pricey but you get what you pay for.

Moog — available used only, I think, now.

Ernie Ball with the Zeppelin Labs mod

DIY convert-a-Crybaby

Boss are pretty good, whether the cheaper plastic ones (EV-5) or the metal FV-500H and EV-30... I'd get the EV-30, 'cause it's a little more compact.


From Experience:
NOT Yamaha. Don't ask.

 

[PauloB]

Sorry, I'm late to this thread; also I feel a bit of a fraud because I haven't built a Meatball clone - I just own the Behringer version (please don't hurt me!). However, I do have some thoughts on the questions raised here, so I thought I'd chip in.

So, judging purely on the Behringer version, the Meatball makes great sounds, but there are definitely things about the way it operates that are very quirky (to put it kindly) and which I would try to address if I was building one.

1. The sensitivity (at least on mine) is a bit low, even when set to max. I know the Aion FX version adds an internal preset to tweak this.
   
   
2. The dry/wet blend control acts quite oddly as the dry and wet signals are out of phase. This was touted as a 'feature' in the original Meatball manual, but it's a bit peculiar! MarcoMike addressed this by adding an inverting buffer into the wet signal path, as described in this forum post.
   
   
3. The effect return socket has some behaviour that may be found to be useful, or unexpected and annoying, depending on your needs. This is described (along with a mod to fix it) in the build document for the Aion FX version.
   
   
4. Re the expression pedal inputs: the question was asked: which of the two is more useful if you were only going to include one - the answer to this is undoubtedly Pedal2 ('Intensity') - ie the filter frequency. I'm not sure if I would ever want to control the decay setting with an expression pedal.
   
   Having said that, the way the Pedal2 socket works is not ideal. It simply connects in parallel across the Intensity control, which is a 1KB pot wired as a variable resistor. So any value of expression pedal pot is always going to lose you a bit of filter sweep range at the low frequency end. Also any expression pedal with fripperies such as a minimum-limit knob (like my Boss EV30) will behave weirdly. (For what it's worth, I found that a C20K pot gave the widest and smoothest response - good luck finding that expression pedal!)
   
   In the same thread I linked above, MarcoMike describes a mod he did to add a more satisfactory expression pedal socket.

Hope some of this may be mildly useful rather than just a pointless ramble!