mkstewartesq
Well-known member
Since I tend to be more of a “modulation guy“ than a connoisseur of things like different fuzzes and drives, I’d always had a soft spot in my heart for the sound of a gentle envelope filter. I previously built the Waddle Box (my Quackpot build report) but, after living with it a while, I just found it unsatisfying – it seemed a bit harsh and strident in the peaks no matter how I set it and, similarly, no matter how I set the sensitivity, the effect just seemed a bit unpredictable and hard to control.
So I went looking elsewhere and found the Lumitron, which is a vactrol-based recreation of the Mu-Tron III. (AionFX has a more complex, feature –rich version available under a different name but I chose to go with the Lumitron to avoid being overwhelmed by options).
The build: pretty straightforward, no real unusual parts except for the vactrols, which I decided to just pony up for rather than trying to roll my own using LDRs and LEDs, as that is an area in which my expertise is exceedingly low. This is also one of these projects where you need to make sure that you have a DPDT Type 2 on-on-on switch in your stash (or buy one). Edit to add: I wasn’t used to seeing a 2u2 film box capacitor being called for in a build either so I had to order that as well.
Everything fit together nicely although I’m still not a huge fan of the way the 3PDT breakout boards are used in AionFX projects. I’m also not a huge fan of soldering in the box, although ultimately I could have built the project without doing that, so that is on me. The component fit was tight and I will forever be haunted by that one slightly-melted film box cap on the board, which just jumped out in front of my soldering iron without warning, I swear.
Interesting thing (to me) about the sensitivity LED, as I first panicked and thought the build wasn’t working just by looking at it when I plugged it in. It’s not a rate LED that flashes constantly - instead, it only responds when the filter is reacting to your playing velocity. So, when you have the sweep of the filter set to go upward, it stays off except when you are actually hitting the strings (and the reverse when you have the sweep filter going downward – the light stays on constantly and only goes off in reaction to picking/input signal).
The sound: I’m glad I decided to not go with some more feature-rich version because it’s going to take me a while just to figure out what sounds I can get out of all of the various combinations of these knobs and switches. But I can already tell so far that I like this better than the Waddle Box/DOD - the transition across the filter due to velocity changes is much more smooth and you don’t have that “either – or” jump from the “muffled heel all the way down on the wah immediately to the ice-pick toe all the way down” that you get with the Waddle Box. It just seems much easier to control how the effect works by adjusting your picking velocity. And most importantly for me, at least so far, the highs are still relatively mellow and controlled – there’s still a good quack, but it’s not harsh, which made the Waddle Box not very pleasant for me to play.
I’ll also need to play around with the bias trimmer. The documentation really doesn’t say much about it other than “just find the sweet spot“, and I’m like “dude, I’ve barely played with envelope effects, I have no idea what the sweet spot is supposed to sound like“. I think it may come down to how much of a “filter” sound you want to start from as a default – i.e., from gentle to “let’s start in Frank Zappa territory”, as that is basically what sweeping the bias pot seems to affect.
The graphics : just the usual film free decal stuff. Some of the lower left corner actually lifted and flaked after the initial bake but I decided to leave it – removing a film free decal after the initial bake to redo it can be a complete bitch. And it’s even worse on a white powder-coated enclosure because no matter how well you remove it there will always remain a “ghost“ image of the original decal baked into the powder coat so, unless you lay your “try again“ second decal in exactly the same spot, it’s gonna look like you super-imposed two images onto the enclosure. So, since this is only for my personal use and not being given to someone else, I just took a “shit happens” attitude and moved on.
Mike
So I went looking elsewhere and found the Lumitron, which is a vactrol-based recreation of the Mu-Tron III. (AionFX has a more complex, feature –rich version available under a different name but I chose to go with the Lumitron to avoid being overwhelmed by options).
The build: pretty straightforward, no real unusual parts except for the vactrols, which I decided to just pony up for rather than trying to roll my own using LDRs and LEDs, as that is an area in which my expertise is exceedingly low. This is also one of these projects where you need to make sure that you have a DPDT Type 2 on-on-on switch in your stash (or buy one). Edit to add: I wasn’t used to seeing a 2u2 film box capacitor being called for in a build either so I had to order that as well.
Everything fit together nicely although I’m still not a huge fan of the way the 3PDT breakout boards are used in AionFX projects. I’m also not a huge fan of soldering in the box, although ultimately I could have built the project without doing that, so that is on me. The component fit was tight and I will forever be haunted by that one slightly-melted film box cap on the board, which just jumped out in front of my soldering iron without warning, I swear.
Interesting thing (to me) about the sensitivity LED, as I first panicked and thought the build wasn’t working just by looking at it when I plugged it in. It’s not a rate LED that flashes constantly - instead, it only responds when the filter is reacting to your playing velocity. So, when you have the sweep of the filter set to go upward, it stays off except when you are actually hitting the strings (and the reverse when you have the sweep filter going downward – the light stays on constantly and only goes off in reaction to picking/input signal).
The sound: I’m glad I decided to not go with some more feature-rich version because it’s going to take me a while just to figure out what sounds I can get out of all of the various combinations of these knobs and switches. But I can already tell so far that I like this better than the Waddle Box/DOD - the transition across the filter due to velocity changes is much more smooth and you don’t have that “either – or” jump from the “muffled heel all the way down on the wah immediately to the ice-pick toe all the way down” that you get with the Waddle Box. It just seems much easier to control how the effect works by adjusting your picking velocity. And most importantly for me, at least so far, the highs are still relatively mellow and controlled – there’s still a good quack, but it’s not harsh, which made the Waddle Box not very pleasant for me to play.
I’ll also need to play around with the bias trimmer. The documentation really doesn’t say much about it other than “just find the sweet spot“, and I’m like “dude, I’ve barely played with envelope effects, I have no idea what the sweet spot is supposed to sound like“. I think it may come down to how much of a “filter” sound you want to start from as a default – i.e., from gentle to “let’s start in Frank Zappa territory”, as that is basically what sweeping the bias pot seems to affect.
The graphics : just the usual film free decal stuff. Some of the lower left corner actually lifted and flaked after the initial bake but I decided to leave it – removing a film free decal after the initial bake to redo it can be a complete bitch. And it’s even worse on a white powder-coated enclosure because no matter how well you remove it there will always remain a “ghost“ image of the original decal baked into the powder coat so, unless you lay your “try again“ second decal in exactly the same spot, it’s gonna look like you super-imposed two images onto the enclosure. So, since this is only for my personal use and not being given to someone else, I just took a “shit happens” attitude and moved on.
Mike
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