I did some biasing math thanks to a recent DIY Guitar Pedals video. If you were to take the Ringer section out of the Life Pedal, because of the voltage divider values being used at Q1 you're only getting about 0.82V at the base, then the way that's biased it's only sending a small current of 88uA, but amplifying it to hit the PNP base with 7.2V. On the original Ringer/Tentacle circuit those figures look more like 2.0V at Q1base and a much larger current of 218uA only amplified to 5V at Q2base. I feel like the signal was already clipping a bit coming out of Q2 using the Life Pedal values - then again I'm using a lower HFE PNP (2306) than the specified 5807, so that might have something to do with it.
One of the reasons I was trying to use the Life Pedal values was because I don't have any 160K's on hand (R2 of the voltage divider in the Ringer/Tentacle) so I did some math with what I had on hand. Settled on 470K for R1 and 100K for R2 to get 1.914V at the base of Q1 (realistically it measures a little over 1.5V). I'm also using a 2N3904 for Q1 but I may try a 5088/89 to see if I like that better. Biased that to give me 4.5-5V at the Collector/Q2 Base. Still very dirty sounding. Swapped out the values in the rectifier part of the circuit for the lower value resistors from the Ringer - left in the 100nF caps. Tried a few different matching diode pairs after the low Vf Ge's - 1N5817 was a little better. 1N4148's measuring 0.603 (about twice the Ge's I have) sound best. Definitely getting more sustain and less dirt. It's subtle, but when you're holding a chord you notice. I also have nothing better to do right now!
For the blend part of the circuit I notice the FET buffer was cutting some low end. The 1M/100nF R-C filter has a corner freq of only 1.6Hz, so that's not the culprit. I looked up the original Buff n' Blend circuit that uses an MPF102 like I have (when you see it next to the Parentheses schematic you'll see it). That has a 1M from rails biasing the Gate that the Life Pedal octave section doesn't have, so I put that in - got my low end back. It also felt a little quieter than when bypassed. The Life Pedal is biasing the FET's Source at 10k, so I swapped that for the original value of 3.3K. The result, I get my low end back and unison volume. The blend circuit turned all the way clean actually sounds like my clean sound. The octave of the Life Pedal wasn't intended to be used on it's own, so these changes were likely on purpose on EQD's part. Since the Squidward PCB is so small I'll put the Buff N Blend on it's own little vero daughter board, and I should be able to fit it all into a 1590A.
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