GeODe (OD pedal) and Fuzz Architect

[laurie]

Nothing in concrete yet...

Thinking the next HighGainSystems pedal might be the "GeODe". A Germanium overdrive with blendable wet/dry.

What do you think? (see mock-up of the GeODe below)

[laurie]

I also have another run of Fuzz Architect pedals coming:
- some Germanium/Silicon like the last batch
- some all Germanium with the "right" gains
- some super high gain Germanium/Silicon
- some super low gain all Germanium

[Pepe]

Isn't a single dry/wet knob sufficient if the level knob can also increase the clean volume? The dry blend signal cannot be the pure true bypass signal, right?

[laurie]

Isn't a single dry/wet knob sufficient if the level knob can also increase the clean volume? The dry blend signal cannot be the pure true bypass signal, right?

Hmmm... You could have a "blend" knob plus an output "level" knob (2 knobs).

Or you could have a "wet" knob and a "dry" knob - still 2 knobs, but gives more fine control and has the major advantage of not requiring a dual potentiometer - a dual potentiometer is required to implement "blend" properly and they are expensive and much harder to mount.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the dry blend signal cannot be the pure true bypass signal"?

[Pepe]

With that I wanted to say that the true bypass cannot be merged with the overdrive sound, or am I wrong? At least not without impedance problems.

[laurie]

With that I wanted to say that the true bypass cannot be merged with the overdrive sound, or am I wrong? At least not without impedance problems.

Correct. The "true bypass" signal can not be merged with the effected signal. When the pedal is "on" then the true bypass signal is blocked, by definition. A copy of the input signal is merged, which is essentially the same signal as the true bypass signal.

What I'm looking for is an OD pedal that can be used in many different places...

Something like this. And I think I'm going to drop the "architect" naming for this pedal... I can't find where the name "geode" has been used for a pedal anywhere else (if you are unfamiliar with geodes it's worth a google search).
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GeODe1.jpg (34.89 KiB) Viewed 10401 times

[sclitheroe]

How about an OD where instead of blend, it's an EQ stage that routes the part of the signal you are cutting (and normally dumping to ground, I guess) around the distortion stage and has it rejoin the circuit at the recovery/final output stage?

So if you wanted a treble boost, you'd increase the treble control, forcing the high end through the dirt stage, and drop the bass control, shunting it around the dirt to rejoin the dirty higher frequencies at the output stage. Or you could do the reverse, to give a dirty bottom end without a lot of high end fizz and higher frequency harmonics.

Or taken further, the front end EQ circuit could split the signal into two seperate gain channels, so you could send a varying amount of the upper and lower frequency spectrum through one level of gain, and the middle section of the spectrum through a different gain stage.

No idea if it would sound good.

Feel free to mock me Just random thoughts on a lunch hour.

I guess I just described a multi-band distortion, some interesting discussion of them here: https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/ ... c=107155.0

[laurie]

How about an OD where instead of blend, it's an EQ stage that routes the part of the signal you are cutting (and normally dumping to ground, I guess) around the distortion stage and has it rejoin the circuit at the recovery/final output stage?

So if you wanted a treble boost, you'd increase the treble control, forcing the high end through the dirt stage, and drop the bass control, shunting it around the dirt to rejoin the dirty higher frequencies at the output stage. Or you could do the reverse, to give a dirty bottom end without a lot of high end fizz and higher frequency harmonics.

Or taken further, the front end EQ circuit could split the signal into two seperate gain channels, so you could send a varying amount of the upper and lower frequency spectrum through one level of gain, and the middle section of the spectrum through a different gain stage.

No idea if it would sound good.

Feel free to mock me Just random thoughts on a lunch hour.

I guess I just described a multi-band distortion, some interesting discussion of them here: https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/ ... c=107155.0

No mocking required!

What you describe is doable. But much more complex than what I had in mind. It would feel like a bit of a "tour de force" for me... my designs tend to be straightforward - my philosophy has always been that the more you process the signal the less tone and feel emerges out the other side...

With the design as currently envisaged the dry signal merges with the effected signal after the EQ, so if you have a lot of treble boost in the effected signal you can merge the full-range dry signal with it to beef it back up. And vice-versa. Not as sophisticated as what you described, but a much simpler design.

What I could do is put a "one knob tone control" on the dry signal (technically called a "tilt" tone control)... that would give you full EQ on the effected signal and some control over the dry signal... thinking on it some more, this should work, remain simple, and give close to what you describe...
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GeODe V1B.jpg (39.79 KiB) Viewed 10354 times

[Pepe]

This is getting interesting again ...

[laurie]

Yeah! I like these discussions. They lead to good things...

FYI - "tilt EQ" is a real EQ, that will give real control over the dry signal:
- With the knob centered the EQ will be flat
- Turning the knob counter-clockwise cuts the treble and increases the bass by an equal amount
- Turning the knob clockwise cuts the bass and increases the treble by an equal amount

Tilt EQ is rarely used as a "normal tone control", but for this pedal I think it will be perfect for shaping the dry signal...