Slow Loris needs love

[rpack78]

Finished the Slow Loris a couple weeks ago and it sounds pretty good except for a couple issues:

1.  With the Cut knob fully clockwise, I wish it had more highs.  With it even in the 12 o'clock position it's practically unusable because it sounds too muddy and bassy.
2.  The sweep knob doesn't seem to make any audible difference in tone.
3.  The volume could be a tad louder.

I read on the build document that leaving out R10 could solve my volume problem.  Going to try that.  And I also read that increasing C8 will bring the frequencies lower in the spectrum, so I'm assuming decreasing it will bring it up into the higher spectrum.  Does that sound like the fix I need for my tone problem?  Perhaps doing both of those things will magically fix my sweep knob.

Any advise will be appreciated.

[thesmokingman]

the sweep knob is going to affect both the amount of gain available and the overall tone if it is wired correctly. its a noticeable change. definitely make sure that is working and even give jumpering that pot a chance to see if it makes a difference.

[rpack78]

Ok, I'll try that.  Thanks for the reply.

[rpack78]

It was a simple fix.  The Sweep pot was shorting against the gain pot, but only when the enclosure screws were tightened down.  Put some electrical tape between them and my issues disappeared.

[JackSkellington]

You could get a less wide range of the cut knob changing the value of: R7, C8, C12 and the pot itself.
The pot should be a 50k, R7 from 1,5k to 2,2k, C8 from 3,3nF to 4,7nF, and maybe even C12 an higher value. I didn't remember well this changing, I'm building a Rat clone, and I didn't try these mod for the moment.
You could try put some sockets and test around it.

Or, if you want simply move the range in lower frequency, change the C12 from 22nF to 47nF. I tried it, and seems work.

Let us to know.

[rpack78]

I'd actually like to do the opposite. I want more higher frequencies.  Most of the rotation of the Cut pot is unusable because it's so muddy.  I want to brighten it up a bit.

[JackSkellington]

1.  With the Cut knob fully clockwise, I wish it had more highs.  With it even in the 12 o'clock position it's practically unusable because it sounds too muddy and bassy.

Oops! Sorry, I've read wrong .
Try to reduce some those caps.

[thesmokingman]

This is a two-fold problem.
The first problem is the sweep knob, which unless left at 0 resistance is going to lower the gain and darken the tone in a way that isn't recoverable by the tone pot. think about it like this, once you remove something you can't put it back in later and this control comes well before the tone control.
the second problem is the filter control is more of a "cut control" than anything and changing its position just alters the notch frequency of a low pass filter. you can broaden or narrow its range of frequencies or shift the limits both top and bottom but you can't really change how it works without replacing it. The larger problem you're going to see is that if you shift the control to cover more upper frequencies, the high end of the pot lets a lot of unwanted frequencies in and the tone gets pretty strident and noisy and you'll end up with a bottom end of the pot where you just don't have much if any bass content.

[High Lord]

the 2015 build doc suggests that C14 is "optional" and is used to smooth out the led clipping highs... might be worth removing, strewth I might try that myself... treble is good .