Adding a tone control to the Afterlife compressor

[sjaustin]

I built an Afterlife compressor and boxed it up in the only enclosure I had on hand, which was a 125B with holes drilled for three pots. It got me thinking: the Diamond compressor has a tone control, and I wonder if I could add one to this circuit.

If I were to insert the AMZ "Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control" (see here) in between the positive leg of C2 and lug 3 of the volume pot, would that work?

[WormBoy]

Yes, all three variations will work. They will decrease the volume though. How big you can make the tone pot depends on how much boost the Afterlife is capable of. If you loose too much volume with the tone pot integrated, lower the value of the tone pot.

[sjaustin]

Ah, thanks for that reply; it's helpful. I tried the second version out with a 100k tone pot, and it definitely killed the volume. I'll try it with 50k and see what happens.

[midwayfair]

Reread the article carefully. If you want to use jack's tone control you have to build the output exactly as shown in his schematic. You can't just use the tone pot because all the values depend on the volume pot value.

[sjaustin]

Reread the article carefully. If you want to use jack's tone control you have to build the output exactly as shown in his schematic. You can't just use the tone pot because all the values depend on the volume pot value.

I don't understand what you mean. I inserted the tone control into the circuit after the last component before the volume pot, which is already the correct value (100k) and goes to output as shown in his schematic. Unless I'm reading it wrong, which is a possibility. What am I missing?

[midwayfair]

Oh jeez, I'm sorry. I thought the volume pot was 10k. Never mind! Carry on.

[sjaustin]

Hmm, even with a 50k tone pot, this cuts the volume pretty significantly. Maybe it's not worth it; after all, the impetus for this idea was more "I have an enclosure with three holes" and less "This compressor needs a tone control." 

[Aleph Null]

If the volume drop is too great, you might also consider adding another gain stage here is a Big Muff tone stack into a Linear Power Booster: http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2013/08/bmp-tonestack-w-lpb1.html

[midwayfair]

Here ... what do you want the tone control to DO? There are other ways to do things, and I can give you some suggestions that might be able to use the existing architecture of the pedal. Passive solutions will be necessarily lossy, of course, because that's the whole point, but there's actually stuff that can still be done inside the op amp stage.

[Boba7]

Hmm, even with a 50k tone pot, this cuts the volume pretty significantly. Maybe it's not worth it; after all, the impetus for this idea was more "I have an enclosure with three holes" and less "This compressor needs a tone control." 

Why don't you include the sensitivity pot as described by midwayfair somewhere on this forum? I put one on my Afterlife and found it extremely useful!

[sjaustin]

Why don't you include the sensitivity pot as described by midwayfair somewhere on this forum? I put one on my Afterlife and found it extremely useful!

Now that's a great idea! I'll do it as described here.