Quadrovibe

[midwayfair]

Haberdasher traded me a board and a charge pump about a month ago, and I just now got around to finishing this. (It sat on the shelf for weeks because I didn't have any 1uF and 10uF caps rated above 16v. )



Went super simple on the art, mostly because vibes just don't tend to inspire imagery (and certainly not cute imagery) for me (maybe because I've never done acid? ). Cream knobs, brass metallic paint, and PPP 1590B in chocolate, yellow LED. I originally had the wires posed super neat, but then I had to move the board around some and they got messed up. Oh well!

It's very warm and round sounding, and the trem in particular is an interesting twist, but setting it up so both modes work equally well is tricky. It was also particularly interesting to me from a design standpoint: The lamp essentially works backwards for the vibrato and the tremolo, making the tremolo's peaks the vibrato's troughs, so you have to play with the trims a lot to ensure that (a) you'll have enough leftover gain for all depth settings of the tremolo (the higher the depth setting, the louder it is -- backward from most trems), (b) the "off" time for the tremolo does not exceed the "on" time (which cuts down on the extremities of the vibrato's effect), and (c) the chop in the vibe setting is not so extreme that you get a woofing/throb sound (fortunately, the setting where this sound disappeared was also an extremely good balance between the T and V modes). Additionally, the vibe loses some effectiveness at the highest speed settings, so even though I socketted and toyed with the 2.2K resistors, the stock values were the best call in the end. So everything here is the stock design. (I'm trying to break myself of arbitrarily altering circuits for my preferences to avoid getting too many things that sound the same.)

The charge pump is just on perf. I don't have any putty, so it's taped to the box until I get some (I've never had to stick anything to the side of an enclosure before).

I'm pretty excited about the new warhead coming out, so I'll have another optical design to compare this to. Right now, I think I perfer the tri-vibe overall, but that's partly because of the "whirl" setting. I did ponder whether it was worth testing jumpering a 100K resistor from the input buffer to the output buffer, but I couldn't get an aligator clip onto the JFETs and I'm always a little paranoid about roughhousing with an etch. I tend to break traces when I try to get clever.

[nzCdog]

Hmmm.... I'vealways been interested in th Quadrovibe, better hunt out a demo somewhere
Cool work Jon... You must have a million pedals by now... those cool builds just keep coming!

[GrindCustoms]

Great looking Jon, I've been lurking at Vibes alot lately....., must get one toghether... i have a nice bulb just for that purpose....

I've tried many glues and what not to stick boards and all that, what i prefer the most for now is two sided foam tape, it comes in a wide array of tickness, so with 2-3 different rolls it covers all the needs.

Rej

[njkke]

Are you running it at 12V or 15V?

[midwayfair]

Are you running it at 12V or 15V?

It runs at ~18v via the charge pump. This is the minimum required to operate the lamp. The build doc (in the discontinued projects section) explains further.

[njkke]

ok, thanx for the infos!

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

Another great piece of work! Really good summary, you answered a few of my questions. I'd love to see a demo of this one if possible? Does it make you think Robin Trower?

[bigrigg]

Another great piece of work! Really good summary, you answered a few of my questions. I'd love to see a demo of this one if possible? Does it make you think Robin Trower?

I built one "Violet Wave" and it's not really swirly at all.  Don't think classic vibe.  It gives a nice warm tremolo effect.  Not really chopper on off like.  Also a good vibrato, slight warble on the other setting.  If you want some "swirl" look into the "Warhead" project on this site.  I just finished and boxed it up.  Will be in build reports soon.

[midwayfair]

Another great piece of work! Really good summary, you answered a few of my questions. I'd love to see a demo of this one if possible? Does it make you think Robin Trower?

I built one "Violet Wave" and it's not really swirly at all.  Don't think classic vibe.  It gives a nice warm tremolo effect.  Not really chopper on off like.  Also a good vibrato, slight warble on the other setting.  If you want some "swirl" look into the "Warhead" project on this site.  I just finished and boxed it up.  Will be in build reports soon.

This is my impression, too. It's fairly subtle in the "ideal" settings. It can be set to be more extreme, but then the tremolo won't do much.

This build was a baby step toward tackling the new Warhead project when it's released. I'm not looking forward to matching LDRs, but I am at least more comfortable with handling charge pumps and the lamp and breaking down the bits of circuitry (like the speed knob, which is really weird compared to the normal basic LFOs I normally play with).