Current Lover on 15V

[aballen]

Today was a good day, I finally rocked a few builds and I'm ready to box them. 

Tenebrion reverb, just my new favorite reverb.
Timmy, fantastic sounding OD, I'm actually amazed at how simple it is, yet how good it sounds
Stage fright, just spooky... great phaser.  Its my first OTA phaser, really like it

And yes, finally my current lover, but I'm having a little trouble trimming this bad boy.  I have it running with a road rage at 15V, using an LT1054(with pin 1 lifted).

When trimming it, I have to pretty much move the bias trimmer fully CW to get flanging.  unfortunately, I still get a bit of distortion, and I cant trim it any further.  T1 is already fully CCW and adjusting the clock trimmer does not seem to help.

It is flanging, but it sounds a bit dirty.... any ideas here guys?

[Scruffie]

Are R9 & 12 definitely the right values?

[aballen]

scruffie you are the man.  I'll check those two.

[aballen]

 100k and 82 k respectively, the 82k looks like it might be 8.2 so I checked the bag it came out of,  they are 82k, thought to my eyes they look a bit like grey, brown, black, brown, brown they are indeed grey red black red brown,  I also checked with my dmm the ones in the bag are anywhere from 81.9 to 82k.  . 

[Scruffie]

Okay, post your voltages up then please.

[aballen]

road rage, running of a 9v battery, putting out 12.6V

IC1:
1: 6.1
2: 6.1
3: 3.0
4: 0.0
5: 5.0
6: 6.0
7: 6.0
8: 12.1

IC2
1: 12
2: 6
3: 3
4: 0
5: 0
6: 6
7: 3
8: 3

IC3
1: 11.8
2: 5.9
3: 5.9
4: 5.9
5: 5.9
6: 5.8
7: 5.8
8: 0
9: 5.9
10: 5.8
11: 5.85
12: 5.8
13: 0
14: 5.8
15: 5.8
16: 0

IC4
1:5.8
2:5.8
3: 7.5 -10.8
4: 0
5: 5.8
6: 0
7: 0
8: 0
9: 0
10: 0
11: 0
12: 0
13: 12
14: 12

IC5
1: 3.6 - 6.9
2: 5.1 -5.4
3: 4.9 - 5.3
4: 3.1 - 7.2
5: 3.2 - 7.3
6: 4.97 - 5.25
7: 1.3 - 4.6
8: 1.3 - 3.9
9:1.3 - 2.5
10: 1.3 - 2.35
11: 11.1
12: 5.05
13: 5.55
14: 5.55

IC6
1: 0
2: 1.3 -4.7
3: 1.4 - 3.2
4: 0
5: 11.9-12.1
6: 10.9 - 11.1
7: 7.7 -10.3
8: 10.95 -11.05

Side note, I do have a 200K trimmer, I could replace the 100k with a 200k... or would that just throw the whole thing out of whack?
2: 1.3 - 4.7

[Govmnt_Lacky]

First question:

Why is your Road Rage only putting out 12.6V? Even with the diode drops, you should be getting ~14.5-14.9 Volts 

Second Question:

According to the layout, IC5 Pin 4 "should be" at the same voltage as IC6 Pins 5 & 6 

Did you read those correctly? 

Third Question:

Where is the GND pin on IC 5? You are getting voltage on ALL of them 

[aballen]

I suspect the battery is not keeping up with the road rage.  I'll get it hooked up to wall power, and re measure

[Govmnt_Lacky]

I suspect the battery is not keeping up with the road rage.  I'll get it hooked up to wall power, and re measure

I think you might have labeled your pins wrong for your measurements on IC5. You should have Vdd on Pin 4 and GND on Pin 11. Definitely look for a solder bridge between Pins 4 and 5 of IC5 as well 

[aballen]

ok on wall power I'm getting 14.92

re- checking IC5:
1: 7.39
2: 7.39
3: 6.71
4: 14.84
5: 1.67 - 3.16
6: 1.73 - 3.24
7: 1.78 - 6.17
8: 0.62 - 16.6
9: 6.62 - 6.85
10: 4.22 - 9.34
11: 0
12: 6.59 - 6.88
13: 6.7 - 7.01
14: 4.61 - 8.89

[aballen]

does this last set of measurements look correct?  I just re-biased it, and I think its working... It starts pretty subtle, and get spacey with the feedback cranked, it sounds metallic with the range pot cranked, and the filter switch seems to interact with the range somehow... havent got that figured out yet.  Anyway, its flanging, and I dialed out the distortion... I guess this wont run off of battery, ever.

[catfud]

I guess this wont run off of battery, ever.

I s'pose that's why it's called the current lover ...

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Charge Pump + Battery = Not Good  Gonna need to run this off of wall power.

As for the Filter switch. When the circuit is in Filter mode, you essentially remove the LFO and you are now in a comb filter setting (Filter Matrix). You can sweep through the Filter with the Range pot. The Speed pot will do nothing (obviously)

Glad you got it running right. You can always fine tune with a scope too. Your initial 324 voltages were way off. Your latest set look pretty good 

BTW.. If you do decide to scope this out, it is best to take readings and make adjustments while in Filter mode with the Speed pot fully CCW.

[Scruffie]

You can use a charge pump and battery... just use a 12V regulator, still 3V more than the original! You can even push this up a bit with some diodes to ground from the ground pin of the regulator to lift its voltage up to say... 13.2V with 2 diodes.

Or look in to lower fV diodes and a low drop out regulator.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Agree with Scruffie however....

Unless you are fond of battery swapping.... I'd stick with wall wart power