Some Moodring mods, pretty useful!

[joelvanginkel]

Thanks so much for these awesome ideas. I did most of them (I didn't change the tonestack or make the Dwell circuit), but I am so happy with the pedal. Here's a video demo of mine (actually I only had it on my board for a few days and then my brother wanted to  or myself).

https://youtu.be/O9ooKkkPlaQ

Joel

[Aleph Null]

Thanks for all the ideas! I'm gonna build one as soon as the pcbs are available.

Just thinking of another possible mod. Do you guys think it'd be possible to have the wet signal distort in a nice way? I'm thinking of the recent Caroline Meteor that seems to belong to the same reverb family.

There are clipping diodes in the feedback loop: D3 and D4. The build doc says these are to prevent overloading the Belton Brick's input. What if you changed the diodes from LEDs to something with a lower forward voltage? You could add a pot in series to the diodes to act as a grit control.

I'm also interested in something like this. Has anyone tried something like this? Any part/value recommendations?

[Boba7]

I'd love to hear more about it too but I don't think I have time right now to try it... Plus my Moodring is pretty much set right now with the modulation  circuit in it... don't think I could or would want to add a grit control... Or maybe I could...

[Jamiroking]

I know this is an old thread but I ended up printing up some PCBs from the moodring schematics and have been toying around with some of these mods.

Using the notes by timbo_93631, Boba7, and neandrewthal, I came up with the schematic changes here. This is the first time I've ever did any mods beyond just basic routing switches so any questions or advice is welcome. I'm still waiting to receive a parts order to finish this build.

Input Level
I implemented the original input level pot but it just wasn't that usable for me, especially because if you wire the pedal in buffer bypass, it's always on. So the two options are permanent boost (buffered) or a volume jump when engaged (true bypass). This doesn't work for my need since it's going to be joining a host of other pedals on my board and I don't need it to pull double duty as a drive pedal. I ended up just reverting back to madbeans initial R3 value of 470k.

New DWELL Knob (reverb feedback)
When I wired it up with timbo_93631's replacement DWELL knob after adding his FEEDBACK pot, the reverb was very faint. I wasn't sure if it was the placement of the A route or the additional cap that he put on lug 3 of the 250kA, but when I moved the route back to the original location (right after R30) and got rid of the 100n cap he added, my reverb came back to life. I thought about moving the B route to after the IC but I was happy enough with my results.

Dry Delay Mix
After axing the Input Level pot, I had an extra hole drilled in my enclosure that needed filling and neandrewthal's idea of putting a dry mix of the delay signal on a knob sounded like the best option. I took his idea of copying the RING knob with a bigger resistor and breadboarded with the components I had around.

With the parts I had around, this configuration allowed me to pretty much kill off the dry signal when the pot was at 0% and have a very good standalone effect volume all the way up to 100% if I kill off all the reverb mix (RING knob)

I only had 100nF and 4.7uF caps and the 4.7uF took way too much off the signal. I would have liked to try the 1uF similar to the RING but the 100nF sounded clean to me.

Likewise the next values of resistor and pot I had were 382k and 500kA and both killed way too much of the signal. Going down to a 50kB made it impossible to get rid of the dry delay signal.



Mods Summary
So I think what's left is a bunch of knobs which are very usable and the possibilities of using the pedal in a variety different ways

• SPACE (Pre-delay) - 25kB for longer values. I think this could actually be even longer. I accidentally wired up a 100kB and there were some cool things you could do with it if you wanted.
• DWELL (Reverb Feedback) - The new knob by timbo_93631 made a little more similar to bean's original
• MOOD (Reverb Tone) - this is still stock
• Dry Delay Mix - with RING all the way down, you have a delay pedal!
• FEEDBACK (Delay Feedback) - same as timbo_93631
• RING (Reverb Mix) - this is also stock
• Slam Switch - still waiting for my DPDT but I will probably short both FEEDBACK and RING pots like Boba7 mentioned but shorting the dwell could be useful too