Guys, I got a strange fish in my net... it's called CA3080A

[Krinor]

I can't remember why on earth I ordered this 8 legged little bugger. I must have been half asleep in front of my computer while randomly clicking on everything on Steve's site... What on earth is this ? And what, do you think, might I have been thinking I was going to use it for ?  A hopeless question, I know, but maybe someone could shed some light on this little component and it's appliance ?

[mdh]

It's an operational transconductance amplifier.  The most common use for a single one of these around here is a Ross Compressor/MXR Dynacomp.

[Krinor]

Thanks. I know, I could have done a search. And doing that reveals somethings about the Ross compressor yes. But I'm certain I didn't plan to build that one. Must have been something else I had in mind. Oh well. I guess I've inhaled too much solder fume lately...

[frequencycentral]

Ooooh - one of my fave chips!

Great for VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, phasers. Basically half a LM13700 but without the Darlington buffer stage.

My brother likes them even more than me - he's even changed his first name to CA3080.

[JFX09]

There was even a book written about it: Making music with the 3080 by Thomas Henry.

[mdaudet]

If you ordered 8 of these OTAS, maybe you wanted to build a Small Clone "CLONE" (five 3080), a few compressors and a Volume pedal retrofit. hehe

Not so comfortable to work with that package, but you maybe want to use sockets and fit the leads on it, just like the LM308 on th RAT.

[Krinor]

Ooooh - one of my fave chips!

Great for VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, phasers. Basically half a LM13700 but without the Darlington buffer stage.

My brother likes them even more than me - he's even changed his first name to CA3080.

Excellent!

As it turns out I didn't order these at all! I checked my order confirmations from Small Bear and they were not on the list.
But this looks interesting. Any particular circuits I should take a look at ? I onlyu have two of these so I guess a phaser will be out of the question for now.

[frequencycentral]

I have a FEW (!!) 3080 circuits. If you have two you could make a nice little multimode (Lowpass/Highpass/Bandpass) 12db/oct VCF for example - might be nice built into a wah shell.

Or a simplified Small Stone (like mdaudet suggested), with only two 3080 stages it would be a soft phase, with less degrees of phase. Kind of like what the Phase 45 is to the Phase 90.

You could make a tremolo, with one 3080 as the oscillator and one as the amplifier. I'm currently working on a tube tremolo using the dual version (LM13700) which gives stompswitchable speed with a lag between the speed changes - a la Leslie. Breadboarded, 50% through the actual pedal build.

Let me know if you want schematics for any of the above. 

[loss1234]

id love schematics for the above!!!

i have tons of 3080's and even proofread the upcoming reprint of the thomas henry 3080 book but your schematics sound simple and i love simple!!

thanks

[frequencycentral]

This is a link to my Skydrive public folder:

http://cid-8ac048c05e7e99ce.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public

I've added some LM13700 and CA3080 schematics.

Also try here:

http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/diy/