when i was tinkering with my breadboard trying to figure out why transistors always seemed to work as they
should when someone else designed the circuit and never worked in my own I finally got something going on
this is what i got on my bread board right now and to my ears it boosts the sound + adds a very pleasant distortion
(http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9938/passiveboost.jpg)
how can a circuit without any additional power boost my signal ?
how can a circuit without any additional power boost my signal ?
It can't.
If every time the offcenter wheel spins, there's a 'bump' in the cycle [say the offcenter part hits something else, every cycle...you'd hear the hit as louder than the wheel spinning offcenter.
Could be the clipping is putting a bump or 'spike' in the cycle, and this in turn puts a 'bump' in the speaker/air and your ''hearing equipment''.
Although this takes a bit of power [so the average power would be reduced], during every cycle there's a power-spike which puts a 'bap' [so to speaker] in the signal, the 'bap' being much higher than the average potentail for an instant.
http://cavepassivepedals.com.au/glassy_mouth.html
They seem to do it passively with step up transformers.
Quote from: Caferacernoc on May 13, 2010, 03:17:01 PM
http://cavepassivepedals.com.au/glassy_mouth.html
They seem to do it passively with step up transformers.
I just checked out their demos, interesting but uh... their pedals don't sound very good at all to my ears. I mean, it's cool that they're passive, but I would never use one.
I sometimes think that the phrase "that's from a web page" will become synonymous with "that's a lie" or "that's deliberately misleading".
This is where that old stuff about having to understand some things so you don't get taken comes in. Let's recap:
First law of thermodynamics - Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.Second law of thermodynamics - energy systems have a tendency to increase their entropy rather than decrease it. The short form of that unwieldy statement is that energy flows from some concentrated energy source to a less concentrated place. So energy flows from some power source to places with less energy.
These have been paraphrased as (1) you can't win and (2) you can't even break even. If you run into a device which someone claims breaks either or both of these, you can assume (for the moment, until and unless we learn new physics that violates all of our present understandings) that they are either uninformed, mistaken, or lying. The second law is in fact the underlying cause why the patent office will no longer consider patents on perpetual motion machines, which violate that by definition.
With this bit of heavy hitting under our collective belts, let's consider.
Quote from: kdowqo on May 13, 2010, 08:33:38 AM
how can a circuit without any additional power boost my signal ?
It can't, full stop. That would violate the Second Law. What it may be doing - and is, if I am reviewing the circuit correctly - is add some funny clipping. This adds harmonics which were not present, and psycoacoustically adds apparently loudness without adding any power. In fact, diode clippers always function by wasting energy above their clipping threshold. Something somewhere else must make up the loss if you want that amount of power back. Your ears are being fooled.
Quote from: Caferacernoc on May 13, 2010, 03:17:01 PM
http://cavepassivepedals.com.au/glassy_mouth.html
They seem to do it passively with step up transformers.
Transformers are wonderful things. They are about as close to lossless energy conversion as we humans have ever gotten, bar that potential/kinetic thing. A good transformer will accept a certain amount of power on its input and give you upwards of 95-99% of that power back on the secondary. The remaining few percent (if the transformer is well designed!) are lost to powering up the core magnetic field, eddy current losses in the core, and Ohm's law losses in the winding wire. It's impossible, both in theory and practice so far, to make a transformer put out more power than you put in.
But how are those guys at cavepassivepedals doing this? Simple. They count on you providing the additional power to boost the signal back up once they've clipped it and done their various losses. They use transformers to step up the signal voltage (not a power question - power is volts times amps), from which they can clip and tone shape it, accepting the losses along the way, and they then give you a massaged voltage to power back up. I'm guessing their inspiration was microphone step up transformers.
"But-but-but-but-but-but-but-but-but-but-but-but-but- what's wrong with that?" I hear you saying. Not a thing. As long as you're willing to live with the compromises that this approach gives you. Transformers are not free, as you may have noticed, and **good** transformer are doubly not free. That has consequences.
A transformer gives you voltage gain. It does this by changing the turns ratio between primary and secondary. The available secondary current goes down in the same ratio as the voltage goes up. It has to - the power in the primary is Vin * Iin, and you can't get that much or more V*I out the secondary. You get less in fact, by that pesky Second Law. Guitar pickups are already in trouble for providing lots of current. That's why we have to have input impedances of over 1M typically. Any lower and you start losing treble.
When you toss a transformer into that mix in the middle, stepping up the secondary voltage, what you do is step DOWN the impedance the guitar sees at the primary. Let's say you get a voltage gain of 10 from your hypothetical transformer. That's a voltage ratio of 1:10 from primary to secondary. The impedance that appears at the primary is the square of the turns ratio. So the primary impedance is 100 times less than the secondary impedance you load the transformer with. If we've been neglectful of our EE lessons and make that secondary impedance 1M without a second thought, then the primary of this 10:1 stepup transformer presents a 10K load to the guitar. Oops. Wait a minute - I'm pretty sure I had a magic tone-sucking-preventing amulet here somewhere. I'm going to need it. And we haven't even talked about the transformer's losses, nor any odd effects it has on tone, like bass response and treble response, midrange resonances, hum pickup, and so on.
Probably you can deal with these after a fashion, but after you get done with designing a really, really good transformer, by a really, really good and experienced transformer designer, and then pay for the fancy stuff you had to design in to get around the shortcomings of the transformer that you couldn't design away, a 9V battery and a transistor start looking pretty good.
Let's look at some of the front page from cavepassivepedals. Notice to anyone from cavepassive pedals: I'm not trying to pick on you, just pointing out what my personal understanding of engineering and physics tells me upon reading this. You're welcome and invited to tell me what I got wrong, and worse yet, provide backup information that will embarass me at my lack of understanding.
QuoteWe have taken vintage technology and improved its capabilities.
That's a laudable goal. Not everything that's old is worthless or passe. For instance, cast iron really is a wonder material. It's just heavy, and that's mitigated against it in most modern applications.
Quote
When every electronics engineer focussed on creating smaller components, more efficient, portable power supplies and eventually, the digital revolution, the passive world took a massive step backward, plunging towards near extinction!
This is true mostly. I'm not sure that every EE focussed on smaller stuff, but the pressure to do smaller, faster, more efficient stuff has been pretty intense. I deplore the fact that modern EE graduates could not bias a three-transistor feedback ring if their life depended on it, and many of them really don't know which end of the soldering iron to hold onto. However, given the massively more demanding attitude we have today, near extinction may be the right place. I'd be very interested in seeing the design of a passive ipod, for instance.
QuoteIf the human race had of realised that passive electronics had a long and exciting development ahead, that many things are possible without the use of a power source, would they still have given it up?
Yes. By the only good yardstick, they did. Most of the human race has no clue what active and passive electronics are, or how they differ. And having a long and exciting development ahead does not relieve the limitations of passive electronics. Passive electronics have their limitations, starting with the first and second laws. Many things are possible without external power, but not as many as this statement alludes to. No matter how long and exciting the road is, if it doesn't go where you want to go, it's not much help. I think again about the passive ipod design.
Quote"Crystal sets" have long been forgotten. To receive radio transmissions without the need for 240 volts or a pack of 1.5 volt batteries would blow most people's minds of today.
They are neat. I discovered crystal sets at about age 10, back when water animals were first crawling out on shore. However, after the novelty of hearing anything come out of the earphone, they'd quickly get tired of looking for a place to clip to a big antenna, and complain that they could not take it with them. Receiving radio without batteries is neat, OK. But not if you can't power a speaker with it, or if it's not portable if you have to use earphones. Or if the frequency response isn't all that great. The mind blow interval would be terrifyingly short. They'd be bored with it in a second once they saw it and understood its limitations. It's a novelty. "Cool! Look at that. What's next?"
QuoteEven more bizarre would be the concept of "wireless transmission of free energy" that Nikola Tesla was prevented from giving to the world! Imagine, never having to worry about finding a wall socket or changing flat batteries.
That is neat stuff. But there are gotchas in there. Remember the folks who say their kids got leukemia because they live within half a mile of power transmission lines? And the folks who are convinced that you'll get brain cancer if you hold your cell phone up to your ear? How many people would like to convert over to Tesla-style power transmission.
And then there's that. It is **transmission** and not "free energy". For this to work, somebody somewhere is burning fuel, catching sunlight, splitting atoms, or fusing atoms to make the energy. It's being broadcast like radio - which it is - and the transmitted power is intense enough to be caught and used. And there are certain issues with living in intense radio fields. For one, microwave ovens are intense radio fields. True, they have a very specialized frequency, but you get the idea. Anything that can accidentally catch the pervasive field gets hot. Like - oh, shoot! - fences maybe. :icon_biggrin: A fence looks very much like a good receptor for Tesla-transmitted energy. Want every fence to be an electric one? Or your neighbor's fence keeping your garbage disposal and/or TV from running because it shades you from the field?
And back to the Second Law. There's a pot full of energy being transmitted. Where does the excess we don't use go? Yep, you got it - it radiates away somewhere. How much of it could we use if we did this? Remember we don't have any perfect collectors/antennae. I think that the folks burning coal/gas/oil/atoms back at the power station have to produce the peak power demand all the time in case someone needs it, and let the excess radiate away, there being no good way to catch it and recycle it. Oh, wait! We could lay out large grids of wires and catch it, then use big heavy wires to lead it back to the power plant to be recycled!!
Oh, wait... :icon_cry:
QuoteWhere ever you went, your radio could keep playing...indefinitely! All this is possible with vintage technology!
Yep. As they used to say to me "How much would you pay to get that scenario?" :icon_lol:
QuoteWe have taken a step back in time to bring you, the musician, what should have been.
Should have been? I think that's a very debatable point, on both the uneducated musical consumer's desires and on technical grounds. :icon_lol:
Quote
We are the first to re-establish passive electronics in a world that refuses to believe that nothing can be achieved without a power supply.
I applaud you for your attempt, and wish you luck with the technical issues. Frankly, I think the technical issues are much simpler to deal with than the somewhat intractable issues with customer satisfaction. But what do I know? If I were a marketing wizard, I'd already be rich.
I wish you luck with your passive approach to musical technology.
It can't amplify doesn't necessariy translate to it isn't cool.
I've had circuits that didn't work, and I remember them sounding plenty cool, once in a while, I don't know what it was before the fix with that one FF I got working that made it sound so cool.
Quote from: petemoore on May 14, 2010, 12:02:46 AM
It can't amplify doesn't necessariy translate to it isn't cool.
I've had circuits that didn't work, and I remember them sounding plenty cool, once in a while, I don't know what it was before the fix with that one FF I got working that made it sound so cool.
You're absolutely right - coolness does not equate with active amplification.
I am sure I saw an ad for passive gadget which they claim was boost but had tubey :icon_biggrin: sound too, some kind of
Thanks' R.G.
That long and well written post sent me back a good 30 years to the classroom we had for conducting physic's labs when I went to, what's equivalent to collage where I live. I can almost smell burnt paper and enamel coat on the copper wire melting in the transformers when we "mistakenly" shortened them. We also had magnets that we demagnetized or re magnetized with reversed polarity. Besides that our teacher also managed to blow the main fuse in the physics building when he showed us how to re wire the 3 phase AC to 3x 1-phase (or something like that) in our High voltage lab. No wonder I didn't become a teacher, poor sods.
In that same building we also had a Rolls Royse Merlin MK III engine. To take off and tamper with the heads and valves on that one was part of the mechanic's class. The best part was to start I up. The sound is something else. That sound beats all the destorted stomp boxes in the world. This is a mean V12 sucker with about 1500 hp.
It was one of the most common airplane engines in the 2:nd WW and sat in classic fighter planes like the Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DeHavilland Mosquito, P52- Mustang, and the Lancaster bomber.
http://www.aviation-history.com/engines/merlinv1650-1a.jpg (http://www.aviation-history.com/engines/merlinv1650-1a.jpg)
Opps nostalgia took me too far back
:icon_redface:
Uh oh,Jay Lenno is looking for Merlin engines to build a new super bike now.JK
Sounds cool solderman,I would love to work on an engine like that.
Quote from: Nasse on May 14, 2010, 02:35:53 AM
I am sure I saw an ad for passive gadget which they claim was boost but had tubey :icon_biggrin: sound too, some kind of
I have no doubt that someone did do that.
There's the real world, where Mother Nature's Rules apply, and there's the world of advertising, where anything the sucker... er, customer will pay for is possible. :icon_lol:
the schematic I posted has nothing to do with cavepassivepedals.com it was just what I ended up with on my breadboard after some failures trying to understand how transistors work
however it turned out that the reason that it did boost the sound seams to be that I played it through my popstarz karaoke-machine which I use as echo (its the best I've got)
the karaoke-machine seems to mess with the pedals + the guitar connected to it thus causing the effect before it to act like a boost
the volume-control on the guitar also crackles when the guitar is connected to the karaoke-machine
when the popstarz was out of the way the "passive boost" actually lowered the volume :P
Quote from: R.G. on May 13, 2010, 10:45:24 PM
I sometimes think that the phrase "that's from a web page" will become synonymous with "that's a lie" or "that's deliberately misleading".
This is where that old stuff about having to understand some things so you don't get taken comes in. Let's recap:
First law of thermodynamics - Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.
Second law of thermodynamics - energy systems have a tendency to increase their entropy rather than decrease it. The short form of that unwieldy statement is that energy flows from some concentrated energy source to a less concentrated place. So energy flows from some power source to places with less energy.
These have been paraphrased as (1) you can't win and (2) you can't even break even. If you run into a device which someone claims breaks either or both of these, you can assume (for the moment, until and unless we learn new physics that violates all of our present understandings) that they are either uninformed, mistaken, or lying. The second law is in fact the underlying cause why the patent office will no longer consider patents on perpetual motion machines, which violate that by definition.
With this bit of heavy hitting under our collective belts, let's consider.
Quote from: kdowqo on May 13, 2010, 08:33:38 AM
how can a circuit without any additional power boost my signal ?
It can't, full stop. That would violate the Second Law. What it may be doing - and is, if I am reviewing the circuit correctly - is add some funny clipping. This adds harmonics which were not present, and psycoacoustically adds apparently loudness without adding any power. In fact, diode clippers always function by wasting energy above their clipping threshold. Something somewhere else must make up the loss if you want that amount of power back. Your ears are being fooled.
Oh man, this thread is giving me deja vu:
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=60256.0 (http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=60256.0)
I think we need more "passive activists."
There are several ways you can power your pedals with "free" energy, such as a wah-wah with a generator hooked up to the rocker, or pressure-sensitive piezoelectric stompswitches, or even powering your effects with the guitar's AC signal itself. And of course solar power in all its forms.
By "free" energy, I of course mean energy sources that you were already simply wasting, that could instead be harnessed and put to useful work.
Or how about this:
A mute pedal which routes your guitar's signal through a rectifier and uses it to charge up some capacitance or battery. Mute, strum vigorously, then unmute and the energy you just put in goes to your various (micro-power) pedals.
Ahh, reminds me of my solar powered pedalboard days, back when our band's rider required 12 Par64 cans pointed stage left.
Deja vu indeed...
Quote from: R.G. on December 16, 2007, 11:25:52 AM
The essence of engineering economics is the equivalence of money and energy. For instance, a US dollar is most easily defined at the moment as being worth a bit more than 1% of the energy in a barrel of oil. Let's assume that the MEG mentioned in the web site you reference exists and works as shown. It's of simple construction; I could build one and test it, and so could many other people, easily. So therefore if it works as stated, I could make a device that would produce an excess of energy, in the form of electricity. So I could, personally, set up a device that would reduce my electric bill every month. I could use that money to build another unit, and reduce my bill further. Eventually I pay nothing for electricity because it is coming out of my MEGs free.
If I am disciplined, I continue to use my monthly "electric bill" money to build more MEGs. Now I produce an excess of electricity. In Austin, the electrical utility must, by law BUY my self produced electricity if I set up the feeds to the power line correctly. And I can, because I have a source of free electricity and cash that I'm not paying. At some point, I have invested enough of my monthly electricity bill to gain a monthly payment back from the power company. When that happens, I have a positive cash flow from selling my excess electricity, and I get free money. I invest the returns in more and bigger MEGs. Soon, the power company approaches the legislature and demands to not have to pay me because they're going broke. The legislature rescinds the "must buy" law for them. But I can now (a) sell big MEG setups to my neighbors (b) sell the excess power to my friends (c) use the excess power to manufacture things with the free electricity, turning it into money again. I can in particular manufacture big MEG setups to sell to anyone who wants to be free of electrical bills.
I can use my free electricity to convert water to oxygen and hydrogen and power machinery with. So my gasoline bill vanishes. Even simpler, I use the excess money to buy gasoline so the gasoline bill effectively vanishes. Money equals energy again.
You see what happens. If the MEG works, we would now be witnessing the dismantling of the power companies and oil companies. It's been long enough since the patenting of the MEG. Even if the government/big business/etc. tried they could not suppress it because once the principle is known and spread to the net, people can independently go make their own. Think of the vast business enterprise that has arisen around the trade in drugs, which is being vigorously and violently suppressed. The governments can't stop it. In the same way, governments are powerless to suppress something so fundamental as free energy, which equals free money. Especially where the ability exists to start with such a simple device as shown in the MEG patent. If there was a huge investment to be made, millions if not billions of dollars to create even the first kW-Hr of electricity, they maybe it could be suppressed. But the MEG as shown can be made by a guy who's sitting in his garage back in the hills in Idaho and wants to live off-grid anyway. There are a lot of those people in the USA, enough that a real free-electricity device that worked would instantly be picked up and used. They use solar cells to do the same now.
Even if such a device existed, and could be restricted to the energy companies, it would instantly kill the global trade in oil. No reason to cooperate with those dirty guys wherever else if I can make my own energy here. If I'm an oil company I can use the free electricity to SYNTHESIZE oil. To say that the ongoing oil trade is a sham is to imply that the entire fiscal and legal energy of governments and business is increasingly invested in a sham to hide a free energy source. The sham must collapse, or eventually the entire business world is doing nothing but participating in a scheme to hide the free energy.
That there is no sign of such a collapse is an indication that the MEG (or some alternate, but equivalent result device) does not yet exist. Occam's Razor tells us that of the two possibilities, (i.e. free energy existing but being hidden and suppressed, versus not yet existing) the simpler explanation must be the most likely one.
>> "realised that passive electronics had a long and exciting development ahead"
> ... ... Passive electronics have their limitations,... ... ...
Passive audio's path is clear.
Many attempts to build a telephone. All early true passive telephones turned a shout into a faint whisper. The more promising telephone schemes took power. One common thread was a rotating (hand-crank) drum with a friction shoe: the friction was modulated by speech current and the mechanical energy out could exceed the electric speech energy in.
(Let's ignore static electromagnets because in principle they may be replaced by permanent magnets.)
Bell's malfunctioning Harmonic Telegraph, patent 174,465, the root of the telephone business, clearly shows a battery. The amplification may have been variable-depth immersion in an electrolyte. Bell probably didn't know what was going on.
The key to wide use of telephone technology is the carbon microphone, which is quite clearly an amplifier, somewhat like an FET except the "gate" is a pressure-point which may be jiggled by a diaphragm.
From 1877 to past 1907, pretty much all audio worked this way. Not passive (the carbon-button amplifier was battery-powered), but not "electronics" (vacuum tubes with their loose electrons). Most of the foundations of electronics were laid: wave-filters, impedances, transformers, clipping, horns. This WAS "a long and exciting development".
Much of this became trailing-edge when tubes became readily available around 1920. Tubes could do more things.
For completeness: true passive telephones did happen. The idea is shown in the Second Bell Patent, 1877, but was not workable at the time. Highly tuned resonant transducers were developed (perhaps with the aid of tube test gear) which could get around 50% efficiency. Two of these on short wire can put 25% of a shout into an ear. These were useful on battlefields and farms where batteries were not readily available. After WWII surplus sound-powered field telephone sets became standard tools for aiming the newfangled TV antennas on roofs (no, the guy on the roof could not call the guy at the TV on his cellphone).
Getting to guitar: well, go back to a dynamic (passive!) mike into a tube grid. The number of turns on the moving coil must be limited: mass must be teeny and wire can not be made infinitely thin. We use a 1:10 transformer to couple to the high impedance grid. You can wind a guitar pickup with a few hundred turns and then transformer it to the grid: early Les Paul Recording guitars did. However there's no urgent need to keep a pickup winding's mass low: it does not move. So instead of a few hundred turns to a 1:10 transformer, you wind 10 times as many turns on the pickup, and have "built-in transformation".
Crystal radios can have great fidelity. If they are loud enough to hear. My problem was I was 1 mile from a 50KW tower. Anything would pick that up. Loud! No reasonable simple (1-tank) rig would pick up ANYthing else.
Quote from: earthtonesaudio on May 14, 2010, 02:49:28 PM
I think we need more "passive activists."
There are several ways you can power your pedals with "free" energy, such as a wah-wah with a generator hooked up to the rocker, or pressure-sensitive piezoelectric stompswitches, or even powering your effects with the guitar's AC signal itself. And of course solar power in all its forms.
By "free" energy, I of course mean energy sources that you were already simply wasting, that could instead be harnessed and put to useful work.
Or how about this:
A mute pedal which routes your guitar's signal through a rectifier and uses it to charge up some capacitance or battery. Mute, strum vigorously, then unmute and the energy you just put in goes to your various (micro-power) pedals.
That's a really good idea. How about the band members, instead of prancing about on stage, sit on stationary-bicycle generators and their vigorous pedaling powers their pedals and amps! :icon_biggrin:
Even better, all seats in the auditorium are replaced with stationary bicycle generator sets and the audience must pedal to hear the group perform. I suspect that the audience produces more waste energy than the band. And let's not even talk about what energy it took to get the audience there to hear the group play. Make the audience stay home and only hear it broadcast to them in heavily compressed MP3, to save both the transportation cost to the venue, and the bandwidth to transmit full-bandwidth audio. Perhaps even better, we could just mail the audience a paper copy of the review of the one person who was delegated to listen to the band for everyone else, and who listened to the band's individual MP3s for each instrumental and vocal part, transmitted to the reviewer without the band ever going to the venue, or even meeting face to face. :icon_biggrin:
If we play it right, we can set things up so that no one can... er, has to travel anywhere to hear music or anything else. That'll be much more energy efficient. Not very pleasing or enjoyable, but it won't waste any energy.
I'm getting confused here
Are we talking about how to power our pedals, power pedals or pedal power. In that case this guy has it going for him. This proves that this issue is as old as the electrons them self. And he has taken it even further. He is powering he's amp as well.
(http://adaptivereuse.net/wp-content/uploads/images/traeger.jpg)
Any way, I agree wirt R.G. It's time that we in the DIY scene took the global warming more seriously. I suggest that we introduce the carbon monoxide neutral guitar rig. Here my idée.
At live concerts triple the amount of speakers (at least). Use 2/3 of the speakers to absorb the energy made by the howling crowd of fans doing their normal audience behavior and screaming there buts of . Transform that energy to the bands equipment and you have an environmentally safe concert.
This will also be sort of a Darvinistic way of sorting the magnificent bands that will have a roaring audience and the ones (the type I've played in) with no audience. No scream, no noise, no play.
Instead of recording the band could play in to a plastic bag and sell it.
;)
Quotethis issue is as old as the electrons
13.7 billion years old?! :)
You do have a point about the crowd being a potential energy source, though. Makes me think of last night's mosh pit in a whole new way :icon_lol:
Some interesting quotes from the Cave Passive Website:
"Q: Why do some of the Cave pedals boost and some do not? Why can't they all boost?"
A: Good question! There are different types of effects pedals that are designed for different purposes. A chorus pedal, for example, usually does not have an amplifying ability, whilst an overdrive does. Some of our pedals boost because they are designed to increase the volume, either to drive the amp harder or to "push" the second stage of a circuit more."
"Most of our pedals that have a drop in level are being re-designed either to boost or retain an equivalent level to true bypass. "
"Q: I have been told by electronic experts that there is NO WAY a signal can be boosted without power. Cave are either lying about the boost effect and it is NOT true bypass, or Cave are defying the laws of physics. So my question is...WHAT IS THE TRUTH?!"
A: Sorry if we speak out of line, but what idiots have you been talking to?! Any REAL electronics/electrical engineer will tell you that a signal CAN be boosted passively! All of our pedals are equipped with true bypass, unless stated. We are not lying or "defying the laws of physics"!
I've been using the same 9v battery for many years now. Every time it gets low I take it out of my negative ground FF and put it in my positive ground FF for charging. Presto!
Quote from: frequencycentral on May 15, 2010, 07:38:33 AM
I've been using the same 9v battery for many years now. Every time it gets low I take it out of my negative ground FF and put it in my positive ground FF for charging. Presto!
:D /applauds
Quote from: Greg_G on May 15, 2010, 04:25:06 AM
Some interesting quotes from the Cave Passive Website:
Hmmm... seems my brothers in physics have been there before me. :icon_lol:
QuoteQ: Why do some of the Cave pedals boost and some do not? Why can't they all boost?"
A: Good question! There are different types of effects pedals that are designed for different purposes. A chorus pedal, for example, usually does not have an amplifying ability, whilst an overdrive does.
Actually, a chorus pedal has the amplifying ability, it just does not use it, at least for every chorus circuit I've ever seen. And come to think of it, I can conceive of not-actively-powered distortion and voltage gain (with transformers or perhaps resonant circuits) pedals, but I can't yet think of any way to do a chorus passively. Echo and reverb, yes. All you need is a large empty cavity to do those passively. You may have some trouble hauling the cave around with you, but it does work. Well, OK, those are not really passive - YOU power them by yelling or playing into them.
QuoteSome of our pedals boost because they are designed to increase the volume, either to drive the amp harder or to "push" the second stage of a circuit more.
"Most of our pedals that have a drop in level are being re-designed either to boost or retain an equivalent level to true bypass. "
Just doing some reading between the lines, I'd guess that there were some customer comments about the pedals being quieter than true bypass level. Just a guess. :icon_biggrin: Especially when no matter how much gain and volume a pedal puts out, there is always a customer who asks for more. We thought for a while about putting a knob on some pedals simply labeled "More". Maybe just a small box with an amplifier (powered; sorry! :icon_biggrin: ) that had a single "more" knob.
Quote"Q: I have been told by electronic experts that there is NO WAY a signal can be boosted without power. Cave are either lying about the boost effect and it is NOT true bypass, or Cave are defying the laws of physics. So my question is...WHAT IS THE TRUTH?!"
A: Sorry if we speak out of line, but what idiots have you been talking to?! Any REAL electronics/electrical engineer will tell you that a signal CAN be boosted passively! All of our pedals are equipped with true bypass, unless stated. We are not lying or "defying the laws of physics"!
Notice the within-the-lines but IMHO diverting (and therefore politically useful!) use of "boost". Boost is really only meaningful in context. Boosted HOW? Bigger voltage? Sure. You can do that with transformers and resonant circuits. Resonant circuits aren't that much use for broadband boosts, by definition. Transformers do provide voltage gain, at the cost of current loss and impedance transformation. The impedance transformation is something that you're going to have to cope with because typical guitar pickups are picky about the impedance they drive; it affects tone.
So strictly speaking, no, the CPP folks (more probably, guy; the transformation to the plural "we" happens pretty soon after the web site goes up) are not lying nor breaking the laws of physics if you restrict the context enough. You can make a
voltage signal bigger without additional power. You can make a
current signal bigger without additional power. You cannot make a
voltage and current signal bigger without power, by the First Law. You can't, for instance, do a passive buffer without voltage loss. Buffers provide more available current, and therefore if they are passive, they must have voltage loss. First Law. If a circuit provides voltage gain, it must also have current loss. First Law.
If by "boost", you only mean "bigger voltage", that's not necessarily a lie. I'm not concerned about them breaking the laws of physics. Mother Nature's pretty good about policing Her Rules. However, as we by now know, in the world of advertising, you can do anything. Just ask an advertiser. That's why most countries have had to pass laws about truth in advertising - to hold it down a bit. It can't be suppressed entirely. Those poor advert copy writers can't be held accountable if the readers understand something more than the literal words within context actually meant, can they? :icon_lol:
However, in the real world it is very difficult to provide (a) voltage gain (b) with a reasonably flat frequency response (c ) from a normal guitar pickup/output (d) into a normal guitar amp (e) using no external power source (f) at a reasonable price. That is, it's hard to do what most people think they want in this context.
The technology for voltage "boost" from a guitar signal exists: it's a transformer. The demands for a transformer (satisfies "e") to get a, b, c, and d are very rigorous. In particular, I think it's impractically expensive to get f with a, b, c, and d.
From H.L. Mencken.:
QuoteFor every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Quote from: R.G. on May 14, 2010, 11:05:08 PM
That's a really good idea. How about the band members, instead of prancing about on stage, sit on stationary-bicycle generators and their vigorous pedaling powers their pedals and amps! :icon_biggrin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_R9Q_OXqA
That's it! I knew I wouldn't be the first to think of it. Now all we gotta do is get all bands to adopt that style! :icon_biggrin:
it's kind of silly to be making "green" pedals that use no energy when you plan on playing them through an amp which requires much more power demands than a 9v boost pedal... just saying. ::) there are other ways to be "greener" if you're a concerned pedal builder - donate some of your funds to sustainable energy research, only use recycled enclosures, join a local CSA or co-op, recycle more, reuse more, start a garden, etc etc.
I followed the "ginger ninjas" link and then found their website. http://gingerninjas.com/
I searched until I found the technical info on their pedal power system,interesting stuff,I imagine the 58 farad caps are quite pricey indeed.
Anyway I sent them an email and informed them about our wonderful forum,perhaps one of them will join.
BTW the amount of energy used to power a band is nothing compared to the amount used to get them to practice and performances.
Quote from: caress on May 16, 2010, 12:18:42 PM
it's kind of silly to be making "green" pedals that use no energy when you plan on playing them through an amp which requires much more power demands than a 9v boost pedal... just saying. ::) there are other ways to be "greener" if you're a concerned pedal builder - donate some of your funds to sustainable energy research, only use recycled enclosures, join a local CSA or co-op, recycle more, reuse more, start a garden, etc etc.
The greenest thing we can do as builders is to refuse to put battery clips in pedals.
Quote from: caress on May 16, 2010, 12:18:42 PM
it's kind of silly to be making "green" pedals that use no energy when you plan on playing them through an amp which requires much more power demands than a 9v boost pedal... just saying. ::) there are other ways to be "greener" if you're a concerned pedal builder - donate some of your funds to sustainable energy research, only use recycled enclosures, join a local CSA or co-op, recycle more, reuse more, start a garden, etc etc.
Correct.
My main gripe with the constant slew of exhortations to do this, that or the other to be greener is that many are silly, most are misguided, and all amount to making you feel like you're the problem, so you should do anything possible to display contrition.
The bottom line is this: Humans change the planet they live on. Period. So do walruses, poison ivy, pine trees, bats, elephants, microbes, and everything else that can be said to be alive. The implicit reasoning behind the "don't do anything" school of environmental sensitivity is that the only pollutant is humans and what we do. Taken to the extreme conclusion in this line of reasoning, the only good human is a human that's not there. Is there some willful ignoring of selective facts there?
Anything else amounts to trying to find some balance between killing ourselves off by environmental pollution, and finding ways to live as "not here" as possible, no matter how much that interferes with anything else being human involves. It has become popular to adopt the religion of environmentalism, and play holier than thou by acting and suggesting that everyone be greener. As in many "religions", the holiest guys think they get to tell everyone else how to live, eat, sleep, breathe, drink, act, talk, and everything else. There is no thoughtful balance about how much humans should be "allowed" to change their environment. The holy guys will tell you. And if need be, sacrifice your property, your way of living, and eventually perhaps you. (Ever read about the Mayan culture?)
What that approach leaves out and ultimately suppresses is the discovery of ways to have less impacts. Google "local minima", and escaping such.
Want carbon neutral? Figure out how to (as a for instance) scale up the petroleum producing algae and bacteria that have been discovered so we can step sideways from a drilled-petroleum economy to a solar-powered-petroleum economy. Google it. It's there. This approach substitutes semi-religiously inspired modifications to lifestyles with a happily accepted step sideways. What it misses is that there is no "holy guy" who gets the power to tell everyone else what to do. Therefore, it's highly unlikely that it will ever exist.
I think the incentive from many people's point of view is maintaining as pleasant and sustainable planet as possible for future generations. Is it so wrong to hope that our grandchildren won't be born into a world undertaking violent changes due to the enormous human populations we're going to end up with?
Quote from: Hides-His-Eyes on May 16, 2010, 03:11:51 PM
I think the incentive from many people's point of view is maintaining as pleasant and sustainable planet as possible for future generations. Is it so wrong to hope that our grandchildren won't be born into a world undertaking violent changes due to the enormous human populations we're going to end up with?
Is it so wrong? No. I think that too, and that's my incentive.
But I find it strange that a non-mainline-environmentally-correct view of how to get to a more pleasant and sustainable planet for our descendants is immediately viewed as an objection to any green endeavors. And I resent a little the implication that by thinking a little about the problem, I would willingly damn our descendants to short, brutish, environmentally disadvantaged lives. I didn't say that, but that's what you write that I said. Think about how you came to that conclusion a bit before you reply.
I suggest that you read what I said again. Nowhere in there does it say anything about raping the planet being good, or that ignoring any environmental problem being OK. It was a plea for some clever thinking about how to both save the planet AND not make it an abusive place for the humans that inherit it. I don't think that anywhere in there I said that it was wrong to hope that our grandchildren won't be born into an unpleasant place to live. In fact, if you'll read it, I want them to live there as free people as well as living happy, healthy lives.
could it be something like this
http://www.blueguitar.org/new/schem/_gtr/dual_mid.pdf
mounted in a box
An old thread
http://archive.ampage.org/threads/0/guitelec/001458/Has_anyone_put_an_inductor_in_their_guitar_for_a_tone_control-1.htmll
Craig Anderton had a circuit in one of his books
I just found this using google how is this legal?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2154081/Craig-Anderton-Guitar-Electronics-for-Musicians
Quote from: Gus on May 16, 2010, 04:34:47 PM
Craig Anderton had a circuit in one of his books
I just found this using google how is this legal?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2154081/Craig-Anderton-Guitar-Electronics-for-Musicians
It's probably not. It's a DMCA based legal action waiting to happen. The poster there just thinks that they can get away with it, or that the law is wrong, and therefore they don't have to follow it - or they didn't think at all.
There's a lot of that going around.
QuoteThe greenest thing we can do as builders is to refuse to put battery clips in pedals.
Amen.
> Craig Anderton ...how is this legal?
Altho the title says Craig, the document says "Donald Brosnac".
Interesting that the copyright page is missing.
> legal action waiting to happen
It has apparently been posted for 2 years.
Anybody have the Anderton to compare?
I think a big problem with the current "environmental movement" is what R.G. is picking up on. It's become a huge blame game. Lots of finger pointing and asking the wrong questions. We should stop asking "what activities can you willingly give up in order to reduce your carbon footprint" and start asking questions more like "what is it about driving an SUV that really enhances my life? Could I get the same benefits from a more efficient vehicle?" If your answer indicates you would be just as happy with a smaller car, go for it. But if not, you're not really doing the planet any favor by switching vehicles anyway and getting a big chip on your shoulder in return. Which would I rather live in, a polluted planet full of happy beings or a pristine planet full of hatred? If you think about it, that's just pollution in a different form.
Unfortunately I don't know of a way for the positive, constructive, affirming environmentalists to really communicate with the masses. Most people don't really think about this stuff, they just get the filtered-by-media message that tends to emphasize how "you're doing it wrong," because that message is easy to communicate. Communicating a sense of empathy for your environment and ALL the things living in it (human or not) is not 7-second soundbyte fare.
It's like this:
Would you like a community garden in your neighborhood? Most would say sure, sounds nice. Then you either say "okay, we're going to take half of your yard," and suddenly it doesn't sound so good, OR you say "a bunch of us are chipping in to buy that condemned lot at the end of the street when it goes to auction, you want in?" and it is much more palatable. There are ways of achieving common-good goals that empower everyone and foster feelings of pride and ownership, and there are ways of achieving common-good goals that are divisive and breed contempt.
My thoughts:
1. "Free-energizing" your pedal system while ignoring the amplification is as useful as a fan in a hurricane, pissing in the wind, pick whatever metaphor for uselessness you like.
2. The cave pedal soundclips sound llike crap IMO. Pretty much what I would expect a passive circuit driven by a high-impedance source to sound like.
3. Those guys on the bikes playing the music look like a bunch of dorks. Seriously...
4. I will never drive or own a Prius or any other hybrid. Never...
That is all.
Quote from: DougH on May 18, 2010, 08:56:40 AM
My thoughts:
1. "Free-energizing" your pedal system while ignoring the amplification is as useful as a fan in a hurricane, pissing in the wind, pick whatever metaphor for uselessness you like.
2. The cave pedal soundclips sound llike crap IMO. Pretty much what I would expect a passive circuit driven by a high-impedance source to sound like.
3. Those guys on the bikes playing the music look like a bunch of dorks. Seriously...
4. I will never drive or own a Prius or any other hybrid. Never...
That is all.
My rebuttals:
1. The longest journey begins with a single step, or whatever metaphor for "ya gotta start somewhere" works for you. Human, solar or other alternative energy sources are not going to move mountains anytime soon, but powering your pedals this way is an attainable goal. At best, it gives you a sense of perspective on what is required to make a little electrical power. Perspective that can help you perceive the rest of the world. At worst, you don't have to buy batteries anymore.
2. Totally agree
3. I've yet to meet someone who didn't think building stompboxes was at least a little bit dorky.
4. I'm with you. Hybrids are for sissies who can't give up their internal combustion security blanket. All-electric is the way to go. High five!
;D
Quote from: earthtonesaudio on May 17, 2010, 09:20:56 AM
I think a big problem with the current "environmental movement" is ... It's become a huge blame game.
That is a remarkably forward-looking, positive, and - more importantly! - useful attitude.
Humans seem to have a talent for making things into a zero-sum game; I win by taking things away from you.
It's probably an evolutionary artifact. It is demonstrably simpler and less dangerous to steal the food you've hunted or gathered than to go do my own hunting and gathering. All that kept this from being an extinction process was the competing fact that if I have several friends I can convince to help me, it's even easier and less risk to take your food.
I spent more than three decades watching this survival-of-the-slimiest process happen at IBM. There were two ways to succeed there. All the players were smart and capable; that was an entry criteria. But some succeeded because they turned out more good results than others (that's group A). Group B succeeded by politically assassinating their competition. It was far easier and more productive of position, power and money to make the competition look bad and thereby take away the results of productivity without actually doing anything productive yourself. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell group A and group B apart ahead of time. You had to let them try, then discard the group B's - if you could get rid of them. They *might* have so insinuated themselves that they could not be effectively removed.
Does any of this sound familiar? :icon_lol:
I think that it's one reason that managers/bosses and leaders are natural enemies.
The environmental movement has moved far away from searching for solutions which are good for the planet AND for people. In the long run, I'm deeply afraid that we'll get neither a good environment nor a social environment good for people. Neither "side" is working for that. They just want to knock the (presumably 'evil') other side off.
I wish I had some solutions. However, by not supporting either side, I become the enemy of BOTH of them. :icon_eek:
OK
When the going gets tough the tough gets going.
Story from the future year of 2256.
"The world as we know it has ceased to exist. After a long and fearful struggle for power over the 9V power source, the lord of the FX pedals has taken over and savage hords of stompboxes are looting the world from there last volts."
Well this can be the grim future if we do not take care of our power need in the present. But do not fear fellow music lover. Be hold and price the acoustic sound. There is a future if for you if you believe.
Brother, Go un plugged and save your humble soul and body from obliteration.
Flange that distorted wooden sword to join the chorus of sustained boost and let their voices echo over tremoluted fields.
If you can figure out a way to passive power boost, someone interested in energy 'production' might like to see your plan.