Arion SCH-1 mods? Make it less flanger-esque?

[MartyMart]

That's 80pf ... possibly a bit much for that particular setup, in my CE-2 clone
I also tried an 82pf with similar "wierdness"
68pf was a very good option and seemed very smooth.

MM.

[grolschie]

I will post back with results with I buy some more caps. :-)

[grolschie]

I will post back with results with I buy some more caps. :-)

Couldn't find a 68pf. So I bought a 15pf and paralleled it to the 47pf making a total of 62pf. And it now sounds perfect to my ears. Lush and deep. All settings sound good now - very deep without nasty warbling and detuning. No more flanging under distortion. Now this pedal is usable for me. Thanks guys!   

grol

[MartyMart]

That's great Grol - glad that one works for you

MM.

[polifemo]

I couldn't locate a schematic for the Arion.
grol

Hi,

I´m new here and I suppose that I arrived a little late on this one...

Anyhow, maybe this little thing - that I found somewhere on the web - can be of some help:

[grolschie]

I couldn't locate a schematic for the Arion.
grol

Hi,

I´m new here and I suppose that I arrived a little late on this one...

Anyhow, maybe this little thing - that I found somewhere on the web - can be of some help:

Brilliant! Thanks for that! Hey guys, any more possible tweaks for wholesome chorusy goodness?

[solarplexus]

well... according to the pics in the SCH-1 and my SCH-Z... there is alot of differences... any idea where the mod could be applied on a SCH-Z ?

[modmod]

i'd like to make it true bypass,if someone can explain me the circuit a bit,appreciate that

[Mark Hammer]

First explain why you need it to be true bypass.  There is an outside chance you are simply making trouble for yourself, but a chance you might actually need it.

[Harry Palms]

Some people just like the "feel" of a hard stompswitch. I'm one of those.

Then again, some people have other ideas.

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=211397

Business must be good.

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=220917


I found this statement kind of funny.

NOTE: True bypassing the SCH-1 will eliminate it's stereo capability.

Oh, really? Maybe I should do a layout for him to show him how to keep the stereo outputs and have and LED indicator.
Naw. I don't think so.

I'm sorry. Did I stray OT?

[Mark Hammer]

I hear ya, and that is an entirely cogent reason.  As long as people recognize that there are personal-context reasons for wanting a stompswitch, but neither is "better" than the other in some absolute decontextualized way.

  As for stereo, certainly a DPDT does not lend itself well to accompishing stereo bypass with LED.  Some pedals can cope with stereo bypass + LED using a 3PDT switch reasonably well.  Others not so much.

There is also quasi-true-bypass in the stereo context.  For instance, one could use a stompswitch to cancel the wet feed to each of two mixing stages, and the 3rd set of contacts to work the status LED.  The input and output buffers would always remain in circuit, but no FETs would be involved in switching.

[grolschie]

I'd be happier with re-housing mine somehow with a proper stomp switch. The knobs and jacks are all surface mount nasties and it seems like it would be a nightmare for me perhaps.

[modmod]

First explain why you need it to be true bypass.  There is an outside chance you are simply making trouble for yourself, but a chance you might actually need it.

besides the cheezy housing,all my effect pedals are true bypass in my singal chain except this one,so i wanna rehouse it and make it true bypass and also eliminate the loopbox and save spaces for my pedalboard. thanks in advanced

[Harry Palms]

Hey guys, did you see the links above? Go check them out.

Good news. The guy who sells the rehousing/mods for the SCH-1 is member of this site!

That is so awesome when big time pro designers will show up to help and encourage the beginning beginners. Maybe he'll see this thread and if he's not too busy rehousing Arions he'll help us rehouse ours. Would you help us rehouse our Arions?

He designs other new and interesting circuits too. I just saw this thread. Check it out. Awesome.
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1501637

Wow... huh? This is awesome. I so love this site. A big thumbs up.

[archimedes]

Just like to add a big thumbs up for the information in this post 

I have just added a 15pf cap in parallel with the 47pf setting the delay time on my SCH-1 and it has done a great job of largely removing the flanger-esque sound at slow rates and low depth, the pedal now sounds far better at these settings.

I have added this via a switch currently floating around in the battery compartment and it is interesting to compare the effect of the two delay times. I think the original shorter delay sounds better for that fast Leslie thing that everyone loves the SCH-1 for - the longer delay time makes that sound more like any other chorus. For slower speeds though where the flanging kind of sound is more evident and annoying the longer delay is better to my ears and the effect still sounds rather more Leslie like that any other chorus I have had (remarkably like the good features of a Rocky Road in fact but without the drastic negative effect on tone).

I read a post or review somewhere where someone was saying that their MXR Micro Flanger does a great fast Leslie sound and this seems to bear that out. A chorus with a variable delay (Dod?) might be interesting to try in this regard but the Arion just has such a great organic sound to my ears that I can't imagine anything beating it and yes I have owned a CE-2.

I have also added a trimmer in parallel with R58 which has sorted the slight volume boost which is another easy win

[zombiwoof]

The problem with the intermittent pots is common with the Arion pedals, and the pots are difficult (read: impossible) to find unless you find used ones.  There are a couple of used ones on Ebay right now, the Tone should be a 100k.  One thing I found out is that the pedal ground goes through the pot lugs, so try touching up the solder joints on the pot, it might help.  Those pots must have been ordered specially for the Arion company (which is still in business under a different owner, but the recent pots are slightly different than the vintage ones).  New Arion pedals are made in China now, and even if you can get the parts through them, I don't think you'd be able to get the original type from them.

Good luck,
Al

[sandro]

Hi, I have a question: I solded a LED between +9V and rate-pot ground with a resistor in series in order to have a pulsing LED going on with the rate of the chorus, and now I am trying to slow down the quantity of the overall rate by putting a 15 Pf cap in parallel with cap 31. Don't have the guitar in my lab so the only thing I can do is watching the pulsing LED connecting or disconnecting the 15Pf cap... nothing happen to the rate velocity of the LED. Something wrong?

Thankyou very much, to you or any other that would like to answer.

<<<< MARK HAMMER INFO WARNING >>>>


There's a small "pf" cap near the MN3102, probably C 31, which sets the amount of
pitch wobble for the circuit, usually 47pf.
It should be across pins 5 and 7 ?
It adjusts the delay time, Chorus is around 10 Msec and Flange a bit more like 20/30 Msec
Reduce that for more subtle wobble, perhaps 33pf would do it.



Marty ( Thanks Mark )

Well....close....but the cigar stays in the wrapper.

C31 is the component in question, but a few corrections:

• Flanging involves shorter time delays (usually between 1 and 12msec) and chorus involves longer ones (between around 6 and 20msec).
• More resonance is usually created at shorter delay times, with the most noticeable ones being at delays around 2-8msec.  At longer delays, any resonances created are so low you don't notice them that much (e.g., a delay of 15msec yields a resonance around 67hz).
• The filtering in the pedal is tailored to the delay range it aims for, so as to provide maximum bandwidth and maximum clock-whine rejection at the same time.  There is usually a margin of error such that longer delays can be tolerated without incurring noticeable increase in audible whine, but only up to a point, after which you have to start changing cap values in the filters.
• Increasing the value of that cap will shift the delay range upward (and resonances downward), so increase its value to around
  30%-50% more than it currently is.  More than that is probably pushing the envelope as far as keeping clock noise low is concerned.
• At longer delays, pitch wobble becomes more apparent AND irritating.  There are two things you can do about it: 1) trim back on the Depth, and maybe stick a fixed resitor in series with the input of that pot to scale back even more, and 2) cut out some of the bass content on the delay signal, as in the method shown in the Tonepad document for the Small Clone.