BACK OFF...passive control.

[stallik]

Interesting. Added an LED. Much noise and really big pop. BUT. the led was not connected to either signal or earth. Just battery +, 120k (3rd pole of switch) and battery -
So, I disconnected the battery and led. Still popping. Went downstairs and turned off the fluorescent tube located under the ceiling directly below my pedals. No popping.
I'd already noticed that my box was noisy without the bottom plate but hey!

Also noticed that some of my other pedals had started popping even with the flourescent off - valvetone, compressor and noise gate but not the spitfire, chasm or PT-80. They are normally all quiet but now?

So, question. Is popping contagious?

[stallik]

AH! Ground had come loose on one of my patch leads. All quiet now with LED and my other pedals are behaving as well.
I've wired the LED to come on when the pedal is on. Seems a bit weird - I'm used to a pedal adding something but this one takes it away. Maybe I'll wire it the other way round

[Mgt280y]

I know it doesn't help with the click but I finished a no click no led one today works and does the job perfect simple things 

https://flic.kr/p/HMCvje

[deadastronaut]

neato... good little tool eh...


yay its sunday....i,ll get time to sort this booger....

[stallik]

Yes, great little tool. Simple but adjustable both in volume and tone. By adding a treble bleed cap, you can really change the whole effect. I'm switching 1nf/none/4.7nf at the moment. Before a spitfire, I end up with the following(my guitar has a 1nf treble bleed)

Guitar full volume
1nf - same as the guitar volume roll off, gets cleaner at lower volumes
None- treble lowers as volume reduces
4.7nf - treble & higher mids by pass the pot. Sound is lower volume than bypass but still distorted.

Going to add a momentary stutter button via a pot to ground

[Mark Hammer]

I remember when J. Everman proposed a passive attenuator box like this a decade or so back, and he got razzed for it.  People dissed him because it was "just" a pot in a box, but from Everman's perspective, he was just responding to customer requests.  I gather those requests were what prompted the EHX Signal Pad as well.  Sometimes you don't want to fiddle around with a volume pedal; you want to just be able to hit a switch and go to a known level.

Craig Anderton once had a project in Guitar Player that was a similar sort of passive thing.  Only in his case it was simply a rotary switch with a bunch of fixed resistors that went between hot and ground to produce different loadings of the guitar, such that one could have the benefits of both 1meg volume pots on the guitar AND lower value pots.

I built one of his LCR "passive tone control" projects into a pedal, along with a Stratoblaster.  The tone control is essentially a midscoop with selectable scoop-point.  Since it is a passive circuit that loses a fair amount of signal level, I added the Stratoblaster as a front end to be able to compensate.  Bypassing the caps and leaving the inductor in yields a bass cut tool, while bypassing the inductor and using the caps provides variable treble-cut; all useful tone-shaping tools, and a nicething to have available at the touch of a toe.

[deadastronaut]

mark,  yep thats it exactly, going to a "known" level...every time.

and no fumbling with a guitar vol....


kev, are you going with a toggle for the bleeds?...

[stallik]

Yes, on/off/on toggle to short 1nf or 4.7nf ceramic (wired in the switch) between lugs 1 & 2 of the pot. I'm using a 220k log pot as that was all I had.

[stallik]

This is what I've ended up with at the moment. I'm sure it will change again. I've omitted the parallel resistor for the treble bleed caps which has likely messed with the pot taper but I'm happy with the result. The stutter looses some treble but you'd never know. I've also avoided switching the LED power via the footswitch

[deadastronaut]

hi guys, been busy of late but i revisited this...the hi/lo gain/vol saga continues..

ive knocked up a buffer on a true bypass breadboard..which works fine

as a test, and no pop or click AFTER a distortion...nice and quiet..

but still pops BEFORE it....(which is what i need/want)

now considering the (seemingly unavoidable) mechanical click that's causing the issue

i'm thinking about Fet switching for this..e.g buffered bypass instead.

do you think its worth a try...e.g, my chasm reverb is totally silent when switched..
or will the going into a high gain still be a problem?

if you remember i just wanted a guitar volume on the floor to have 'preset' passive gain control..
it works, but clicks like a mutha....so thought i'd go down the buffer/vol route instead..

cheers guys.

[ashcat_lt]

FET switching can be de-clicked much more easily than a physical switch because you can lowpass the control signal so that it doesn't change states fast enough to hear.  It will basically fade in and out, but it can usually do that fast enough to not really be audible as a fade while still being slow enough to not sound like a click.

[Rixen]

there's an interesting discussion here on a muting circuit for relay true bypass applications. Probably not quite where you are coming from, but I'm sure it'll help someone..

http://stompville.co.uk/?p=423