Psychtar Review

[jmusser]

I don't know if anyone has built this yet or not, so I wanted to let you in on what I've found out. First of all, I'm happy to say that is exactly as Tim has advertised it. Sitar AND octave up, with the flip of a switch (and adjustment of the pic ups). I have a fat strat, and I had heard that the Sitar portion of this worked better on a single coil in the bridge position. It may, but it worked just fine on the bridge pic up half of the humbucker. The Sitar sounds best with the tone controls rolled off, and the volume turned about a quarter of the way up. It comes through no matter how you have your tone set, or if you're on the neck pic up, but the BEST is tone rolled off, bridge pic up, 1/4 effect volume. All it's really going to take now, is to spend some time with it and learn the finger intricasies of getting the optimum out of it. You need lots of hammer ons and pull offs, but the tone IS there. Next, switch to the octave up. If you're set up like you were for Sitar, you're still basically playing Sitar, except it's not as pronounced. Switch to the neck pic up keep your tone rolled off, and dime the volume. Lord! It has a very nice (& loud) clean octave up, that I would put right up there with the up octave of the Super Fuzz sound sample thet RDV played. This octave up, does not like two strings at once, PERIOD! You can get by a little doing power chords with the E & A strings, but it basically sounds horrrible like most down octaves do when you want to play two strings at a time, on any of the other 4 strings. I had the Jawari bagged up for a long time to build, and I just didn't think I would play that effect enough to warrant building it. I took the gamble that the sitar portion of this effect would be as good as the Jawari sample, so I would have that to play around with, and then have an up octave I could play a lot more often. It is just as good as the Jawari sample, and has one helluva up octave. Another thing, this thing has MAJOR gain. It is amazingly LOUD with the effects volume turned up. My ears are still ringing. If either of these effects are your cup of tea, you're in for a treat. Once again Tim you have a winner!

[jmusser]

After I've built this now, I'm wondering what it would take to be able to switch in a fuzz option for the the octave up portion of this effect ? I want to keep the clean octave, but it has such a pronounced octave that it would be cool to be able to fuzz and sustain it. Is it just a matter of boosting and clipping the output? Yes, you're correct, I want my cake and eat it too!

[onboard]

That's cool Jim. And sort of freaky, in a synchronous sort of wy. Let me explain. A friend and I have been emailing about pedals. Out of the blue yesterday, he writes that he can't stop listening to Ravi Shankar lately.

Ok, just a small coincidence. Last night I decide to poke around on the breadboard and what happens by accident? Yep,  touch something here and there and suddenly - it sounds like a sitar.

Then I log in to look for Jawari info and here's your Psychtar post. Soon to be thread, I hope.

S'anyway - you want to do what? Fuzz and sustain just the octave? Here lately my brain is leaning towards putting an active mixing stage at the end of just about everything to find the benifits - if any- of blending in dry signal. Could it be a matter of tapping the signal where you want, sending it off to get it's own treatment, and actively mixing it back in?

Sorry if that's just plain ludicrous.

[jmusser]

Tim's Octup Blender already does a great job at doing that. I just want to flip a switch while the up octave is on, and have it go from clean octave to fuzz. That may mean it needs a boost section in front of it that drives it harder for the fuzz, but I'm not sure.