Electric Mistress: where's treble boosted and then cut down?

[psst]

I built a Mistress, it works fine except it sounds too "dark".
Maybe there's something wrong in my build in the part where the circuit is supposed to bosst the treble, so I only cut it down.
That would explain what's happening.
So where exactly is that treble boost and then the cut down in the circuit?

Also, I find the output lower than in true-bypass. Is this something that usually happens in this circuit?

Thanks a lot!

[Bernardduur]

What EM did you build?

[psst]

The one in generalguitargadgets...

[nelson]

If you have done a true bypass mod to this pedal its normal...however the pedal stock I believe isnt true bypass and there shouldnt be a volume drop.


I am not very familiar with the EH circuit other than it is not true bypass. Is there a gain trimpot you can adjust to raise the effected sound to unity level?

[psst]

Yeah, I thought that, but for now that's not very important to me, I want to fix the treble stuff first.
Does anyboy know which parts of the circuit are the highs booster and then cutter?

[moisho]

Hey psst... I've build mine and I truebypassed it, and I've a small volume drop, but the results are good in general.
Does anyone have a sound sample to compare?. Right now I could say mine is working fine, but... you know

[Mark Hammer]

There actually isn't a heck of a lot of lowpass filtering on the DEM, which is part of what seems to give it a rawer and more desirable (for some) sound.  That being said, the one place where you *could* play a little with the filtering to get a little more high end would be C8 and C9.  The C9/R16 network rolls off highs around 8.8khz, and the R17/C8 netwwork adds to that.  Just for the hell of it, lift one end of R17 and let us know what happens.

[psst]

Ok, I'll try that...
I just came from the shop to try a "real" one, and it suffers from the volume drop stuff too...  

[psst]

BTW, I could manage to put it in a BB Hammond box...

[psst]

In Electro Harmonix they told me there's no easy way to increase the volume, so the solution is adding a gain stage to to the output signal.
So an opamp, with a trimpot and we're there....

[psst]

I just did the mod to be unity gain ON and OFF, very cool. Recommended.
Very cool pedal.

[Lee_ranaldo]

in your mistress version you can adjust the gain of the output OPAMP.

If you find mistress too dark to play floyd.. gilmour uses for chorus sounds like in SORROW intro with a bigmuff..

in Brain Damage (LP version), i guess he uses a univibe, but if it's a mistress you can set up like this.

RANGE 1' o Clock
RATE : Aprox 3' o clock  or 1 o Clock(don't remember right)
COLOR: 1' o Clock

use a bright tube amp falling intro overdrive and you will achieve the sound almost close.

i have a reissue mistress that is almost equal to the Standard mistress version from the late 70's, all filtering. in the reissue version they've increased the bass response changing some caps to 0.22uf value i don't remember right, i had the reissue schematic from H.Davis but i lost it.

If you change the values to stock, the flanger becomes weaker and thinner but sound more choral and vintage. But in stock values it's sounds amazing i can really play anything like the police songs, rush, heart's barracuda sometimes, Emulate a Small Clone. etc.. My Mistress Suffers from lost in high frecuencies, but i guess with true bypass i can cure the problem, (but i like to leave it as stock).

Good Luck!

[Lee_ranaldo]

BTW stock values are values according to schematic. (late 70's one)
Sounds better with reissue schematic values (Increased coupling Caps values more full sounding).

btw i can speak español too.

you have to calibrate your mistress, steven giles posted the calibration procedure for your DEM version.

go to BUZZFOX.COM and you can try the DEM virtually (reissue).

[psst]

Thank you for your comments, but I already calibrated it before. The "darkness" was an illusion of the low output with the crappy practice amplifier I tried it with. It sounds amazing now.
And of course, I built mine with true bypass...
Thank you for your PF setups, but I already had mine, which I like a lot  :wink:

[Bernardduur]

Floyd used a Non-deluxe Electric Mistress

It has a much lighter sound; I love mine.