Creeping Featurism....

[phaeton]

Not sure what I'm looking for by posting this thread, It's more like a Request For Comment.  (That means i'm about to get all philosophical and I don't expect us to come to any real conclusions.  But we might have a fun discussion)....

Suppose you have a circuit roughly sketched together.  The specifics in this case aren't important, just the concept.  In my case, i'm specifically thinking on combining an EH Screaming Bird (Treble Booster) and EH Mole/Hog's Foot (Bass Booster) by running the two circuits in 'parallel'.  Probably not a new idea but interesting nonetheless.  So we've got a circuit that boosts treble and bass and by that action 'cuts' the mids.  Might be fun to play with.

Why not include a separate "drive control" for each side- Now we have an active EQ pedal, albeit somewhat simplistic.  We could have a lot of fun with a boost like this, right?

So lets add some clipping diodes- one set for the treble booster section, and one set for the bass booster section.  Choose any type you like.  I'm currently fascinated with the sound of 1N4001 rectifiers so that's what I'll use.  I say we use a separate SPST switch on each, so that we can engage or disengage the diode pairs separately.  It might be kind of fun to play around with this- you can distort one side or the other, or with the volume control you can set one half for just a slight rattle and the other for full-bore clipping.  Cool, eh?

Well, now we'll need a 'balance' pot to equalize the outputs of the two halves- clipping diodes will hack the level down.  So let's add a pot with each circuit tied to one of the outer lugs, and the wiper as the output.  Easy Sneezy.

Hey now, this is a boost pedal after all, so let's put another boost stage after it just to make sure that our clipped circuits are up to snuff.  We could use a transistor, but why not a TL082?  Either way, we'll need a volume pot at the end to even it all out.

-But wait, there's more!-

Why not connect each half of the first part to each side of the TL082 chip-  A separate gain stage for both sides.  If the Screaming Bird/Hog's Foot sections are built right, we should be able to push that little TL082 into some nice JFET overdrive, no?  So we'll put the "balance" control right after that, and feed it straight into a transistor.  Then we'll put the master volume control on the end and we're done!

-And if you call in the next 10 minutes, we'll send you......-

Whuddya say we change those SPST switches for some DPDTs so we can switch out different pairs of diodes?  Maybe the brightness of my 1N4001s on the bass side would compliment the 'softness' of some staggered GE diodes on the treble side, no?  How about if we switch them out a different way?  Hell, let's get some rotary switches and line up sets of diodes with capacitors on them, MOSFET transistors on them or even.....


At what point do you stop? 

Sure, not all these combinations are going to sound good.  Some might be horrible.  Some might be excellent.  It's all pretty subjective, too.  Breadboarding the whole mess will tell you pretty quickly what you like and don't.  However, my tastes tend to change, somewhat frequently.  Is it better to try to build everything into one "STOMPMASTER 3000" pedal, or is it better to have a pedal that "does one thing, and does it well"?  Putting this all in one box will create something huge with so many power-hungry components that you have to plug into your dryer's 3-phase 220 outlet.  If you build a whole stampede of stompbox variations, is that any better?  Is it better to accomplish something great or spread this all out over time? I'm not looking at this from a Dollars and Cents perspective, because all in all this is actually one of the cheaper hobbies you could have, and even if it were expensive it's pretty dern fun anyhow.  It's good clean fun.  It keeps me out of the cathouse. It's a real hoot.  R.G. Keene calls it "my personal choice of a good time", and what's good for R.G. is good for us.

Thoughts?

[Coriolis]

Good point, and you're not the only one!

"What if I univibe my Phase 45? Hey! What if I could switch between a gazillion different caps, instead of just the phase pair and the vibe pair?"

I go through this everytime I build something. It really is tempting to enter "feature hell" with a lot of designs, but most of the time, I don't do it! See, I found out it's not for me. Cas in point: I built a tremulus lune because I wanted a trem, but of course I fell for all it's bells and whistles (what if i need that variable waveform?) instead of just building an EA or something. When it was fininshed, I found that i basically only ever adjusted the speed and depth knobs, at least for sounds I was going to use, and i should have known it, because I like traditional tremolo-sounds (like fender-amps) for my guitar!

I've also built the Scrambler, only to find out that the "Blend" knob is useless to me, I basically wan'tto hear that effect full on or not at all!
So I've wired up a pot I didn't need, and drilled a hole for it too!

I guess for the style of guitar- and the kind of songs I lke to play, it's better with something I can just turn on and play, instead of getting on the floor and tweak it to death. From now on, i will concentrate on getting a few good sounds in a box, and not go over board and confuse myself!

...But I still wanna build me a big fat modular synth, with every option in the book, some day!

C

[phaeton]

I basically wan'tto hear that effect full on or not at all!

Heh.. me too, usually, but there are times where I want the distortion to be 'just right' and would tweak it for days and days.

In the late 80s, early 90s when I was still doing the club circuit I had an old SS Peavey amp from the 1970s, a TS-10 and my old KMD Phaser- that was my whole rig!  I would lust after the towering racks some guys had- all this beautiful processing that could create any sound known to man.  Then I realized that 90% of these guys all had one "sound" dialed in and that's all they'd use the entire set.  Most of them even had the same "sound"- high gain, scooped mids, chorus and multitap delay for solos.  Well, then there were the guys that didn't play guitar, they played their effects.  You know the type- they'd go through 16 patches in each guitar solo.

Simple is beautiful.  Jack Orman's Muffer is a wonderful device.  Of course the one I built is full of mods, but most of the time I ignore my tweaks and use it pretty much as the original schematic.  It's either off or on. I love it!  But then I could sit in front of a rack of effects all day and scroll menus and twist knobs, and create some really far-out sounds.

I can't win!

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

One compromise for the more 'occasional' tweaks, is the trimpot with a little screwdriver adjust hole thru the case. I'm a "more knobs = better" kind of guy, but even I can see the problem of having to reset too many knobs before a gig (fortunately i don't gig!).
The 4MS people show you what happens if you can't say no to knobs..

[Ge_Whiz]

Answer: you breadboard your circuit idea with all the bells and whistles. Then you play with it for days, identifying what works and what doesn't, what sounds good and what sounds crap. Finally you squeeze it into the smallest possible box with just the one knob for output level. Then you build a classic Treble 'n' Bass booster and give the new design to a friend, 'cos the classic design sounds better. 

[Mark Hammer]

Nice idea for a thread.

If you take a healthy sampling of pedals released by the major manufacturers of the period, and counted the average number of knobs and switches on the chassis, you'd see a fairly linear increase over the last 35 years.  The same company (E-H) whose pedals too often consisted of one knob and one switch (what I like to call one-knob-wonders) no produce a variety of floor-pedals with at least 6-10 controls.  DOD went from a variety of one and 2-knob wonders to the average pedal having 4 or more knobs.  MXR had 4 knobs on their top of the line products 25 years ago, and today they have things like the Double Shot.  And so on.

So, why?  I suspect this transformation has occurred not because we KNOW more now.  The sorts of mods we often discuss here are frequently the outgrowth of things from 25 year-old articles.  What HAS happened, however, is an increasing hunger for both divergent and convergent sounds.  Huh?  What I mean is that the average musician's knowledge of the tonal palette that is "out there" in the musical world spurs them on to find something different and unique ("divergent") for an occasion or for their own signature, and that means building more options into any given pedal.  At the same, there is a desire by musicians to be able to reproduce, at will, a tone they have heard elsewhere  that they either need to reproduce for commercial reasons (i.e., cover band), or simply because they like it.  Consequently, they desire pedals that allown reconfiguration is service of emulating other pedals and rigs ("convergent").

Why am I telling you this, and what does it have to do with your question?  Well, the question is "Where do you stop?"  My answer is "When you have enough control to produce pleasing variety, and reasonable emulation capabilities.  Sometimes it doesn't take very much.  For instance, make yourself a Ropez/Ross phaser.  Now add: 1) a switch to cancel the dry signal, 2) a switch to increase the LFO rate into the audio range, and 3) a switch to add the phasefilter option.  You now have a pedal with a surprising amount of flexibility and range of sounds available, well beyond what is typically found in phasers.

I guess the key thing to ask yourself is what feature set will make the most difference with the least work or parts count.  Though I'm a little too old to have grown up with "Transformers" toys (well, we DID have the Johnny Seven One-Man Army), I like simple things that can totally reconfigure a pedal.  Twist one knob or flick one switch, and its a whole different beast.  There may be other features that could be added, but if I can have a clean economical zen-like chassis surface with a couple of controls that achieve a lot of variety, I'm happy.  Certainly one of the advatnages of such arrangements is easy reproducability.  In other words, nailing a sound a second time a few weeks later does not involve memorizing some 10-control "code".

[petemoore]

  A 'door handle' to access "A" tone is much easier/quicker to open than a 'combination lock', Leaving all the numbers except 1 or 2 on a 'combination lock' circuit certainly makes it easier to find your way to "A" tone.
  Tremulous Lune has so many knobs that are interactive, it's a bit much, and I find I'm leaving many of them 'just set so'...'this' one changes 'that' one...I need to mark and write a manual for setting the circuit up for different types of tremolo really...or a 'map' of desirable settings, showing knob settings for 'Fender' or "Chop' or whatever 'name' I choose for "X" type tremolo...I'm sure I could 'get by' with a good fewer knobs, but would have to re-assess the circuit and what I do 'need or want, and what I think I could get by 'without'...As it is I leave most of the knobs untouched and enjoy the really great tremolo sounds, mainly just adjusting speed and depth.
  I do 'treadle' alot on the phase speed pot, but don't really adjust mix and depth that much.
  80% of the knobs I have I think I just leave 'set'...but I DID set them, so for *finding the desired pre-sets they are quite necessary.

[PenPen]

I think this is just normal human curiousity. You wonder more "hmmm, what if I change this here, how will that sound?" when building these things. I second Ge_whiz on, do it on the breadboard to experiment with, and you will find the sweet spots. I got into this whole hobby to find my sound. No distortion pedal on the market that I have ever heard does exactly what I want. Many have portions of what I'm looking for, but not exactly. I need a pedal that has two modes, a slight distort, and a full on distortion. To make it useful, I needed it to have a bypass switch, and an A/B switch. But as I search for the sound, I find pedals with this feature and that could be useful, so I add it to my design sketch. Then I did a second run, and decided that some features wheren't useful for ME, or that this or that would be set permanently. Currently, I have 4 features in my Pre stage, 4 in my "boost" stage, 5 distortion types in my Distortion stage for blending, and 3 features in my Post stage. I think that is about the limit, some of this will change when I start building the stages and I decide that some things can go or not. You add features, then make a few sweeps to clean up the things that you don't really need. I have it spec'd now with many things as switches, but only items that I NEED as switches. This sucker is a monster, but it will be better than having 10 pedals to lug around, most with settings that never change. So I figure it will be best to just put them in a single box with a single on/off switch.

Other pedals I want to build I plan to strip functionality out of. When I built AMZ's Muffler, I change a couple of values, omitted the diode clipping (didn't like it), and added a second transistor stage, with just a single control for master volume, which is just a trimpot and I'll be replacing that with a resistor soon. When I build the EchoFlanger (long time from now) I intend to strip out everything that is not related to the chorus and flange modes. I have a design goal in mind and adhere to it.

In my teens, I was in a punk band, and just had a distortion pedal, thinking that was all I needed. But I liked Sonic Youth and other noise bands, so I added a phaser (later replaced with a flanger), my bass player had a distort and a wah, and that was about the max we needed. I've played with making noise tapes adding in a delay (god you can get some crazy sounds from these), I have one that my wife won't listen to anymore, it sent her into a panic attack the first time she listened to it. All the same, I could find no use for a delay in my own music other than noise, so I haven't purchased a delay and probably won't. Probably wont' make one either. You just have to decide if you really need something or not and don't go overboard thinking you may need this or that. Keep your pedalboard as clean and trim as possible, thats my philosophy.

[petemoore]

  Keep your pedalboard as clean and trim as possible, thats my philosophy.
  When I NEED a pot for something, and don't have that value item, that's when I go looking for a pot I don't use, set it, and replace it's position with a fixed or fixed resistors...
  The 'Clean and Trim' philosophy is probably a really good one to adhere to Before building a circuit with all the adjustable parameters: Adjustable first, then set.
  It would tend to save looking for cool 'hole fillers',,or open holes.
  I DO need to use the 'unused' pot when I add another circuit before or after in the chain though...

[grs149]

The issue of "how many variables" comes up every time I embark on a new project. Back in the 80's, I read a construction article by Craig Anderton in Electronic Musician magazine for a bank of switchable bandpass filters to adjust the timbre of a guitar signal. He discussed a number of possible mods to the circuit, including the substitution of variable pots in place of simple On/Off switches for each filter, but he cautioned that the result of this mod would probably be "more quantitative than qualitative."

Effectively, he seemed to be saying that "just because to can add infinite variability to Parameters A, B, C, and D, don't assume that your life will be happier as a result."

I have always kept this philosophy in the back of my mind as I experiment with various effects. My approach has always been:
1. Experiment with and ELIMINATE as many possible circuit mods/variables as you can while it is still on the breadboard.
2. If you can possibly  use a switch in place of a pot to control a parameter, use the switch.
3. If you can possibly use a hard-wired setting in place of a control of any kind, use the hard-wired setting.
4. Once you've arrived at a (beadboarded) setup you think you're happy with, set the whole thing aside for a few days. Then come back and listen to it again.
5. If you're still happy with the sound, build and box it. Quick, before you change your mind!
6. Never modify the circuit again.
7. Spend a long time practising/playing your guitar to make up for the time you spent working on that pedal. This is supposed to be about the MUSIC, after all. If you spend all of your time revisiting/tweaking your effect pedals, you've lost sight of your prime objective.

Greg

[Mark Hammer]

I *love* "big picture" threads like this one.  Thanks Phaeton, and thanks to the contributors so far for their ideas and reminiscences..

[R.G.]

At what point do you stop? 

Why on earth would you ever stop??? (ROFL...)

Ok, I can type again now... oh, my sides hurt...

You're getting two kinds of answers here: tinkerers and players.

Tinkerers will add knobs forever. And tinkerers design pedals.

Players want exactly the sound they want, with no confusion, fuss, or bother. One toe-tap and bango, it's there. On stage, you do NOT want to be futzing around with knobs, selector switches and settings when you want to go from "hyperatomic laser bleed" on a lead line to "Borders bookstore" for a ballad, especially if it's all in the same song. A real player wants one button for this, another for that, and as little mess and fuss getting from one to the other as possible.

Player-tinkerers are terminally confused. Or just schizophrenic.

[GVC]

Great thread!  I have been going overboard with switches lately (SPDT, SPST, DPDT) for Diode switching, input cap, impedence, boost, etc., sometimes in conjunction with Pots but not necessarily. 

I would really like to see some photos of some of the frankenstiens our imaginations force us to create, anyone???

[GVC]

PS,

I love my switches, and I am more of a player,  My reasoning for switches is two voicings for the Guitar and or AMP change,  I dislike knobs because it is always up and down, especially if the knob is sensative.  Switches allow you to make, sometimes subtle, changes to suit the situation.

I am sure we can all agree that a pedal will, and should, sound totally different depending on what else is in the lineup.  Some diode combos sound better with teles than Les Pauls and the other way around.

[Peter Snowberg]

Fantastic thread! 

I'm such a victim of feature creep that I went to DSP to accommodate it.

You can never have too many knobs and switches while designing, but once you make it to a working prototype, it's time to limit things a little as overlap becomes apparent.

Case in point, you don't need several of the volume controls in the above example because a blend control should be able to take care of the same functionality.

The big trick is finding enclosures that fit a pedal board.

[RDV]

My bestest switch I got is the MRB on my Vox/LM3886 amp.

Drastic that one is.

RDV

[PenPen]

Players want exactly the sound they want, with no confusion, fuss, or bother. One toe-tap and bango, it's there. On stage, you do NOT want to be futzing around with knobs, selector switches and settings when you want to go from "hyperatomic laser bleed" on a lead line to "Borders bookstore" for a ballad, especially if it's all in the same song. A real player wants one button for this, another for that, and as little mess and fuss getting from one to the other as possible.

Player-tinkerers are terminally confused. Or just schizophrenic.

I think this is a good point. I'd like to say I fall into the split persona catagory. When I design the tinkerer comes out, playing with this and that, making everything variable. Then I sit back and realize the tinkerer side is designing FOR the player side, and I think about how the player would want it to be (the UI). I developed this technique from computer programming, the geek side wants all kinds of options, the user side wants the computer to read his mind and let him do stuff. All too often I find software that was geek designed, and they took no consideration for the user, and as a result, the user is left baffled by it. Same applies to effects. I need to tweak and twiddle with parameters when making boxes, but then I get done with that and think about the player side of me, what am I going to want up on stage, I start cleaning up stuff I'm never going to want to use, find the sweet spots and hard wire it. Because I'm the player I know what I want, I don't have to leave stuff in for other players to fiddle with finding their sound. So I can confortably hard-set values for parameters. If you are doing a commission work, then talk extensively with the player to find out what they want to use it for, and then design it to be as simple as possible to the player.

Recently I had two jobs come in, one friend needed his guitar rewired, and while doing so I started getting ideas of adding switches with different caps for the tone and such. Then I did an evaluation, is he really wanting to do that, is it going to be useful to him, and it turned out that no, he liked the tone of it as it was, so I left it as is.
The other, a friend was going into the studio (with Steve Albini producing!) and needed something to stutter his guitar. I discussed options with him, my mind dreaming up designs with active components, a tremolo circuit, a buffer, etc. But when all was said and done, he just wanted it to cut out when he stomped on it, and disengaged when he let off (a momentary mute box). So I experimented with techniques, to remove all secondary noise and buzz (I didn't want to piss off Steve in the studio with some crap box that added noise), and ended up just making a simple series/shunt with a momentary switch. I then refined it down to just needing a momentary SPDT switch, though SmallBear sent me a momentary DPDT and I didn't have time to send it back, but it worked out great, I delivered it Sunday, and he was overjoyed with it. It was dead simple to me, and I could have overdesigned it to make coffee too, but I just focused on what the player wanted, and left it at that.

[phaeton]

Player-tinkerers are terminally confused. Or just schizophrenic.

This is me too.  Furthermore in programming I'm more of the C/UNIX philosophy- once again the "do one thing and do it well".  Just about everything else though, I'm a mess.  On top of it, I'm damn stubborn, which means that with all the questions I ask, and all the great responses from esteemed people and all the excellent advice here I'd still go ahead and build the pedal with 4 knobs and 2 switches on it.  Everyone could "TOLE YOU SO!" until they were blue in the face but It wouldn't matter.

Nuts, huh?

[A.S.P.]

My bestest switch I got is the MRB on my Vox/LM3886 amp.
Drastic that one is.
RDV

my most drastictest switch is the BYPASS stomper...
(it even cuts off the indicator-LED!)

[phaeton]

So who dares me to build this concoction anyways?   

Call it the Feeping Creature, no less....