designing for kazoo sound?

[kvb]

A quick search led me to the Si Tonebender as a possible answer.
Tcobretti wrote that his Chronometric Fuzz was Kazoo like.

What if a person was trying to design a fuzz to be as kazoo like as possible?

My first inclination is to think that very boosted mids would be a good idea.
Tcobretti's schem shows a cap rolling of treble on the first transistor.

The kazoo sounds that I've heard (maybe the White Stripes on a couple of songs) make me wonder if they had a particular effect or used a %^&*ed wah with something else.

I'm not asking what I should use. I'm asking what I should try to put together.

What I might do, after I finish a few other projects, is try a wah, booster, Ge transistor combination.

But I know that things might not need to be that complicated. So I'm just asking what you all would suggest or try.

[superferrite]

Put me down for the Kazoo Fuzz if anyone has any recommendations!  I've been listening to some Garage comps and I need something that makes my guitar sound like that kazoo/baritone sax sound.

[nico13]

Mosrite Fuzzrite ?

[birt]

you could also just A/B between your guitar and an electric kazoo. problem solved :p

[Nasse]

Anybody tried connecting a hose from talkbox driver to real kazoo

[Joe Kramer]

I'd guess anything that gets as close as possible to a perfect squarewave will sound kazoolike.  A squarewave has only odd harmonics, and sounds very "hollow."  A well-biased FF, Tone-Bender, etc, should get you in the neighborhood. . . .

[Mick Bailey]

A  'fault' with the Baxandall tone control is the Kazoo-like effect it can produce.

If you got plenty of level out of your primary effect it might drive a Baxandall  directly. If not, use an op-amp or FET as a buffer.

See page 11 onwards for more details;
http://blueguitar.org/new/text/threads/from_adam/baxandall-tone-stack.pdf

[Joe Kramer]

That's interesting about the Baxandall, but it might have more to do with gain levels being altered (massive overdrive, that is) in the tube amp spoken of there.  Since the core of a Baxandall control is really just passive resistor/capacitor filtering, it's fairly "linear" and doesn't create any significant distortion like active gain stages do.  A Baxandall or some other tone shaper might help refine the kazoo effect, but it's still something like a squarewave that you'll need to start with.

[kvb]

Anybody tried connecting a hose from talkbox driver to real kazoo

That's an idea. What's with the roll eyes?

Another idea would be something like a 386 driving a small speaker that is aimed into a real kazoo that has a small microphone pointed at its membrane. All of that could be mounted in an enclosure.


I know that there has to be some square wave happening somewhere but I've heard plenty of high gain square wave action and the kazoo like zing remains elusive.
I've got a Fuzz Face on the breadboard right now. It sings. It is not buzzy.

Baxandall - There's an idea I can try without too much trouble. I'll stick one in between a couple of stages and see what happens. Thanks

[petemoore]

  Kazoo....
  Here's my take on the 'waveforms'.
  every time that membrane hits full excursion there is a small period of super high pressures [a click] that sounds louder than...well it's a bit like whapping somehting with a hammer instead of pulling back and forth on it...
  @@Rate you have the sound of whose voice plays it, the bassier waveform having a 'louder' click for every peak [would be just ahead of every peak] 'amplified' if you will [ie reaching a higher amplitude for a shorter period of time, like you had a board riding the surf hitting a rock 'smash-blam'.
  So...without disconnecting ground on a diode to ground clipping circuit [lol...just to relay the concept], using the point when the diodes conduct and also the point when they stop conducting to produce an electronic 'click'...electronically mimicing [as close as possible, using a circuit of some ilk, say a switch] the tone of the kazoo membrane and it's excursion stops, if not the timing...relationship between the wave peak of the voice and the point when the excursion hits.
  Diode  clipping in itself [or transistors]...anything that switches states as the peaks are neared..has some things in common with kazoo, namely noticably 'distortion on every wave peak.

[Dragonfly]

Fuzz + variable twin T + gain makeup

[superferrite]

I was messing with my Ge FuzzRITE this afternoon and it can get very kazzooy if you starve the signal just right.  I think that is the sound I was looking to emulate, but I guess this topic has some legs anyhow.
The talk box idea is awesome--I can see Captain Beefheart using it with a sax out the other side of his mouth!

[birt]

Anybody tried connecting a hose from talkbox driver to real kazoo

That's an idea. What's with the roll eyes?

Another idea would be something like a 386 driving a small speaker that is aimed into a real kazoo that has a small microphone pointed at its membrane. All of that could be mounted in an enclosure.


I know that there has to be some square wave happening somewhere but I've heard plenty of high gain square wave action and the kazoo like zing remains elusive.
I've got a Fuzz Face on the breadboard right now. It sings. It is not buzzy.

Baxandall - There's an idea I can try without too much trouble. I'll stick one in between a couple of stages and see what happens. Thanks

i was serious with the electric kazoo, it exists.

[kvb]

i was serious

Yeah, That's cool.

However, the point is that I know various artists here or there have played solos that sound very kazoo-ish using their guitar. It might be as simple as using a compressor in front of a fuzz.

I do not have any clear examples (sound clips) of what I am talking about. Besides, I am trying to avoid the types of answers that appear when people ask 'what sort of equipment did so and so use to get this sound'.  I'm really looking to emulate the sound that I get while humming with my bottom lip against my top teeth.

I know that it is not as simple as just plain high gain. Searing, high gain found in the 'big hair' bands is more violin like.

I do have something that comes close to the kazoo thing, but only for certain notes. The rest of the time it sounds heavy-metal-ish.
It is two bazz fuss in series with a 5n cap to ground at the input. This emphasizes the midrange and sounds a bit nasal.  This is what leads me to believe that the kazoo thing involves some filtering.

I'm going to try different arrangements of compressor, fuzz, and the twin T wah that Dragonfly suggests.
And, I will also go and buy a Kazoo and tape it to a Smokey amp. 

[Joe Kramer]

Okay, I just dug through my toy box and found the kazoo (I knew I had one in there somewhere).  FWIW, here's my analysis of the sound.

If you make a sort of "oooh" sound in it (say around middle C), what you get is a fairly pure fundamental with the familiar buzzy sound sort of superimposed on top.  The buzzy sound is of course some very high-order harmonics, but to my ear, these harmonics aren't necessarily related to the fundamental tone, only to the envelope.  In other words, I'm hearing two distinct voices simultaneously, one rather clean tone that corresponds to the fundamental pitch, and one very bright buzzy tone that's layered on top of that.  Seems to me this could be imitated by splitting the signal.  You'd have a fairly clean path, and a path with some very high order symmetrical distortion (read: squarewave) that's high-pass filtered post-distortion.  Then you'd mix these together to suit.  Anyway, that's the hunch I think I'd pursue. . . .

Regards,
Dr.  Kazoo

[petemoore]

  k...here's a cheep 'n easy kazoo like thang to try:
  Drill small  holes in the speaker cone of your most expensive speaker [lol]...
  Epoxy the ID [and a little bit around there] to make them very strong.
  Put guitar strings through the holes.
  attach strong kazoo membrane like patches in front and behind the cone, so that they will smack into the cone upon an excursion and the cone will smack into them. Like loose 'soundy' rivets.
  I'm looking for a better word than 'soundy'...uh oil isn't 'soundy' accoustic guitar bodywood is.
  That should be able to [with cajoling and working with] do a 'kinetic-kibash-kazoo-piece-stop-slam' tone on the wavepeaks. Get about 1/2 kazoo membrane being slammed by the hardened cone of a speaker and...for sure you'll have a "paper flappin' / membrane slappin'' tone.
  The other idea I had was glue some 'slapper-flaps' right to the front of the speaker...messy speaker repairs [before trimming excess patch paper] made small funny sound..
  I tried the 'original fuzzbox'...slicing up speaker cones, glueing them back and slicing another speaker cone the 'other way'...no real advantage in any of that other than arriving at the determination that it didin't work out too good.

[A.S.P.]

Iwant a Talk Boxed Blues Harp 

[ugly_guitar_guy]

Someone beat you to it 

[A.S.P.]

isn`t that a pickupped kazoo?