Reckless Vibe - an original uni-vibe (univibe) inspired effect pedal

[jonny.reckless]

The uni-vibe has long been my favorite guitar effect pedal. I have owned multiple vibe style pedals including the Fulltone mini deja vibe, the Dunlop Rotovibe, the MXR uni-vibe, the EHX good-vibes and the Mooer shaky Jimi. I've also built a trivibe from runoffgroove which is a great design.

I always wanted to design and build my own vibe pedal. The Reckless Vibe is a 4 stage device using LM13700 for the allpass filters and the LFO. It features a true sinusoidal low frequency quadrature oscillator, BJT based frequency exponentiation and a variable blend control. I'm really pleased with the sound.

Listen to it here:

Schematic:


I laid out a PCB for this project which fits into a Hammond 1590DD enclosure as you can see in the video. Let me know if you would like to build one.

[Plexi]

Love it!
I'm another Univibe fan (had two Dunlop UV1, Microvibe, Wilson Effects Haze Vibe).
In a future I would like to get the Rotovibe.

Where is placed the vibe in the chain?
I can perceive it's more "phasey" in some sounds, not so scooped/swoosh like many vibes

[jonny.reckless]

The sounds are guitar -> vibe -> amp. I used a Fender Mustang for this track.

The amp is the Boba FET (another original design on here) into Celestion Vintage 30s in a 2 x 12 Seismic cab.
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=118627.new;topicseen#new

[Chuck D. Bones]

Hi,
I'm new around here, been lurking for a few months soaking up the wisdom.  I don't see the schematic for the Reckless Vibe, has the link vanished?

Thanks,

Chuck D. Bones - Circuit Wizard and sometimes guitar player

[duck_arse]

welcome, Chuck.

what we have here, is failure to communicate. the postimage."org" addresses need to be changed to postimage.cc instead, like this:

https://postimg.cc/image/g8omyncc5/

[phaeton]

Aside from the great sounds, I feel like one should point out that top-notch construction.  I followed the link to the Boba FET and I must say that that is well-done also!

You do good work Jonny, especially for someone so Reckless!   

[jonny.reckless]

Thank you for the kind words! I've got a couple of spare PCBs. I can send you one for $5 plus postage if you are interested in building one.

[pinkjimiphoton]

jonny, count me in for a board please if there's any left
thanks bud!

[Eb7+9]

really like your pre/de-emphasis idea here Jonny

though not a vibe clone per se, sounds very good
other great ideas in here too

well done (again) ...

[jonny.reckless]

really like your pre/de-emphasis idea here Jonny

I have to give credit to runoffgroove for that idea. It's a part of their trivibe circuit, which I built a couple of years back. Helps a lot to keep the LM13700 noise down.
http://www.runoffgroove.com/tri-vibe.html

[Chuck D. Bones]

Thanks Johnny.  Sorry I took so long to see this and respond.  Pretty impressive design work, making a proper sinewave oscillator and then doing an exponential conversion.  I can see the benefit of the exponential sweep: spend equal time in each octave.  I have a MOSFET-based design in the works and was going with a triangle-wave LFO driving an exponential converter.  Now I have to rethink whether I want a triangle LFO or sinusoidal. 

[noisette]

Just want to say it´s a really nice circuit! To get the LFO right is probably the most important and difficult for vibe circuits!
Something to brood over for me in the train, thanks Johnny R.!

[jonny.reckless]

Thanks for all the great comments. I'm actually working on a new revision of the vibe. I'm trying to make the PCB a bit smaller, and add support for an expression pedal to control speed. Will post here when I finally get it working how I'd like.

Getting the OTA based quadrature oscillator working right took a lot of tweaking!

[Myampgoesto12]

Thanks for all the great comments. I'm actually working on a new revision of the vibe. I'm trying to make the PCB a bit smaller, and add support for an expression pedal to control speed. Will post here when I finally get it working how I'd like.

Getting the OTA based quadrature oscillator working right took a lot of tweaking!

Wow I totally love that sound. Having expression control for speed would be awesome. I'm still new to doing this kind of work, and LFOs are still a bit beyond me, design and what not. I check on stuff like this a lot though.

Thanks Johnny.  Sorry I took so long to see this and respond.  Pretty impressive design work, making a proper sinewave oscillator and then doing an exponential conversion.  I can see the benefit of the exponential sweep: spend equal time in each octave.  I have a MOSFET-based design in the works and was going with a triangle-wave LFO driving an exponential converter.  Now I have to rethink whether I want a triangle LFO or sinusoidal. 

My taste, personally is sinusoidal sounds better for strait vibe, but triangle could sound cool with the more phaser like tone. I've seen schems emplamenting simple diode pairs to ground(?) through variable resistance to clip the peaks of a triangle wave, but I guess thats at the cost of the swing of the LFO, and its more of a faux sine?

Anyway this thing is wicked cool. Good job, man.