Design elegance in circuits?

[jishnudg]

Looking at an old build, John Hollis's "OMNIDRIVE" got me thinking about this...there are a ton of amazing effects pedal circuits, but are some of them better examples of 'design elegance' than others? Not in terms of tone,really, my question is more about the way the components have been used, is there something quirky about the way the circuit is biased etc

so some examples, off the top of my head, would be - -

- John Hollis Omnidrive - - many many nice touches, I learned so much from just reading the schematic
- Bluesbreaker OD - - the DRIVE pot     
- Fulltone Plimsoul - - the dual gang pot thing
- every Jack Orman circuit snippet, especially the ones on diode clipping controls
- the Hemmo Bazz Fuss
- The ROG Thunderbird - - has some neat stuff that I don't really understand, but am wrapping my head around
- Phuncgnosis - - - actually, any Escobedo circuit has so many quirky, interesting things in it

I'm sure there are thousands more - -  any other suggestions from forum members, regarding examples of design elegance in stompbox circuits? Would love to check them out!

J.

[tca]

Here's one more: Arsenio's Tube sound overdrive.

Cheers.

[bool]

Design elegance?

Electra OD.

"The height of cultivation runs to simplicity ... "

[midwayfair]

To me this would be about efficiency. When someone finds a simpler or cheaper way to do something. Controls that do multiple things at once, and nothing they don't need to.

Runoff Groove are the champs at efficiency as far as I'm concerned. I never look at their schematics and say, "I could remove half the components and do the same thing."

The Tube Screamer's tone control is a really great classic example. Also the Big Muff Tone Control. The Klon's gain control.

[amptramp]

I nominate the Tillman preamp - pretty much the lowest part count you can get for a useful circuit.

[Transmogrifox]

Design elegance?

Electra OD.

"The height of cultivation runs to simplicity ... "

+1 to the Electra

[amz-fx]

We had a Muntz television when I was a kid...  it was black-and-white and in a huge wooden cabinet on a stand in the corner of the living room where it could receive all 3 available channels on the rabbit ears antenna. Vacuum tubes, of course.

Earl "Madman" Muntz had a philosophy about electronics which was to simplify them as much as possible. Take out every part that was not absolutely necessary, and keep taking out parts until it stopped working... then put the last part that you took out back in. This was called "Muntzing" and I remember my Dad talking about it (as he worked on our Muntz trying to improve the reception). Earl also had a 4-track audio player that eventually led to the 8-track... elegance in design.  



regards, Jack

ps: Thanks for the mention!

[midwayfair]

Oh, I just remembered my absolute favorite recent example of being really impressed by a design. It's not a circuit but still: I have a Deering Goodtime banjo that came with a back on it. You can take the back off, and then you have all these screws and special bolts lying around that tighten the head and originally held the tone ring on. They don't exactly fit if you try to put them back in because the bolts have a beveled/rounded "head" to hold the tone ring tightly. So how do you get them back on? You just flip them around backwards.

Deering sells a version of the banjo with no back. It's the same banjo body, just with the bolts flipped around.

Although this was "just" something that was done out of practicality in not needing to get two types of bolts, it's just so amazingly well thought out.

[duck_arse]

the ea tremolo seems to have enough about it right that people are still having trouble with building it.

[knutolai]

The ROG Omega is nice. Look at that mosfet!
http://runoffgroove.com/omega.html

[Mark Hammer]

Every variant on the Fuzz-Rite, including the Orpheum and the Shin-Ei FY-2 and doubtless many booteek units I have yet to familiarize myself with.  Two simple cascaded gain stages, and a control that simply panned between the output of one and the output of the other.