precursor to the reslie tone and univibe?

[pinkjimiphoton]

many many years ago, before shin ei (?) before honey, before univox, there was a bizzarre precursor to the univbe called the nomad verberola. rarer than hen's teeth. think a reslie tone with a switch for double/half speed modulation, much deeper detune, and an added tremolo mode... well, that's the verberola. i recently repaired one for a friend, required internal microsurgery as i had to repair a broken slide pot, with one wiper snapped off (cleaned and soldered back together) and the carbon track broken in half. i repaired the crack with a pencil, it worked great. when all was said and done, it lives again. i was supposed to scan the schematic, but got caught up in a repair and forgot to before i shipped it back... but the owner was very cool, and sent me a pic of it. i sent a copy to mirosol from tagboardeffects, hoping he can lay it out on vero for us all... anyways, here's the schematic:

[armdnrdy]

Hey Jimi,

Did you record a sound sample when you shad it in your possession?

I can't seem to find one on the net. 

[Mark Hammer]

An article in the current Vintage Guitar has the Honey Psychedelic Machine as the precursor to the Superfuzz and Fy-2.  The Psychedelic Machine, in turn, had what was essentially a Resley-tone/Uni-Vibe included with a Superfuzz in a single chassis.

The HPM came out in 1967 according to the article (which would be about right, if one wished to trace widespread use of the word "psychedelic", though the Timothy Leary-editted journal journal Psychedelic Review dates back to 1963.)

I suppose one has to wonder where the idea for the modified phase-shift circuit came from in the first place, so I suppose it is possible the Verberola predates the Resley and Uni.

Just one question: Also Japanese?

[pinkjimiphoton]

mark,
this is japanese, and was built by the guy who went on to build the honey psych and reslie tone and ultimately the univibe.

i posted this on farcebook today, analog tom tweeted at me that he had tried contacting fumio meida directly about it and got no response.

it differs from the later machines in a couple ways...

first, obviously, it the tremolo... it's a square wave off-on-off kinda pulse, BUT the lamp makes it very neat... it's like a soft clipped square wave, not as harsh as say a kay tremolo.

second, the chorus is more wobbly than any other vibe i've used, other than maybe my clone theory. it has a significant detune, seems to go sharp then flat and is GROOVY AS @#$%.

next, it has a range switch for the speed control by the treadle... (the treadle uses a 5 pin din plug, and is basically a volume control and a pair of wires to trigger the onboard relay that switches the effect in and out)... on the half setting, it's typical univibe speeds.
on the full setting LOOKOUT, JACK, YOUR CHROMOSOMES HAVE MOSQUITOS MELTING THRU THEM... very very fast almost ring mod but very focused still.
very formanty on the chorus setting, i loved the trem, but the vib imho was kinda meh.

overall it wasn't as cool as you may think... i mean for its time it must have been mind-blowing. i've heard better now, and don't get me wrong, it's hip as hell, and sounds great.
but maybe i'm jaded a bit. sounded better than my dunlop univibe, definitely. cleaner, more liquid.

i had time constraints and it was a repair gig so i didn't have time to record audio or video, sorry. i realized on the way back from the post office i'd forgotten to scan the schematic on the bottom lid.

c/p from fsb cuz i gotta gig tonite and gotta get ready and type REAL SLOW>......

that was broken. 

it's not broken anymore. :mrgreen:
expect him to list it close to two g i'd imagine, as this is the unit i just repaired.   
cool toy. more outta tune than a univibe, and with the switch can go from what we all know as a univibe to double that... mosquitos in your chromosones. :twisted:

honestly i wasn't that super impressed, it was very very cool for what it was but my clone'd theory sounds better to me. but definitely worth cloning if someone is up to the herculean task.
i had to turn it around pretty quick and all i got is a crappy phone camera so i didn't do much more than check voltages and stuff... everything was good. he said the volume fader was funky,
so i checked that... bingo. like sooooo many heroic people, the way someone tried to fix the malfunctioning slider was PUSH DOWN ON IT REAL @#$%ING HARD.

they broke the back plate of the slider in half. there were a couple tiny pieces missing, but otherwise a clean break. glued it back into one piece. next problem was the carbon wiper was broken in half. just by butting it back together, got continuity again and the unit worked, but not right... turned up half way, then kind started again in the middle. scratched my baalz for a minute pondering where the @#$% i was gonna find an odd ball 50 year old japanese slide pot.   



pencil lead to the rescue. it's graphite, it's conductive, and you can draw your own resistors with it, so what the @#$%... i scratched it over the crack until it was filled in nicely with a little overlap that should wear down as the pot is used. a little cleaner/lube and no scratches or glitches. got a slightly different taper to it, it rises a little faster in the middle than it did, but then is linear from 0-50 and again from 50-100. it's like there's a little hump in the middle, barely noticeable. :applause: it works again.... BUT...

cuz someone had pushed down so hard on it, they not only broke the carbon and plastic, they snapped the wiper for the carbon track clear off. it was brass, so i took a dental scraper and cleaned up both the broken off wiper and the thing it had broken off, and soldered the bastidge back together real quick like with some silver solder while supporting the whole mess with one of them magnifying glass with two roach clip things on it. i figured i'd have one shot. (wasn't THAT hard, really) so i went for it. got it lined up perfect and got it reconnected. "sproinged" it a few times to see if i could bust it, nope, nice and solid. so i slapped that bitch back together after cleaning the pots switches and jacks and had it back to the guy in about 36 hours... it arrived saturday, i repaired it sunday, off it went again monday.

as i was driving away from the post office i realized i'd forgotten to try and scan the schematic to get a better pic. i'm trying to get a better resolution when it gets back to him (probably today)

lotta money for it, for sure. but what i really liked was the tremolo on it, and the chorus. the tremolo was that hard repeat square wave thing, but because of the lamp fading it kinda rounds off the edges.. and you can go from chop-------chop-------chop to mosquitos. sadly not without flicking the range switch tho.
the chourus is real deep and phasey and vocal like it should be, and very lopsided sounding in a good way.
the vibratto was kinda meh....too much dry signal for my taste.

nice box. figure cloning it would be fun, or maybe someone can figure out a way to implement some of the stuff like the tremolo to the modern-ish vibes.

[pinkjimiphoton]

easier to see in negative, to my eyes

[R.G.]

It's not all that different from the univibe. I can probably hack the NeoVibe, maybe even the UVICS. I'm fairly tied up in the rest of my life right now, so it will be deep in the stack.

[digi2t]

Companion SVC-1 Vibra Chorus

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=30927.0

Dating Shin-ei style "SM-NO" stamps is based on the Japanese calander. The first number is the year, counted from the first year of the Showa era (1925). The second number is the week. So, "54.12" would equal 12th week of 1979.

From this picture;



we can see that it was built the 5th week of 1973.

[pinkjimiphoton]

dino, where do you learn all this stuff?? lol!!!

rg... that would be cool!! be a nice add on for existing pedals i hoped.