Triple pedal order question

[lars-musik]

Hi,

I have a pedal on my workbench taking shape on special request of a neighbouring guitarist. He wants a Tonebender (with tonestack) plus a russian-style Big Muff in one enclosure. I thought I'd throw in a Rangemaster for good measure.

Now the board I made is populated (A Green Russian following the GGG schematic , a Toneburner and a Rangemaster, the latter two share a 7660S voltage inverter).

Now my question: is there a "best" effect order for those three? I am planning on building the whole thing with switched jacks, so that every circuit can be tapped and patched individually but I would like to have a reasonable order to start from.

Any opinions?   

Cheers, Lars

[Ben N]

You don't say which Tonebender, and that could make a big difference here, but I'm not fluent in the differences, so I wont comment on that. Never tried any of these in combination, but: I can't imagine your neighbor actually wants to stack the Tonebender with the Muff, so the order between them is unimportant. I also can't see boosting the inputs of either fuzz with a RM (harmonics of harmonics--ack!), so the RM wouldn't go first, unless it's modded to be full range or mid boost, and even then. Truth be told, I'm not sure I would have much use for a RM after the fuzzes, either, but that's the scenario I can most easily imagine. There have been various interesting experiments with boosting the input of a Fuzz Face with a RM or similar boost, but a Tonebender (MkII, at least) is already a boosted FF. I don't know if adding another boost--especially a treble boost--will be very useful. So, bottom line, for me, I'd probably never use any two of them together, so order doesn't matter. In fact, I might try to have a 1-of-3 footswitch to select between them.

[lars-musik]

I had linked the schematics in my first post (just click on the pedal's name in the brackets they should pop up), so there you can see which specific circuits I built.

also thought about the impossibility of stacking these, so all of them have one or the other switchable mod (Rangemaster to full spectrum, the Tonebender has a switchable Q1/Q2 collector bias that makes it a very nice overdrive and a switchable diode clipping in the Muff).

So they could make for interesting sounds when combined (but maybe not). However, I thought there might be some impedance issues that I'll never get and so I figured "why not ask".

[Ben N]

Sorry I missed those links before, Lars, my bad. If you're only using one of them at a time and they are true-bypassed, there should be no special impedance issues. In case they are ever used together, in light of the differing power supply polarities, make sure you've got coupling caps as per the schematics.

As I mentioned before, switching that requires only one stomp to pick any of your four choices (3boost/fuzz + bypass) and automatically turn off the others would be cool, although implementing it adds a lot of complexity & cost, plus a switching board. If you're interested, RG mapped out a way years ago, but it's buried in a bigger fx switcher project. Lookee here, at drawings 7 & 8 and associated text. I have no idea if the CMOS chips are still available, though.

[lars-musik]

Thanks for your ideas.

I think, I'll stick to a serial switching scheme for the three circuits. I once built a Wooly Mammoth + Big Muff (the Wooligan Pi, here for a good friend who is a classical and jazz double bass player) also both switchable and it sounded really mean and fun with both circuits active.

I just surfaced from my workbench in the basement where I wanted to try some mods on the new project but just played the beast in different combinations. It is really great. It has a "tame" switch, that brings the collectors of the Tonebender's Q1 and Q2 up (or better "down") to about 8.something volts (510R instead of 10K for R4). In combination with the switchable emitter cap options on Q2 it sounds really great  in front of the Big Muff(although it still hums quite a bit without an enclosure and with the long cables that I'll shorten when I'll box it).
The negative and positive ground mixture also works very well with the ICL7660S voltage inverter.

Here's a preview of what I'll have to stuff in one box:

[amptramp]

If you want to be able to support every permutation, have the output of each stage go to a busbar and use a rotary switch to select which bus output will be the input for that particular stage.  One of the rotary switches will connect to the output and there will be one busbar for the input.  If you are only going to do the selection once, you can make the rotary switch a DIP switch - there is no need for it to appear as an operator control unless you plan to change the configuration during a set.  This also allows you to delete stages if you find they should not remain in use.

[MrBinns]

if you had a 2pol, 6pos, 2 deck rotary switch

or 2 2pol, 6pos rotary switches and kept them synced

this should work:

[lars-musik]

Thanks very much for your suggestions. I'll look into it (although I think that switchable jacks with patch-cables might just work a little more intuitiv for me and the guitarist I am building it for).