Jawari vs Green Ringer

[thehallofshields]

What is it that gives these 2 similar circuits such different sounds?

Transformer vs Transistor as Phase Splitter?
DC Bias / Gating of the Diodes?
Amplifier stage characteristics?

[Mark Hammer]

The sitar sound can be gotten out of most octave-up fuzzes...BUT you need to use the bridge pickup, pick very close to the bridge, pick delicately, and maybe turn down the guitar volume just a bit.  What makes the Jawari circuit get to that sound more easily is that it does not have as much gain up front as an octave fuzz does.

[thehallofshields]

So you basically think it's no-clipping + strong gating of the diodes?

I know you're a big fan of a heavy LPF driving the Green Ringer, but we want a bridge-pickup/upper midrange focus with the Jawari?

[Mark Hammer]

So you basically think it's no-clipping + strong gating of the diodes?

I know you're a big fan of a heavy LPF driving the Green Ringer, but we want a bridge-pickup/upper midrange focus with the Jawari?

Well, the additional harmonic content has to come from somewhere, right?  So there IS clipping.  But the clipping is always a matter of the moment-to-moment signal amplitude, relative to the diode forward voltage.  What makes the sitar sound comes partly from the rapid change in amount and kind of additional harmonic content.  It's like a piece of bread that blends from more peanut butter than jam, to more jam than peanut butter, as you go from one edge to the other.  Except here, the nature of the harmonic content shifts as you go fro the initial pick attack to the onset of the decay.

Personally, I think you're spot on with respect to the need for some sort of highpass filtering.  I've always thought that the "penultimate Jawari" would split the input signal, feeding mids and highs to the transformer/diode circuit, and blending that with a clean low end on the output. Of course, that becomes a more complicated circuit, violating the "Escobedo standard".    But it might sound a lot better.

[thehallofshields]

I'm thinking of using a compander IC and sending;
lows -> compressor -> clean
mids/highs -> expander -> rectifier.

The purpose being to get the attack to really jump out with the unusual harmonics, but then have something there at the decay when the diodes stop conducting, to make it sound a little less dinky. I haven't tried this out yet, it's just an idea in my head right now.