Small Clone Chorus: distorting a little?

[Bucksears]

Has anyone had any problems with their Small Clone Chorus distorting at all?
I'm finishing up the build on mine (not boxed up yet) and I've noticed that it distorts a little sometimes if I really hit the strings.

Also, how DO you tweak the trimpot? It must have a 'sweet spot' somewhere because I get either: nothing, heavy chorus with a little distortion, chorus or nothing (going around the dial).

TIA

[george]

I guess mine distorts but I think I've adjusted my playing style so I'm not hitting the strings as hard.

I also have a CE-1 and a CE-2, the big difference I noticed going from the CE-1 to the CE-2 was the tendency to distort if I used the bridge pickup.  I guess this is because the CE-1 runs internally on 15V and therefore has more headroom than the CE-2 running at 9V.

Assuming you have the Tonepad smallclone, it uses a MN3007 BBD like the CE-2.  These tend to run better at higher voltages: in fact the Ibanez CS-505 which also uses the MN3007 runs internally on +12V.

I think it comes down to the lack of headroom of the MN3007 running at 9 V..

With the trimpot all you can do is find the point where the chorus kicks in, adjust it until the chorus drops out then set it somewhere in the middle..

I've just learned to live with the distortion,  although others on this forum might have a solution.

[SnooP_Wiggles]

use a 12V power supply? worth a shot....

[RedHouse]

Not to hijack the thread, but anyone else have trouble downloading the Small Clone Chorus project PDF from Tonepad? every time I try I get the error:

Acrobat Reader
---------------------------
The file is damaged and could not be repaired.

used the feedback link to inquire but got no response

[Mark Hammer]

No problems with downloading, myself.

Important to distinguish the headroom of the BBD and the headroom of the op-amps.  The change from 9 to 12 or even 15v has a different impact on the BBD than it does on the op-amps.  In the case of the op-amps, they can usually swing to within a volt or two of the supply, such that a 15v supply can easily result in the capacity to swing plus or minus 6.5v, well over line level.

The BBD itself, has a much smaller degree of headroom (couple of volts max) and while I suspect that supply voltage changes impact on that, one doesn't necessarily get the same return on investment.

The bias trimpot is likely the key to nailing as clean a sound as possible.  While it is often possible to nail the cleanest tone by ear, there are trimpots and there are trimpots, and you may well be having a difficult time zeroing in with the one you've used.  It's also the case that it is harder to identify the "clean zone" by ear using a guitar strum as your signal source than if you used a steady tone from some source like a keyboard or signal generator.  There are a gazillion simple signal generators, using 555 timers or whatnot, posted around.

As for CE-1/CE-2 comparisons, parts of the difference between these beasts is that the 50k input pot on the CE-1 loads down the guitar like crazy.  A buddy who attempted to improve upon that by following the folk wisdom of changing the low value pot for a higher value one found that with the better preservation of signal and high end also came clipping.

[george]

As for CE-1/CE-2 comparisons, parts of the difference between these beasts is that the 50k input pot on the CE-1 loads down the guitar like crazy.  A buddy who attempted to improve upon that by following the folk wisdom of changing the low value pot for a higher value one found that with the better preservation of signal and high end also came clipping.

I guess another thing is that the CE-1 has the handy "level" control and high/low input level switch which lets you pad down the input to prevent clipping ...

Mark, another thing about BBDs, what's the difference between the MN32XX "low voltage" BBDs and their MN30XX equivalents?  


regards
George

[differo]

I had same problem with small clone from tonepad. I was just excited that is worked with the mn3007 I picked up from ebay that I boxed it and played for a while and then I put it back on the bench just to try fixing the small clipping. Well, as Mark said my problem was the bias and after fiddling with the trimpot, I found the nice spot with just enough chorus and no clipping whatsoever. If I just touch the trimpot and turn it for a 1/10mm to the left or right it starts to clip. 

[Mark Hammer]

Lately, when talking people through the task of tweaking the bias, one of the recommendations I make is to lift the clean mixing resistor (one end of it) so you hear ONLY delay, and listen to the result/chorus through a headphone amp of some sort.  The idea is to be able to hear the quality of the delay signal in as favourable a circumstance as possible, so that the adjustment can be made as accurately as possible.