Circuit bending a few Things, seeking guidance and suggestions.

[Dumpster Diver]

My latest spell of boredom has borne a small peach in the form of a new and un-deniable psychedellic wave of sonic ability.

Circuit bending a few Stomps has me reaching for greater sonic potentials, not being experianced as many of you, I have run into some issues of how to Controll the beast once it has been unleashed.


I bent a Denelectro pastrami OD, it has only one bend (I see that Im not the only person out there who discovered this bend on their own) ..It Hyper gains the volume untill the notes im playing are starting to glitch out decaying notes on my guitar, it has a very peircing Blisteringly loud OD, and Makes very cool Croaking sounds bleed through the notes Im playing at the right balance of settings. very cool but now the mod has left the pedal so incredibly loud, what I need is to learn how to subdue the sound level, I know theres several ways to obtain comfortable volume levels. seeing that the Trims no longer respond normally..but at least I can switch off the Bend if I want...still impressed that it screeches loud as hell, yet hardly working my power Tubes. 

However...the one Im more interested in refining is a Beringer Ultra feedback Distortion.
I needed something like the Ampeg scrambler and by chance I came closer than I thought I was gonna get to that type of sound with the ULTRA FEEDBACK DISTORTION ( I should have probly googled how to bend it BEFORE I went nuts but..well...)

I fried out part of the circuit, either capacitor or IC, or both on relay, when I crossed the wrong thing to a Point on IC4.

but Ended up getting a nice bend Im happy with.

It sounds like 8-bit donald duck playing a gameb0y. I think I will call It the JUICY CRUNCH, it makes a really great..umm..Since Im no expert I have to describe the sound it makes like a kind of Octave Fuzz almost when you get the right setting on your guitar. Another great Effect it produces now is a nice Garbled and Gritty Distrotion, perfect for a sludgy stoner sounding band (not sure what this pedal was designed after originally of course) any note you hit on the fretboard decays back to an open note..makes it sound like it sequences two notes when your playing one note on one string, like any note decay just becomes replaced with your open E again , very cool, I can play Lightning bolt sounding stuff and Its not like playing a conventional Guitar at that point. it makes it sound like your playing a lot more notes and gives you the freedom to play super fast with minimal Strain..the lighter I touch the strings the more effect comes through (seeing how volume and tone controlls on your guitar no longer work the same any longer) its at a comfortable level and when mixed with the CFH you get a very cool Fuzzed out wah sound, I can play Grand-funk sounding stuff and have enough clean to really get a beautiful yet disfigured sounding funk type things going.  but without any volume out of your guitar it Just makes a crazy

Womp womp womp womp womp womp type sound..It has a great flexible sound good for thrash to Doom to black metal.


so..that being said, I have exhausted the extent of my circuit bending capability with my limited experiance and know-how.

The problem I have with this bend is the pedal doesnt have true bypass, you can hear the constant noise from the pedal on your clean signal now that its been bent and completely fried out. and since the pedal Is now Fried, switching off the bend does very little to change the sound back to the original mode of the Circuit. turning the pedal on now, only Just fattens up the effect slightly.

I would have to wire a bypass and have no idea if that can be done easily or not...please point me in the direction where I can study and do some homework on this one.

and honestly the pedal sounds much better since I broke it.

It wasnt something I went and bought, My friend left it here and Well, I was feeling saucy.


Hook the two pedals together and WOW, you better watch out.


It drives this HUGE Long sweeping sequence wave, washing through all sorts of blends...

goes from Overdrive-to-fuzz-to-distortion-to cheese grater in a mind-warping cycle that you just gotta Ride out on.

I play two notes all night and Its more than I can handle.

Bottom line is I need to be able to switch, combine and interchange all my different effects with eachother, and still have my Clean channel as an option.
I dont know how to go around, since Im not very experianced with pedal boards.  maybe you can tell me exactly what I gotta do.

anyway thanks for the interest, Im very enthusiastic about circuit bending...so I am open very much to your advice and suggestions etc...even specifics.

-Jules

[garcho]

Bottom line is I need to be able to switch, combine and interchange all my different effects with eachother, and still have my Clean channel as an option.

Use a laptop.

If you want, you could build (don't be scared to take the plunge from bend to build) a very simple 'FX loop' pedal that will at least give you the ability to bypass bent FX in your signal chain. Use the search function here, or better yet, search on google (i.e. FX loop looper site:diystompboxes.com). It'll take some digging to find what you want, but you'll learn stuff along the way.

[Dumpster Diver]

yeah, I was thinking I would have to somehow make a manual Bypass with some Kind of A,B,Y box, or D.I. somehow, or channel selector Just running out to the bent pedals and back...I really dont have my FX Loop Theory to conceive of something this un-convnetional.

It has to be practical.

[timd]

Yeah - garcho is right - do the FX loop pedal. There are a few varieties out there, both powered and unpowered. I was suggested it from other forum members and it works great and is an easy build. BTW - circuit bending is fun - love the stuff myself.