Meds are pulsing and fuzzy... but with some boost...

[mistahead]

From me losing it a bit yesterday and going off topic for that thread - I'll throw this out there for (translation) consideration:

Hmmmm Ultra-fuzz like a Silly Face or Fuzz Factory, LFO driven tremelo before it, use the same LFO to drive a boost's gain characteristic behind the Fuzz... pedal to adjust LFO rate....

Have I just lost my sh*t again lol?

EDIT: Not entirely... thank you medication lapse... ok what I was looking at is the capability to push the input levels for the fuzz up and down which in most cases will have a significant impact on tone and amount of filth. Couple this off so you are (Almost) keeping unity volume but then pulsing the gain in a not-so-clean-boost (not an OD or other dirt box however) inversely.... some pulsating, tone swinging, vari-fuzz... so only around 60% of sh*t lost this time.

[WaveshapeIllusions]

Sounds like a fun idea. If you want to keep volume the same with changing dirt intensity, you just need to drive the output trem with an inverted version of the same LFO. Could use an oscillator that does sine/cosine or just an inverting amplifier to get the flipped copies. Drop in a trimmer for one side (ouput is probably best) to make sure the level stays consistent.

[ashcat_lt]

Cosine is not the inverse of the sine.

The issue being that the distortion, by definition, is compressing the signal.  If it's distorting, then the actual volume ain't really changing much.  Say you have the first trem and the fuzz set so that the bottom half of the cycle is clean, and it distorts on the top half.  It will swing from quiet till it gets halfway where it's distorted and then not get much louder.  Now run your inverse trem on that signal coming out and it will sit at unity until the distortion hits, and then get quieter because, as we said, the first trem cant make the actual fuzzed sound as much louder as the second trem will go.

Having trouble putting it in words this morning, but I hope you get the point.  Every once in a while somebody comes around wanting to engineer some way to keep unity volume through a distorter at all settings of the gain knob by somehow turning it down proportionally after the distortion (dual gang pot or whatever) and runs into this same problem.

[WaveshapeIllusions]

Oh, right. Don't know why I thought cosine was inverted sine.

Anyways, yeah after a certain point it doesn't get much louder. The extra harmonic content increases volume some, and it seems a bit louder though. But yeah, it's not a linear increase in volume and it stops ar some point. In this case, limiting one side of the LFO on the output would help the problem. Of course, how much is limited and how to do it is an issue. Using a trimmer to control the LFO amplitude may help in picking the size. Diodes to groud might help to keep the volume from decreasing past the point that the fuzz stops getting louder.

I don't know what kind of diodes would work best in this case though. Breadboard it I guess. You'll have to figure out what kind of control element you want and what the LFO swing needs to be. Zeners may be useful if you need a specific point, but that assumes the swing is of decent size.

For the dual gain control, limiting may help too. You can't just use a reverse connected dual pot, but it might be possible. It would require using some kind of voltage controlled resistance for the gain control, but I think it would be doable. Figure out where the fuzz stops getting louder and then use diodes to limit the control voltage. Alternatively, tapering resistors might help. Or put one in series to set the minimum output volume.

[ashcat_lt]

Cosine is sine shifted 90 degrees, I'll let you have a pass on that.

Re: the other stuff, it is all so much dependent on the input level that it becomes complicated fast.  A louder source will "hit the ceiling" sooner, so that any limiting of control voltage needs to adjust to that somehow.  If we were designing for something approaching a consistent (or even predictable) source it would be easy.  We're not, though.  We're designing for this wildly dynamic instrument with absolutely no attempt at standardization for output levels.  You could almost make it work for one person playing one guitar as long as they don't actually use most of the dynamic range available, don't switch pickups or turn any knobs.  Or you can add enough knobs to make it adjustable for another person playing another guitar as long as they don't actually use most of the dynamic range available, switch pickups, turn knobs...  Or you can force the input to conform by compressing/limiting it, but that's just fascist! 

[mistahead]

I'm not able to use the correct terminology yet - hit me up for clarifications... little more lucid today (for now).

As the "front LFO branch" drives a tremelo into a circuit in what is basically an attempt (in my mind) to emulate swinging the volume control on the guitar, while the actual output volume on a lot of fuzz circuits wont be seriously impacted by this action it will create a percieved change to a listener which MIGHT be mistaken for volume waves.

But we still have a good signal coming out of that fuzz stage with the dirt on it being more variable than volume (compression, clipping, and tone was noted is changing more than just dB output volume). The "rear LFO branch" is doing a slightly different thing - inversely pushing the gain on a boost that breaks up on its own A LITTLE without dramatically impacting actual output volume too much, SHO I hear is a candidate but Tim Esc. utility boost can do this easily too.

There will definately by some variation in (at least percieved) volume, but in part this is some potential charm, as we cycle through the fuzz "cleaning up" and "breaking up" the more suble grimey-boost is doing the opposite - there will be an overlapping point too which could be very interesting as that may be peak for aspects of the signal...

You'd definately need to put some controls over the depth of the impact for BOTH front and back, few other things as you've noted might need trims/interactive controls.

Having someone switch from passive single coils through to hot rails, through to passive humbuckers, through to active humbuckers, through the the complete overkill (for most styles) super gain active humbuckers of angry-battery-sucking-doom and having a piece of kit respond well (or horribly) to it is not really something I've considered is the responsibility of the effect maker - we still see boutique Fuzz Faces that are the most tempremental pricks of a circuit when it comes to putting ANYTHING on either side of it, and its part of the charm.

[ashcat_lt]

I'd be interested to hear what it does.  Probably not the same as "auto panning" between a fuzz an overdrive.  Maybe if the autopan happened before the dist circuits?  Like pan the input back and forth between the two inputs, and mix the outputs.

[mistahead]

I'd be interested to hear what it does.  Probably not the same as "auto panning" between a fuzz an overdrive.  Maybe if the autopan happened before the dist circuits?  Like pan the input back and forth between the two inputs, and mix the outputs.

I'm a long way off the chops to build it... just thinking on theory. I wouldn't be thinking of panning into overdrive so much as just pushing a little more out of a "rolled back" fuzz inversely as it rolled back, counter some of the tone aspects without saturating the signal with a whole new distortion, just keeping it a little crunchy so those harmonic freqs. dont entirely disappear from our perception and result in just sound like sad power supply pulse noise.