Curious red llama properties

[Luke51411]

I built a way huge red llama. I didn't know a lot about the circuit but wanted to give it a go because I had a 4049ube lying around that I wanted to try out. It seems to work fine but I noticed that some notes decay will drop to an octave down and have a horn sort of sound and then cut out. It's an interesting effect but I hadn't heard of the circuit having these properties before. Has anyone else experienced this before or is this an interesting mistake?

[Luke51411]

I tested the battery and it's a bit low at 8.36V would this influence the octave? Upon further testing the octave down decay is fairly prominent on the whole fretboard it just fizzes out sooner on the lower frets, it's also present on all combinations of pickups on my strat though it is altered depending on the pickup.

[Mark Hammer]

The circuit can misbehave a little when supplied with insufficient current.  The problem is not so much that the battery reads 8.3v, but that by the time it reaches that voltage, it doesn't have quite as much current delivery capability.

I will note that the original EHX Hot Tubes was also a 4049-based overdrive, and it had an onboard power transformer.  You CAN power the unit with a 9v battery - I've done so for ages - but it tends to eat up the battery quickly.

So try your 9v power supply, if you have one, and see if the unusual traits disappear.

[Luke51411]

It's kind of an interesting effect. Will it hurt the chip running at low current?

[Mark Hammer]

No.  Take a gander at this article and schematic, and you'll see that restricting current to the 4049 can actually be used in a strategic way to get different sounds.

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/tech-pages/46-articles/36-em-fuzz

[Luke51411]

I hooked it up to a power supply and there is still some octave down in the decay around the twelfth fret when the gain is maxed though it's much less pronounced and takes a little longer for the octave to drop. It's pretty interesting. If I added a voltage sag pot would I be able to dial in the octave down?

[Luke51411]

I suppose I should just try it out and see what happens I'm not sure it's really a sound I'd use but it would be fun to tweak anyway!