The 8-Bitar - a new minimalistic octave down

[Freppo]

Yeah, there are in fact an odd buffered version avaliable from ebay... I once bought 50 of them (CD4069BE) by mistake. I didn't pay attention since I believed that they were only avaliable as a unbuffered version. They were unusable in many of my projects that use inverter gates as linear amplifiers or integrators for example. For normal inverter logic they work fine and they are not schmitt triggers (I suspect misbranded 40106, but no).

That said, the 8-Bitar needs the UBE, unbuffered version.

[Marcos - Munky]

Thanks for your answer. So I do have an useless (at least for me) IC and need to buy the correct one. Now I need to drive 30km just to buy an IC

[brianq]

Ugh....

[PRR]

> BE suffix without the U means buffered

It may just mean "old".

When I was younger, all CMOS was unbuffered. Apparently as CMOS production costs came down, they started adding "bonus" buffers. But some chores rely on the softness of unbuffered CMOS. So new UN-buffered CMOS has the "U". But old unbuffered CMOS doesn't bother to say.

There's a date-code on the chip. You may be able to decipher it. Sorry, I do not know when "B" and "U" notation became routine.

[Marcos - Munky]

Mine's marked 5233. I really doubt it was made in the 33th week of 1952 . It's a better idea to just buy an UB one. I have to get IC sockets too, so I have to buy parts anyway.

[Atodovax]

Thanks Fredrik. Love your stuff! I checked your site and found the BOM and the schematic (in a pdf) but I didn't find a vero layout.  Where should I have been looking? Cheers.

You can find stripboard layouts under DIY Guitar Effects > Original designs.

Here's a direct link to the 8-bitar layout
http://www.parasitstudio.se/uploads/2/4/4/9/2449159/8bitarvero.png

/ Fredrik

Hello! i built this on veroboard and sounds amazing! but i had to reverse the transistor, is tahat correct? tried with 2n2222 2n3904 and 2n5088. its reversed on the layout.

[Marcos - Munky]

Got the correct IC and built mine using this layout: http://effectslayouts.blogspot.com/2018/07/parasit-studio-8-bitar.html

Got cool nintendo 8 bit sounds. Also, I must say with my humbucker loaded les paul I didn't had to use neck pickup and rolled off tone pot to get amazing octave downs anywhere above 5th fret. Using the neck pickup, I got the octave down on the whole neck - even playing an open low E string . Just forget about polyphony when playing with the 8-Bitar.

Now, I have to wait for the 3pdts to arrive from China, so I can finish this little beauty.

[trevor78]

Is there any way to reduce the gain on this pedal? Thanks!

[iainpunk]

no, its always going to be square wave.

its not really gain, its more waveshape replacement.

cheers, Iain