Small but interesting DC-2 experiment

[Mark Hammer]

I'll leave the astounding stuff to Scott Stites ( https://www.birthofasynth.com/Scott_Stites/Pages/dimc_main.html ) but was thinking about the Behringer CC300 I own, which is a DC-2 clone.  The DC-2, you'll recall, has two counterswept 3207 bucket brigade chips.  That not only results in three voices for a thicker chorus sound (two delayed and one dry), but since the two delays are counterswept, with one always going flat as the other goes sharp, we don't really perceive much "pitch wobble".

Pondering its architecture the other day, I thought "What if I kept the countersweep but nudged the respective delay ranges a little further apart?".  So I pulled my CC300 apart, and figured out which was the cap to zero in on. Happily, because the pedal is a clone, and Behringer has done us the service of legending the board with component values, the fact that it is surface mount did not pose any great obstacle to locating the relevant part (100pf, right under the V3102 clock chip).  At first I tried piggybacking an 82pf cap (total of 182pf), but that seemed to provide a more gurgly sound than I wanted.  I dropped the piggyback value down to 56pf and that worked out nicely.  With other things on the go, I'm going to reassemble the pedal, but I hope to install a toggle down the road to add-in or omit the additional clock capacitance on the one channel. 

Staggering the delay ranges of the two channels provides for a more complex and somewhat thicker sound.  It is not "better", just different.  And for a pedal whose controls are 4 buttons, a little bit of different as an option is nice.

Note that the pedal provides two outputs.  When used in mono, the two counterswept delays are mixed to the single output.  When used in stereo, each delay path is fed to a separate output.  So, if you plug into both outputs, but only use one of them, the one you do use becomes a standard dry+wet chorus.  The added cap on the one channel gives you a choice of two somewhat different chorus sounds.