RatShack Sampler revisted.

[Ansil]

ok went back to ratshack had to grap a few quickie parts.   i got in there and they had there little samplers again  and surprise surprise i got one.   i have already cut the wires and ran an audio jack into it.  where i did my favorite soundtest of the moment i played the 16horas into ,  well now it plays back like my old mp3 player.. (in other words kick A**) so i decided to go ahead and relpace the capacitor with a film one and mount it into a box. i urge everyone if you haven't checked this otu you need to do so.. for 9.99usd you can' t go wrong for 20seconds of sampling.


http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=276-1323

[Alex C]

That looks great for all kinds of messing around.  I'll definitely check that out.  How good is the sound quality?  I know it's limited by the speaker, but what do you think?  Looks like a real neat gadget.


Alex

[travissk]

I assume that he disconnected the speaker and the piezoelectric material and replaced them with in/out jacks, but I could be wrong.

[Alex C]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.  The wording could be interpreted in different ways, but it's likely that since he was already adding jacks, he probably added an output jack too.  Is this right, Ansil?

[Ansil]

i disconnect the speaker, add jacks add an effect and dry jack.. i also add some volume controls and a spastic control on the voltage positive.  if you record at regular V+ and change it on playback it realy has an interesting effect.         also you should probaly play with that capacitor on there. i am having great luck with a film.22uf butyou might like a different one.

[Luke]

As always, exelent man!
Luke

[Galaga_Mike]

Hi Ansil or any other reader that will take pity on me,

I heard about this sampler over at the project guitar forum and couldn't resist so I built one last night. It sounds great, but I have one question.

I now have a wet and a dry jack like you mention here, but I'm wondering what the best way is to have one jack with both sounds and with a volume on the sampled sound. I would like the dry signal to be full volume, so I don't really want a resistor on that signal, but when I have the dry wired directly like shown below and the wet on a volume pot it doesn't work.

IN ----------------------------------->  OUT
        |                              
        |                              
      =======
     | sampler  | --------> Vol Pot -----> OUT
      =======

I'm pretty sure that the reason this doesn't work is because the output of the sampler is hooked to the input of the sampler and that sounds bad to me. I guess that I'm looking for some type of audio diode that only lets the IN signal go from left to right on the schematic. Maybe there's an easy solution that I'm just not getting. I'm gonna feel dumb if the answer is a diode.

Any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated. I'm fairly knowledgeable with circuits, but I've really drawn a blank on this problem.

Thanks for running such a great forum here!

[aaronkessman]

i may be misunderstanding you, but wouldnt a simple mixer/buffer stage be the solution?

[Rodgre]

Quick question. Do you have to wait the full 20 seconds to retrigger the sample, or can you retrigger it immediately?

For example, say you recorded a drum sample into it and wanted to hit it every "two and four," could you do that?

Roger

[Galaga_Mike]

Aaron:

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll try a two-input version of this circuit (circuit 2):
http://www.all-electric.com/schematic/simp_mix.gif

Please let me know if you think this is a bad way to go or if there is another circuit I should be looking at. I read the thread on transistor vs. opamp buffering, so opamps seem okay.  The end result will be something like:

IN -----------------------RES/\/\/\ -------> MIXER/BUFFER -----> OUT
IN -----> SAMPLER-----RES/\/\/\---/

Hopefully that will work and having the input and output attached only though those resistors will not be a problem. Actually, should I do it like above or should I only buffer the sampled sound and then do a passive mixer to get the dry signal back in? Hmmmm.

Rodre:

On the version that I have, which is an older version, there are two play buttons; One plays the message all the way through when the button is pressed, the other only plays the message as long as the button is held down. I have the second one wired up and I can restart the sample at any time. It's great because I make a strange noise on the guitar and then replay it in a rhythm. Very cool.

[petemoore]

Can it be set for continuous repeats?
 You could get some whacky sweeps going with that driving an envelope detector on a auto wah or phaser...just record drum tracks or anything with diverse dynamics...

[aaronkessman]

i cant see that schematic right now, for some reason my work is blocking it. But a simple mixer seems to be what you need. You definitely need to make sure that the dry input is buffered before trying to blend the recorded output with it. The output from the recording may or may not be low impedence.

so at the very least you'd need to do the opposite - buffer the dry and passively mix it with the wet.

[Galaga_Mike]

Thanks Aaron! That's what I'll do. Buffer the dry and passively mix with the wet. That makes sense now that I think about it.  :lol:

Pete:

You can't set it to repeat, but I think it was Ansil in another post that suggested triggering it with a timer or some circuit like that. I would assume that a simple 555 circuit would work fine (although I'm sure you can tell from my posts that I'm not an electronics guru by any means).  That would make some interesting loops.

[The Tone God]

You can't set it to repeat, but I think it was Ansil in another post that suggested triggering it with a timer or some circuit like that. I would assume that a simple 555 circuit would work fine (although I'm sure you can tell from my posts that I'm not an electronics guru by any means).  That would make some interesting loops.

Ansil and I talked about doing this. Never got around to testing it since Ansil was focusing on other things.

I belive it can be done with some tricky logic. There is a status LED that blinks at the start and end of each button push. My plan was to to use a 2-bit shift register or a carefully control flip-flop and have it fire a pulse out every two LED pulses. Connect that pulse to a switching element like a 4066 or FET and you can trigger the start switch with each "end" LED pulse.

Andrew

[Ansil]

actually the one i have now only blinks at the end of the cycle. so it should be able to be done easier now.  i also changed the capacitor on the board although for the life of me i dont' remember to what value now. but it sounds better.

another thing i did was add in two small transformers and as i noticed the output and the input were tied together so a booster section  and some switching so basically since the speaker was the original input and output source device.

you can make it trigger when you wish you dont' have to let it play completely out.  and bufferying it is best.


gw

[mojotron]

ok went back to ratshack had to grap a few quickie parts.   i got in there and they had there little samplers again  and surprise surprise i got one.   i have already cut the wires and ran an audio jack into it.  where i did my favorite soundtest of the moment i played the 16horas into ,  well now it plays back like my old mp3 player.. (in other words kick A**) so i decided to go ahead and relpace the capacitor with a film one and mount it into a box. i urge everyone if you haven't checked this otu you need to do so.. for 9.99usd you can' t go wrong for 20seconds of sampling.


http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=276-1323

Does anyone have a schematic of this sampler device?

[Ansil]

ok went back to ratshack had to grap a few quickie parts.   i got in there and they had there little samplers again  and surprise surprise i got one.   i have already cut the wires and ran an audio jack into it.  where i did my favorite soundtest of the moment i played the 16horas into ,  well now it plays back like my old mp3 player.. (in other words kick A**) so i decided to go ahead and relpace the capacitor with a film one and mount it into a box. i urge everyone if you haven't checked this otu you need to do so.. for 9.99usd you can' t go wrong for 20seconds of sampling.


http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=276-1323

Does anyone have a schematic of this sampler device?

probally not seeing as its all buried under goop and is all smt except the transistor's and a coulpe full sized resistors.

[Galaga_Mike]

Just an update:

Last night I put a buffer on the dry signal and then connected it back with the wet signal. I could then hear the dry but I would only get a loud hum when I played back a sample. So I then put another buffer on the output of the sampler before I mixed it and still nothing.  So now I'm back to having two outputs on the thing. I have an older version, so I don't know if there's some big problem there, but I'm stumped. Suggestions are welcomed.

Even though I don't have it quite how I want it, this thing is awesome.  My new favorite pedal.

[rockthebass]

hey guys, sorry to revive this old thread, but i thought it would be better than making a new one.  id also like to go ahead and apologize for hardly understanding any of this (lol).  im in this experimental band right now where i need a phrase sampler A LOT and my old effects board just went out a few days or so ago so im in some hot water right now.  i got interested in diy pedals after looking for a simple way to make a sampler---not too simple though.  ive been doing a lot of studying on this and dont really understand a lot of it.  i think if someone could give me a nice little "push" i could be on my way to making these pedals all the time (like i want to do).

so if someone would be so very kind as to draw me up a schematic of this sampler i would REALLY appreciate it (dry and wet output, and a wet volume pot).  i just bought some pc board and the little recorder today.  i think i can handle basically any schematic and ill try my best to handle anything else.  thanks!

[noesis]

i think this link may be of use:

http://www.carrionsound.com/gallery/schems/in_the_lab/in_the_lab_3.htm