octavia tone control

[leonhendrix]

hi
how do u add a tone knob to the rm octavia, i'm asking this beacuse i already have an enclosure with three control holes and i'm to skint to buy another.

...just remembered its a bank holiday, sorry

leon

[Peter Snowberg]

The first question is which type of tone control do you want to add?

The two most common are the classic RC high cut control as you find in guitars, and the control used on the EH Big Muff Pi which is commonly refered to a "BMP tone control". The BMP control can be really nice IF you have it tuned to the right frequency for the application. Some people just hate it no matter what. It's interesting, but it is limited in what it does.

The classic RC tone control is fine in some places but it might not be what you want in this situation. To give it a shot, just connect a pot 500K maybe.... from ground to a small cap like .01 or .02uF and then connect that to the junction between the top of the volume pot and the 0.01uF coupling cap just before it. That's one way at least. There are a million ways to add a tone control.

If you use an additional opamp, you can start doing things like mid scoop or mid boost controls as well as good low-pass and high-pass filters.

If you look at a tube screamer and check out the tone stage after the clipping stage, you could graft that tone control right onto the end of the octavia too. You would probably want to play with the tuning of the tone control too since this is after an octave generator.

Hopefully others will chime in with more info.

Take care,
-Peter

[alex frias]

I experiment a bit and did that to the transformerless version I've found at the PISOTONES.COM:
http://rapidshare.com/files/50905634/OctavioDFrias.GIF.html
It has a huge sound and the TONE is a very interesting sound shaper, not that conventional...

[caress]

i've used a big muff tone control/recovery.  it works pretty well and adds a ton of gain if you keep the recovery stage on there...

[alex frias]

Samples:

TONE pot control off, no filtering, maximun position:
http://rs129.rapidshare.com/files/51253960/OctavioCareta.mp3

TONE pot control on the minimun position:
http://rs103.rapidshare.com/files/51254532/OctavioToneOn.mp3

Parker P-30 guitar -> Octavio Du Frias -> Behringer GDI-21 (Brit, HiG. Clsic, Low Drive) -> ADAT input/ SEKD ProdifGold -> PC (with some reverb software for ambience)

[alex frias]

Recently I experimented substitute the Ge 1N34 diodes with Si 1N4001. Well, a huge, snoring sound appeared. An absurd amount os subharmonics at lower registers and better ocyave up definition at higher registers on guitar scale.

Am I missing something or it is a common issue?

I've changed one more time the tone control. An RC simple filter with a 50K pot and a cap 1nF from the diodes meeting point to ground.