Weird effect idea, probably not new. . .

[ryanscissorhands]

After playing around with Adobe Audition and being bored, I discovered a cool effect. Might be out there already and I don't know it, but here it goes.

Take a wave. Clip it, invert it, and add it to the original. What's left is the parts that would normally clip, and the parts that normally don't are gone.

I clipped it by just amplifying the signal in my digital program and maxing it out. Then I decreased it by the same amount, inverted, and combined. Weird sound that picks up on some harmonics, but a very. . . gritty sound indeed. Since all that is left of the original wave is the tips, it's mostly quite spaced-out triangle waves, but it's interesting.

Samples here. Hopefully:

http://www.geocities.com/ryanscissorhands/Samples1.html

Any thoughts on making this DIY? Besides that the original signal needs a lot of compression?

(and sorry for poor quality, I just used an old recording from like 2 years ago for the test.)

[ryanscissorhands]

Really, I don't even know if I would even WANT this effect. But I'm always looking for weird sounds that nobody else can make with factory pedals. WHich is why I worship Tim Escobedo.

[niftydog]

if you could tame it by blending the messed signal with the original it might be actually quite a useable effect. It's somewhat unpredicatble, which is good for some, not so good for others. I kinda like it - it has potential.

I see no reason why you could not do this, although it may not work quite the same outside of your PC!!!

[puretube]

:wink: of course this is being done by some commercial pedal, that`s not yet on the market: e.g.: //www.blitzwire.de by the funky makers of the MoJo pedals http://diystompboxes.com/sboxforum/viewtopic.php?t=25039,
and who knows ( :wink: ) soon by some more well known manufacturer?

The thing starts to sound even wilder, when you again invert it, and add some moving phase-shift between the 2, depending on the envelope...

[StephenGiles]

Hey Ton, are we going to the barbers here?
Stephen

[puretube]

YO, Stephen...mean dancing sawteeth!    
(lol, got my hair cut yesterday incidentally, too)
[about the 5th time over the last 30 years...]

[Tim Escobedo]

Sounds interesting. I suppose it could be done analog.

[Ge_Whiz]

Isn't this what the Gretsch Contrafuzz does in the analogue world?

[aaronkessman]

sounds cool - but the site went down/blocked me right before i could listen to the blended sample! crap.

i like your use of it.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

You are right Ge_Whiz, looking at the Contrafuzz schematic. I guess this idea of "FX output minus the unprocessed signal" could be more generally applied. I havn't seen it done with a spring reverb, to name an obvious one. (whoops, you wd have to delay the dry signal before subtracting.. :oops: )

[ryanscissorhands]

Well, the mix wasn't special, just the two samples, fixed at about the same volume, one panning L/R, the other R/L so you could hear them together or separate.

Contrafuzz, eh? I'll have to check it out.

[Nasse]

I think one Elektor book has a simple analog opamp circuit that is adjustable and does just same thing, lets you extract the "tops". There was info about how to make it take upper and lower part of the waveform...

If I remember I thought how it would work in fuzz applications

[Nasse]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v411/Nasse/redo.jpg

:lol: Ou jee I did a quick and dirty re-draw, it  was 301 Circuits book, "Electronic Magnifying Glass" circuit, about two pages ahead from nasty looking looking distortion schem

it uses dual power spply

[Khas Evets]

Don't you get the same effect putting diodes in line, rather than to ground? It would only pass the signal above the diode's forward voltage drop. I think the Boss HM-2 uses this.

[brett]

Yep.  The "lose the bottom" effect we spend lots of time trying to avoid in octaves.
cheers

[{ antonio }]

i designed something like what you are taking about.  a few months back i thought i would be neat to see what happens if you heard the clips of a signal rather than clipping a signal.  but i added an itegrator before it.  its good fun.  antonio.