"Noise 567" review

[jmusser]

I have been working on several things lately, one of which should be coming out on the forum very quicky. In the mean time I threw together Christian's "Noise 567". It don't get much simpler than this, 5 components total! On the drawing it calls for an LDR. After talking with Lightning Fingers, he assured me I could use a pot instead, and suggested a 500K. I tried that value, and it was OK, but once I took it to 1 Meg, it was a whole different animal. I tried as high as 10 meg, and as low as 100K, and the 1 Meg sounded the best to me. "Best" is in the ear of the beholder on this circuit! I used a JRC567D Tone Decoder/Phase Locked Loop. The first thing I found out, is that it wouldn't drive my amp past about 2 out of 10. After that, it totally died. I played around with it there for awhile, and then I ran it after my Titan Boost. That's what it seemed to need to drive the amp. It didn't change what it did at all that I could tell. What does it do? Terminal weirdness! He advertises it as very noisy, and it is that. It sets up an oscillator that seems to run through most of the audible frequencies. In the upper frequencies, it give you a delicious thin fuzz, and will absolutely nail the "Satisfaction" tone in the bridge pic up position. The drawback is, that while it's nailing that tone, you're playing over the high oscillated tone that got you there to start with. Since it's high, you can kind of get by with playing over top of it, and you can get a bunch of thin fuzz tones to about a third of the pot rotation, and then things get nutty. During that first third of rotation, if you switch to the neck pic up, you can pretty close to nailing the chirp of the"Dirty Bird" effect. By now, your ears WILL be bleeding! The middle of the pots rotation will allow you to do so pseudo ring modulator stuff, ringing of bells, that type of thing. If you just like weirdness for weirdness sake, wind through the rest of the pot. It will go into down octave (sometimes 2 down), mixed with ring mod. Horribly ugly and repulsive things come out of your amp. You can go up the neck, and some notes WILL ACTUALLY GET LOWER! :shock: If I had a wish for this circuit, it would be for some type of filter to get rid of the oscillation in the higher frequencies, because it has one of the very best thin fuzzes I've ever heard. If you just want to play around with it, you don't need a boost, but if you actually wanted to use it, it needs a boost in the front. Do you have 15 minutes and 5 parts?

[troubledtom]

where did you find the 567? i've had no luck for yr's and hemmo p /christ
is a friend of mine
   peace,
         - tom

[lightningfingers]

You can get the regular LM567 version for the Noise 567, from the Maplin in the UK. Its the LMc567 that i've had trouble finding.

I tried that value, and it was OK, but once I took it to 1 Meg, it was a whole different animal.

Cool! I'll have to try that, I haven't used mine for months. Gotta go make the New ROG project first though  

[jmusser]

They JRC567D, I got from Mouser. They sell chips from about all the major manufacturers, so it's hard to tell where you can actually get the LMC567. I originally wanted to build Tim's "Thing Modulator", but couldn't find a source for the LMC version. Maybe since I've posted this, someone may chime in with a source. This circuit does such weird things in the lower frequencies, it makes you laugh. I mean, have you ever went to a higher fret, and played a lower note? :lol:

[Freddy205]

Where is the schematic for this thing?

[jmusser]

http://www.angelfire.com/ego/sitruuna/images/noise567.bmp

[jmusser]

For some reason, that link is not coming up, even though it's the one on the bottom of the drawing. So, We'll do it the long way around. Go to the first "Schematics" page on this site. Scroll down to you see "Hemmo P." click on his handle there, and then when the "Angelfire site comes up, click on the link that says "Forward". At the bottom of that page, it says "Here Maybe?". Click there. That'll get you to what few schematics he still has posted, and of course, the "Noise 567". OK now, for this information, you must tell me how to filter the high frequency oscillator tone off the thin fuzz! :wink:

[Freddy205]

It works if you right click save link as in IE. This thing is evil. Pure noize in a box. I'm gonna play with this some more and see if I can make it any more horrible!

[jmusser]

I believe I'm going to box it up with my Titan Boost and Octave. I have made those switchable, and it wouldn't take a lot of extra effort to switch this out, since I won't use it much. As you've heard, this thing is way passed sick, into the vulgar and disgusting category. There are some qualities to it though that I'm surprised haven't been expanded on, where the circuit could be made more useful. It does a gob of things, with just a turn of one pot. I looked at my pot again with this circuit, and I had actually settled on a 100K instead of the 1meg. I had switched so many of them out, that I thought the 1 meg is what I had stuck with. I'd say this pot value could be a lot of different values anyway, depending on your tastes, and rig. Let me know what else you come up with on this circuit.

[jmusser]

After reading more about Tim's CMOS version the "Thing Modulator", it looks like someone has already tamed this circuit somewhat. Arrow Electronics has them, so I'll need to get one. I will use the non-cmos chip and see what it does, and then get one to replace it later. We'll see what happens.

[jmusser]

As an update, I tried the JRC567 in Tim's Thing Modulator, and it didn't do a thing, so I'm guessing that the internals have changed, and maybe even the pinouts, between the JRC, and the LMC. I figured it would work in that circuit, but would be noisy, but alas, it's noiseless! I will order in a few to  LMC567s to play around with. www.arrow.com has the LMC567CNs for $1.16 in case you're interested. I think this little circuit will be a dandy. Thanks also goes out to Christian (Hemmo) for the "Noise 567". It's definitely got the noise, but it has some very weird tones coming out of that one chip too!

[Threefish]

I'd been eyeing off the Noise 567/Thing Modulator circuits to build but I couldn't be bothered getting an LMC567 in by mail. After searching all the threads (including this one) for info about the two circuits, I decided to just try a Thing Modulator using an LM567 (the non-CMOS equivalent to the LMC567), which I could get from my local Jaycar. I threw it together today, and man, what a monster. Thankyou Tim and Hemmo, and everyone who has contributed to the threads on these circuits. This is going to keep me entertained for a while.
I've got a 100k pot on it at the moment as on the Thing Modulator, but I'm going to try it with an LDR as on the Noise567, maybe even add a dpdt switch to the box so I can use either. After reading JMusser's comment about using a 1M pot, I might try that too.
I may get to building a Thing Modulator with the proper LMC567 one day, but if anyone out there wants to try this and can't get the LMC chip, have a go using the LM version. I'm sure the result will please you.

[krachbox]

hi there,

i'm going to get hold of some lmc567 (through farnell) in while amd look forward to building the thingmodulator and noise567.
are there any new experiences regarding the frequency pot, meaning which value works best?
i'm also planning to integrate it into the uglyface i'm about to build in a while (yes i like noise ). any suggestions for that?

bye

(my first post here btw)

[brad]

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if you connected an envelope follower or sequencer to the LDR via a vactrol.

[jmusser]

Did you have to do anything different to get the Thing Modulator to work with the LM567? In my attempt, I got absolutely nothing out of it, so I figured it must have some internal differences that made it incompatable with that circuit.

[Tim Escobedo]

I'd be surprised if the Thing Modulator worked with a JRC567/LM567. The reason is that the Thing Modulator has a 100k series resistor regulating the V+ rail. The LMC567, a low power CMOS version, seems satisfied with the lower current. The regular 567, however, seems to demand several mA current to function. The 100k resistor seems enough to generally starve the circuit into silence.

[nordine]

tim, do you know any way to get that ticking of the thing modulator out of the signal?.... in high freq settings, that ticking really constitudes the ring modulator sound... but in low freqs, it just gets in the way of that weird tremolo effect... any possible mod?

i've tried lots of things, but only get speed alterations, or bandpassing

[Tim Escobedo]

If I understand your question correctly, that "ticking" is the result of the LMC567's internal oscillator spitting out a sloppy rectangle wave. And sloppy modulation. My guess is that there's probably not much that can be done about it. Real ring/balanced modulators often use a triangle or sine wave oscillator for much cleaner sound down into sub audio frequenies. In the case of the Thing Modulator, simplicity dictates the all-in-one chip design utilizing with the internal oscillator.

I know of no mod to counter the effect.

[nordine]

hmm

always had this slight thought it was "unmoddable"... so simple build, yet complex effect.. sure it had all happening inside the chip

however, congrats tim, killer effect

[Threefish]

I know this is an old thread and probably past anyone's interest, but I found it by chance and thought I'd add my last 5c to the topic.
I got the LM567 to work (in a way, anyway) by using the Thing Modulator schem minus the RC network on the power pin (like the Noise 567), and an LDR in place of the TM's 10k, next to the Frequency pot, which I kept at 100k. To quote Tim E :
"with the desire to make the thing shut up when I'm not playing, I found that using both a LMC567...and a 100k/100uF RC network on the power pin go a long way in suppressing the onboard oscillator..."
reading that, I surmised that the 100k/100uF was there just for the CMOS version and built mine like the Noise 567, without the RC network. I also used the cap values from the Thing Modulator (.1uF all round instead of 10uF and 22nF) ...er...for no real reason except that it would be easier to not put them in all the wrong places. The result is a hilarious collection of dirty ring mod, strange atonal fuzzes and quick decay bong/clang/crashing noises, and the worst/best broken speaker/amp/everything-WTF-noise I've ever produced when hitting more than one string. Oh, did I mention the flat out oscillation at some point of the pot arc? Not that useful, but fun all the same. Yes, it ticks through everything, but if I'm not going to stomp on it, I just pull the (DC) power plug.