XORUS project help ...Sound clip and notes

[John Lyons]

Hey folks
A few people have built this but it's not quite there yet. Take a look at this page with sounds clips and notes
http://mrdwab.com/john/XORUS.html

This circuit produces a huge range of square wave textures.
I think it can be taken further But I'm in need of a sharper mind.
Check it out and see what you think you can come up with.
There are a lot of details on the site.

Thanks
John

[bioroids]

Hey this thing sounds great! Sadly I don't have any ideas on how to improve it (maybe puting a compresor before it to sustain the sick decays more?

Miguel

[Marcos - Munky]

Nice clip. In my prototype, it had a little bad decay, it was a little better than the one you got. I really don't know what causes the decay, maybe it's because of different ICs and guitars (my guitar have a hot pickup). Another thing that can be causing the gating effect is the biasing, but I don't know how to help with this (maybe Mark Hammer or Tim Escobedo?)

About the problem with the pots' tuning, it happens in my prototype. Since this unit have very high gain, any small change in the pots will change the sound. Some time ago a guy posted something about how to make the pots harder to turn, so you can get a very precise setting, but I don't remember where's this info. Weh Jeff and I played with this circuit, the initial idea was to make an octave effect, but later it became a kind of noise maker effect. I like the randomness of this effect a lot, but if it could be "tamed" it will be great too.

[John Lyons]

The sustain isn't a problem really. It has a ton of sustain...It's just that it gates eventually so the little pick scratches and nuances get chopped of between notes. I'd be cool with it as something switchable but to gate all the time is no good.
I think the problem is the biasing. The Transistor seems ok because I've tried biasing that and it was pretty close to where it should be. Maybe it just needs to be run on less than 9v. My Boss power supply puts out 9.6v but when i tried a 9v battery it didn't help. I'm going to try to drop a volt or two and see what happens. WHen I first powered it up today it was fine and didn't gate until a few minutes later. So it's close...

If I can get the gating worked out I'll be happy enough to call it done.
I was just hoping with all the tweakers and sharp mind here, someone could put the polish on this one!

John

[John Lyons]

Bumpsky...

Any other comments or observations? Definetly not a common distortion circuit, I figured someone would have some advice on the general circuit.

John