Tychobrahe Parachute Pedal SCHEMATIC puhleeeze

[DEZREJECT]

the only version i have found is at geofex, and not that i dont trust it... just looking for EXACTLY what the pedal should do

goto http://www.chicagoiron.com

thats the reproduction and if theyre all true then yeah itd be best to buy theirs but i wanna dabble with one... amazing little pedal... but id probably take out the volume cutting deal


has anyone built one? have one? built one using the geofex schematic(found at http://geofex.com/FX_images/PARAPEDAL.gif)

[cd]

The schem at GEO was reverse engineered from very detailed high resolution photos of an original, vintage Parapedal, the text of which is available using the search, what more do you want?

[DEZREJECT]

im looking for the page right now... what i want is either a verification that that schematic sounds like the original because if you read on how that company reproduced it they said the originals like fuzz faces varied A LOTTTTT, and without like 100 of them, measuring every thing down to a thin hair... especially with how unreliable tolerances were... i respect that schematic and thats all i have to go off of... but say if anyone had say the chicago iron repro... and measured their parts, and made a schematic off of EXACTLY the new "perfect" reproduction model because thats the point of that reproduction, if they do in fact vary as much as theyre said to.. thatd be like building a fuzz face with just any two transistors.. why match em!? what the hell?! well we know about the gain settings and such... and if the pain staking task of first off finding all these pedals, secondly figuring out which are the best, and thirdly reproducing that with todays standard of tolerance... thats what i want to build.

so why dont i buy it is what the natural responce... well i want to put it in my custom enclousure that ill probably use LED/LDR set up (thank you tone god lol) and in sence be putting my own throw on it...

think about with cars.. yeah a base 69 camaro would be cool to toy around with... but id rather completely trick out a yenko SYC 69 camaro over just the base.
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http://www.diyguitarist.com/DIYStompboxes/MyStompboxes.htm

if you scroll down a ways he actually did one of them from geofex, and as id expect was in awe of it... thats reincouraging as to that someones built them.. but any word as to how close it is to say the chi-iron repro...?

[R.G.]

OK, let's make this easy.

The unit this was taken from was selected to be "the best" of 1000 units bought at great expense over a period of 20 years by an excentric and mysterious zillionaire who may or may not have been involved in the Spanish Civil War and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. He wanted only the perfect sound, the very peak of the tone possible from this rarest of the rare pedals, and so he secretly assembled a team of rock guitarists and ex-Nasa exo-acousticians to reverse engineer the samples and select only the very best  possible one from the 1000 sample units. The team labored in secret for six years and found that the secret of the sound was to make the units from circuit board material that was made between 1973 and 1986 by a Japanese company in a factory in Malaysia. Only one ton of this material was imported to the USA, although it was widely used in cheap Japanese stereo stuff at the time.

The other secret was found to be that the knobs were heat treated and tempered in a combination of boiling water and Epsom salts for a period of 2.74 minutes, after which time they were cooled and cryogenically stress relieved in liquid nitrogen. Also, the second resistor from the left had to be made from sulphated nichrome for best midrange response and the ICs could only have date codes ending in even numbers.

The result of the team's work was a .....perfect.... reproduction of the most ....perfect.... of the samples. The Reproduction was used by the eccentric zillionair's daughter in her experimental fusion band until he died, at which point the daughter's may or may not have been high on horse when her boyfriend stole the Reproduction. It's been verified by interviewing the

Most of the research team was killed after the perfect reproduction was made, but a couple of them escaped. One obviously is now with the company that is making repros, but the other was being hunted down, but he made it to my doorstep and died there. But before the hunters and bloodhounds got there, he passed a tattered, bloodstained sheet of paper with The Secrets on to me, and I was able to hide them.

And that may or may not be how the secret of making only the best possible repro was saved for the world. That was years ago, the zillionair is dead now, and his daughter has moved to a commune on the west coast, so I don't think they'll be coming after... mesadgsadaaaa

[DEZREJECT]

lol hmm.. so basically to sum i have no life, and care way to much about getting it perfect?! yep thats me! lol have we hung out before?

[R.G.]

  not quite that bad! 

I just get full of advertising that harps on mysterious secrets hidden in unobtainable magic pedals; and the insinuations in the advertising that even if you had one, you could not possibly be smart enough to look at what's inside and understand, or if you could, it would not be one of the few really good ones that only they had to work from.

Come to think of it, there are darn few effects ads that DON'T invoke magic mojo parts or secret matching procedures on mystery parts. The only bad part about this is that this vein of advertising takes advantage of people who really, really want to believe in the magic, and worse, "learn" what little technical stuff they "know" from the advertising. I've gotten so cynical that I tend to believe the opposite of all the claims - I have this suspicion that if I see it in advertising copy it is at best misleading, and at worst CAN'T be true.

I've run a whole series of myth buster articles in Musician's Hotline the past several months. I'd advise people to go read that stuff for a sobering look at advertising-speak.

[alteredsounds]

R.G.  I'm slightly to young to have been involved in the Spanish Civil War but maybe the Fall of the Berlin Wall athough I have bad memory from around this time.

The schems were drawn-up from some very detailed pictures I took of my Parapedal and if you read through all the related threads from the time, you will see that alot of effort and discussion was contributed by alot of people to reproduce what I would say was as percfect a clone as could be.  Those units didnt vary alot because although there are bound to be differing tolerences in parts, there is very few parts and no germaniun transistors in there. 

Just build it and try really.

[DEZREJECT]

lol yeah thats the plan.. well its good to see that big names were involved.. ill look it up later as far as the older posts (have to get ready for the day to start! its already past noon!!!) i feel again honored haha the "gods" of the DIY world reply to meeee woo! lol... and dont get me wrong i know pretty much all of this "magical circuitry" is definable in simple terms... there is a way to decode anything and everything... but its more over an intimidation...

in this example, its a rare pedal right? and its a super unique sound to it... and for that sound thats why i want to build one.. thats why im being so close minded as to it has to be dead on perfect to square one... i guess just new effects throw me off

ie.. go play a dunlop crybaby.... go play an old real crybaby.. hell even blind ABY test it... theres something about the new effects that just seems so... lifeless... and i guess thats what makes classics so classic

now one big thing you said.. MY PARAPEDAL.. so you actually own one... lucky you... is there any difference between the Parapedal and the Parachute? i've seen pics with both decals on the rocker... i know theres also the pedal flanger

speaking of the pedal flanger.... (know much about the schematic for this? or would you just say go with like the ultimate flanger circuit floating around these DIY sites, or an MXR, EH style... just rip one of those and just use the manual knob basically as the expression pedal...ala geofex... :-D? see i did some of my homework!!! lol)


sorry to be so difficult.. no disrespect meant by it.. i mean i bow down lol u guys know ur shit better than me there im not gunna argue that even a tad bit lol... you know

just trying to get the real deal

[alteredsounds]

lol i wish i did know my sh*t in comparison to most people here!  I was lucky picking that Parapedal up on ebay for a ridiculous price a couple of years ago (less than £100 ex postage).  I'd love to complete the line-up but the prices are way beyond my spending.  It's a unique sound sure but unique doesnt mean good to everyone so I would def try and build one before spending serious money on an original or even the Chicago Iron.

[DEZREJECT]

from sound samples though it just sounds like what i want... id deff like to mod it.. like its said to have a volume roll off in toe forward position... maybe that volume decrease switchable... maybe a little boost circuit switchable like the dimebag... this is all related to my other big post that started out as how to and in now developing into what im working on... basically its a lot of rocker pedal type stuff rolled together in an old morley case and im playing wiht right now using one LED/LDR with the light controlled by a little piece of cardboard or what have you wiht a V slit varying the light amount with the pedal position.... and then using that LED/LDR to then control the voltage to more LED/LDRs which would control the wahs, antiwah, volume, this pedal, or whatever else i can dream up to stuff together... i know it will be way tough (reading from geofex, tone god, etc...) but to me thats what i want for a live situation...

this pedal just seems like although so unknown like it could really add a lot.. not ness the main wah tone.. like u said not everyone likes it... but they dont have to. itd be a good thing to throw down in an arsenol!

do you have a lot of pics of your pedal? im interested in how the pots are rotated.. fulcrum locations, and such as i am also customizing my old morley wah case... ill have to do a search right quick.. if theyre already posted i should find them

i have no idea how much 100 pounds is... im an american, lol

[R.G.]

R.G.  I'm slightly to young to have been involved in the Spanish Civil War but maybe the Fall of the Berlin Wall athough I have bad memory from around this time.

Tee hee...   

I thought you'd like the mysterious zillionare part though.   

[DEZREJECT]

im gunna be honest.. lol i havent slept much in like 3 days... and honestly when i first started reading that i was like... whoa.. really... lol oh wait brad.. you havent slept in a long time.. youd believe anything right now... lol i found the pics and a lot of veryyy good information after searching...

i would appologize for not searching in depth here first... but hey i got to interact with some people i look upto lol so sorry, but not so sorry haha

it seems like most of the posts went dry....

any luck on finding the RIGHT pots?

rg did you get my idea about using an LED/LDR to control the voltage to an LED in yet more LED/LDR deals? any word on that?

[R.G.]

Where was that?

[DEZREJECT]

sry so long to reply.. shower haha umm itd be in my other post... and the whole thing was that the pots are all diff... so say i wanna control a wah circuit, a volume circuit, a parapedal circuit, etc all from one rocker pedal... i came up with that the only feasible way.. other than hook up like 5 diff pots lol.. or 5 diff LDR/LED things to a little light amount controlling slip... the easiest solution would be mimic the original morley optical deal... using a cardboard or substitude thing with a V slit to control light to an LDR.. and then that LDR would be controlling the voltage to another LED in its own LED/LDR deal... and then that would be the control for the wah say... and then another circuit with its own LED/LDR deal, etc etc etc.... i know itd take a little toying to get that just right.. but as far as making a switchable pedal thats the only easy way i can come to without something digital or whatever

[R.G.]

I would not do it with LEDs and LDRs, because of the tracking and other difficulties in such a setup.

I would replace individual resistors with the switched-capacitor equivalents, using the dreaded digital circuits. That can actually be quite workable.

Your foot pedal just sets the duty cycle on a PWM chip by varying the input voltage. The output of the PWM chip directly controls the pulse width of a switched capacitor using a section of a CD4053. The number of controllable parts is literally unlimited. The SG3524 and its ilk will do this well.

[DEZREJECT]

lol u know im gunna have a blast trying to find data sheets and then over analyzing those chips... and in the end probably saying screw it and end up having like 10 different wah pedals right? lol well thatll make deciding on paint jobs easier! wont have to just pick one lol

is there any schematic or pedal that youd reccommend looking to... to try to get a better understand?

[DEZREJECT]

okay im getting all of these parts together.. from the schematic thought some are not labeled....

what are the following

IC-1
IC-2
C3
D1



also the few places that were listed on other posts of where to get something like that pot... they said item sold out.... any leads for where to get that?


i can read schematics... but just to be sure any one have a parts list? especially if say one of the IC's is rare maybe a substitute?

[alteredsounds]

I dont think you have read through all the relevant posts here yet

[Processaurus]

The bit about fusion and horse, really got me, RG.  

On topic, you can make a custom dual gang pot by taking one apart and subbing in the resistave wafers from other single pots from the same manufacturer, oftentimes.  I'd go with the more durable CTS type pots rather than alpha.

[Paul Marossy]

I built my Parapedal clone from the info at GEO, and it sounds great. I used a NOS Italian made dual pot which is similar to an old CTS pot. I personally feel that there is no need to mod this pedal - it goes thru the whole range of frequencies that you could want from a wah - I mean it'll go LOW, and it also has a shorter travel than a CryBaby.