Building a Sawtooth effects pad.

[henrymop]

I'm sure this has been done somewere before, but I want to know if I can somehow make a pedal that makes the synthisizer "Saw." If you have no idea what I'm talking about, see this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtooth_wave

I was hoping to make it sound like the Yamaha Softsynth S-YXG70 Sawtooth wave, which sounds like this:

It's the file called "saw.mp3"
http://www.angelfire.com/ab8/jamesrussell/

What I want to know mostly is if it's possible, and if you can point me to any scematics or info on how to do this. I'm just a beginner, but have taken a look at the info on General Guitar Gagets and am willing to learn.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

If you just want to make a saw wave, that's easy. most LFO circuits will do that, if you make the frequency caps smaller.
If you want to control it with a guitar, that's hard.
Very hard.

[KerryF]

^- you mean like touch sensetive when you talk about controlled with the guitar?  also, i think it may be useful to post a bunch of schematics of Saw Wave pedals so he, and maybe I, can check out what is needed to create one.

[henrymop]

Yes, I want to use this primaraly with guitar.

[Seljer]

If you want you're guitar to sound exactly like that synth go look up MIDI guitar systems, they allow you to use your guitar as a MIDI controller for basically any other external synth.

If you want to create an effect pedal to create that sound...thats a bit more complicated

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Yeah, after listening to the mp3..... I don't think an analog fx is going to do it, especially if that is a chord at the end.
If you know anyone with a Korg MS20 synthesiser, you could try running the guitar into the external signal processor section, then running the envelope output control voltage to the VCA and the pitch CV out to the oscillator CV input, then settign the oscillator to saw........ and see if you are happy.

[henrymop]

Well, if you take a look at this gif,



would this somehow be possible?

I'm not sure if this will help, but the example fiel I put up on my site looks like this.

This is the note C, the first note you here in the example.


Here is the chord, at the end.

[slacker]

have a look at Tim Escobedo's Simple Square Wave Shaper from here http://www.geocities.com/tpe123/folkurban/fuzz/snippets

That kind of does sawtooth.

[Elektrojänis]

If you just want to make a saw wave, that's easy. most LFO circuits will do that, if you make the frequency caps smaller.
If you want to control it with a guitar, that's hard.
Very hard.

Do you actually mean triangle wave? I think thts what most LFO's in pedals do. Sawtooth is a bit different.

Anyway... It would be difficult to make a pedal that converts guitar sound to a sawtooth waves. Single note stuff might be possible without DSP, but chords... Well if it needs to fit in a stompbox it would need to be DSP (and it would still be hard). Hmmm... Hexpickup might help with chords though.

[Paul Marossy]

Not that I know anything about this topic, but I thought I read somewhere that you can use a 555 to create a sawtooth. 

EDIT: OK, not a 555, a TL082 - http://www.interq.or.jp/japan/se-inoue/e_ckt17.htm
Anyhow, my hypothetical idea was to use a 555 timer chip in astable mode, and do an oscillator synchronization circuit kind of like what the Crash Sync does. I don't know if it's possible, but it's a thought....

EDIT#2: I think this is the page that I remember seeing before - http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/Exper/EXP_6.html#xtocid186757