Working Punisher Report

[petemoore]

  Works great when wired right, I think typing out the whole thing helped me look at my notes and figure out what was of course right in front of me but .. 1k miscon.
  Drops output Voltage when input sees voltage for a time, two good chord gooses [Mu Amp for tests because it's self biasing], can drop the minibooster to a somewhat gated distortion, low volume, little treble sound, or completely drop it altogether and then It rises.
  Makes a real sneaky sounding...[as I had hoped] rythm effect on Dear Mr. Fantasy..a couple hard attacks on low notes and it sounds like the rythm amp 'turned the corner', sustain a bit and it's coming back around the block 'behind you'. Slick, and does the 'dip-trick' very well.
  I hooked that into a FF, and the low point of the power dip [to Mu amp] sounds like an 'frying, orange Tube', and rises up to solid boosted FF sound, high notes can be played about full volume unless a batch of them are attacked in quick sequence...a very fun play indeed !
  Takes some dialing of all three pots to set the effect, does great job !
  Quicker Rise and Falling of the output Voltage would be cool, and I think a smaller input cap could even out the low to high note effect amount, though having the effect controllable with amplitude and frequency is quite usable.
  I don't know that STM designed this with Mr. Fantasy in mind, but he sure likes it! He's been searching for something to get that 'misbiased tube after hard attack' [or two]  that rises to biased right sound which then rises to 'someone's cranking the volume knob' effect.
  Neat trick does profound volume swells, like a bow slowly increasing volume and string swing.
  Works great !!!
  We thank STM for this unique circuit, I haven't seen anything like it.
  It also features a 'complimentary LED attack indicator'...cool looking and could be applied in some creative-circuit manner also.

[The Tone God]

Thanks for the build report!

We thank STM for this unique circuit, I haven't seen anything like it.

I'm sure STM loves the compliment but he did not design the Punisher.

Andrew

[petemoore]

  {dagnabbit..doh..thanks for correcting me]...Forgive me Tone God !!
  Tone God !!! Thanks to Tone God For designing the
  PUNISHER
  Very interesting circuit Andrew !
  Takes some tweeking, the bypass cap on my guitar helps keep the bass/treble more evenly dipping voltages, I like that it is 'lethargic' in that you can wham on it once and it 'whams' full, the second and third whams are what determine if [well as I said took some tweeking, I had 3.67v as top limit, dipping to under 2 with heavy pounding] it drops .5v or drops 1.5v.
  The recovery time in my case would be nice to decrease, if I dip it too low it takes a while for it to come back up.
  Also if dipped hard enough it seems to drop to and get stuck at .3v, 'restarting' it with a PS removal/application seems to reset it.
  Could be my build, but if I'm 'off' a bit on the settings, [especially increasing the value of the the 100k trimpot] and it took time to get it to hold still enough, it's like it warms up and locks up...so this build of mine isn't quite ready for prime time, I think with a bit of tweeking on the Mu and dedication to guitar as source, mu as circuit this works very well, as it sits it's a powerful compressor with lots of character.

[petemoore]

  It goes right down to .9v N/P. That's equating to pretty heavy compression, as 2.67 is the set top V, I can smash that Minibooster down from 2.67v to ~.9v operation in about 2.5 or 3 seconds. It ain't Mr. Fantasy sound but..
  Real cool ! Smashing it down to .9v by hammering low string chords up to 12th fret [at least, more testing etc.], nice mushy lower volume rythm punches, then let up a touch or hit just single/double high string notes and the rise in voltage = volume/freq response is quite profound.
  The Punisher seems to 'average' the voltage of 'the last three seconds or so', with the last two seconds having more sayso, pretty neat watching the DMM rise/fall with attacks and sustains, I'm considering going to all the trouble to mount, probably not too much trouble to wire up one of those VU meters, a handy item to have on such a voltage dropping device.
  The speed of attacks is also having a large influence on how much/how fast the voltage drops, and I can keep it under 1v or about 1.3v, let up just a little bit and I'm at 2v+, where the leads can be played on high strings, not much voltage drop there...cool...it's frequency sensative !
  Lots of fun !!!
  Thanks again Andrew, the Tone God !

[The Tone God]

Thanks.

Since the envelope portion is taken from the Dr. Quack/Q circuits you can do a search for mods to those circuits to play around with the response.

Andrew

[petemoore]

  Yea, I can only try to reason how this works, LED/s Diodes I suppose set a voltage by which the opamp follows, and the 10uf cap looks like the only thing on the board that could explain the '3 seconds' it must be getting 'filled up' and 'emptied' to smooth/slow the voltage rise and drop.

[The Tone God]

The 10uF cap gets charged by the audio signal that gets rectified by the red LED. Higher frequencies don't peek long enough to really charge the cap well. The lower frequencies do hence the difference frequency response. The same thing happens though on a real cranked tube amp. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a mod to adjust that floating around. If not one could probably be created.

Andrew

[petemoore]

  Ugly little Raco houses the Punisher now, it will sit on the first floor of my 'two story' backrow of pedals, mostly hidden from sight.
  A DC jack for PS, two PS lines to DC plugs out the hole in the top to power...whatever needs some sag. Three pots, that top trim pot, IMO needs to be on the box.
  I happened to grab a DPDT center off switch, and will add a ~.022uf to the other side of the switch so I'll have .01uf, circuit input 'bypass', and a smaller input cap value selectable !

[Cliff Schecht]

Could one of y'all post a schematic for me to peek at, I don't feel like clicking search .

[petemoore]

  Look at top of threads page, contest archives, september submissions.