calling slacker or slackfilter users

[swt]

Hey! i built your slackfilter, and although it works, i'm having some problems. First, when a turn the freq pot, it takes a while to get, like a delay, or a cap discharging. Is this normal?. Also, is there a way to get deeper (width) lfo changes?. and the random is fixed, right?. Excuse the inconvinience, but i'd really like to tune this for me. Thanks a lot!!

[swt]

no takers? it's strange the way the sound sucks ( in a real way...like a mute switch), when turning the freq pot.

[slacker]

Wow can't believe anyone actually had a go at building it
Are you using the 1.1 schematic or the original one? I had that issue with the frequency pot with the original version but not with the 1.1 version. The LFO also works better in version 1.1, because on the orignal the 2 depth pots interacted with each other in a bad way.
The random mode should change speed as you vary the LFO speed control and the depth should be controllable by the LFO depth pot.

[swt]

i've built the new version, but the random mode is fixed, no matter what i do with the pot. And the freq pot does that strange thing, and i guess that's messing the env and lfo too. Will getting the 47n cap out solve this?. what's that cap for?. Anyways, as far as it's now, it sounds good, i'd really like to get it working properly. Thanks for sharing a good design.

[swt]

by the way...i did this on perfboard...do you have a layout/pcb for this?. might give it a try to a new one in that case. Thanks!

[slacker]

If random mode seems to be working but only at one speed that probably means you have wired up the switches for the LFO differently than I have. The schematic is confusing about this because I showed 2 separate switches but I actually used a DPDT switch in mine, it's wired up like this.



So when the switch is down you get a triangle wave from the LFO and when the switch is up you get the random part of the LFO mixed with a square wave from the variable speed part of the LFO. This lets you change the speed and pattern of the random steps.

Does the frequency pot just mute the sound when you're turning it or do you get no sound at certain settings of the pot? If you get no sound at low or high settings of the pot then you probably need to play with the values of the 15k and 75k resistors connected to the pot. These set the upper and lower frequencies and might need to be different values for different transistors. Try replacing them with trimmers or just normal pots and adjusting them for the best range of frequencies.
This might also help with the LFO width problem.

I have got some vero layouts for it, but I built it on 3 separate boards so it's a bit of a mess and the layout s are not labelled up. If I get chance I'll see if I can label them up and try and make some sence of connecting them together.