21st century green ringer

[tomgoos]

Hi all,

First of all I'll start with a tiny introduction of myself since I'm new to this forum. I'm Tom from the Netherlands. I started building pedals approximately 2 months ago. Using byoc circuit boards and sourcing here in the Netherlands and our neighboring country Germany I built about six pedals up to now (2 screamers, phaser, delay, rangemaster, compressor and a tremolo. Oh yeah, did the monty allums mod for a DS1). So I'm relatively new to the pedal building stuff. I have some background in electrical engineering though. Enough about me! Let's talk business!

So the next project will be a green ringer and a tonebender combined in one enclosure. Now my question is if anyone has recently built the 21st century green ringer? (http://personal.inet.fi/koti/holmberg/images/ringer.gif). I did a search on the board but I couldn't find any recent posts. But, is it good and what's the harmony mod like? Or should I just go for the Dan Armstrong version?


Cheers!
And I like this forum!

[foxfire]

one thing to keep in mind is whether or not you're going to have the 2 pedals share the power supply? a traditional tonebender is positive ground but, it looks like the 21st green ringer and the standard green ringer and negative ground?

[Mark Hammer]

Welcome!  There is much to like here.  I hope you enjoy your future visits.

While not a Tonebender+GreenRinger, I just finished boxing up a Distortion+ plus Ampeg Scrambler this morning before heading off to work.  Not exactly the same, but it fits the broader category of distortion into octave-generating circuit. 

A few comments.

First, the issue of grounding is something to think about and potentially a problem for a single-battery pedal.  On the other hand, there are many variations on the Tonebender theme that use a negative ground, and I'm sure that by the time the signal has passed through the Ringer (pardon the pun), any possible audible differences between PNP/positive-ground and NPN/negative-ground Tonebenders that might exist will be long gone.  So you don't need to be hamstrung by the "traditional" Tonebender.  You can always make one of those separately.

Second, the Green Ringer itself does not come with any gain adjustment or output volume control.  You CAN replace the 47k output resistor with a 50k/47k log pot for volume control.  That still does not allow one to adjust the sensitivity of the circuit.  This is where the volume control on the Tonebender portion becomes very handy.  It allows you to set a signal level that will produce optimum octaving....or perhaps something more chaotic than that.  I found on my D+/Scrambler that by carefully adjusting the drive and output levels of the D+ portion that I could get much "better" octaving (closer to something like an Octavio tone) than I had ever been able to get with just the Scrambler alone (this is the second one I've made).  The Scrambler has its own "charms", as does the Green Ringer, but the inability to adjust much about the octave-generation portion of each of them means that they tend to impose a certain personality on the sound that may not be exactly what you want.  In this respect I think that having a 2nd circuit integrated that permits better control over the input signal is a good idea.  I might also note that a distortion will also impose a certain degree of compression and sustain that helps in setting the level "just right" for octaving.  The compression/limiting means that you can easily tell at what output signal level the octaving will kick in, and the added sustain means that whatever octave is there you get to hear for a little longer.

Third, having some kind of tone control is extremely helpful.  People often find that getting their "best" octave sound relies very much on selecting the neck pickup, and adjusting the guitar's tone control - something you can't always do in a hurry.  Having the onboard distortion circuit with tone control can pre-shape the signal for better octave detection, so that is a definite plus.

Is the Green Ringer the best octave circuit  out there?  IMHO, no, but it is simple to build and sounds interesting.  Part of why my opinion of the GR itself is not all that high is because of what it lacks in signal shaping.  When married with another circuit (and with an added volume control), I am certain it can become a very pleasing effect.

best of luck.

[mac]

There is a schem by RG that has both pnp or npn GR versions, and the 21st is pnp.

Instead of the 21st fuzz switch I'd use a fuzz pot. Maybe a better octave can be obtained as Mark explained above. Or even experiment by adding one more stage before the first transistor, and something to break the symmetry of the diodes, ie, to change the texture.

mac

[soggybag]

I built a Green Ringer a while back and incorporated both the Filter and Null mod. These are both posted at GGG. It gets the extreme clear octave I have heard from an analog circuit. The sound borders on cartoon quality.

http://www.webdevils.com/stompbox/?p=18

You could easily incorporate the null mod in this circuit. The null mod balances the inverted and non-inverted waves that make up the octave.

[Mark Hammer]

Yup. An excellent call, and well worth doing.  Keep in mind that the diodes for the two complementary half-wave rectifiers require the signal to be above a certain minimum to pass.  That's one of the reasons one might expect some sort of adjustable boosting before input would help in scoring the optimum level.

[Processaurus]

Looking at the "balance" pot on the 21st century green ringer, I can see an improvement.  The strongest octave, which you'll want to get to quickly, is at a touchy 50/50 balance of the two signals getting mixed together.  So it will be somewhere near the middle of the pot.  However, the asymmetrical waves you get when you get away from that middle position will sound identical to the mix you'd get on the other side of the pot (for instance 9 o'clock and 3'oclock will be the same), so why not have the 50/50 blend at one end of the pot so you can get to it consistently and quickly?  You can just put a 500K trimpot (the next value up from the 250K balance pot) as a variable resistor, between one of the outer lugs of the balance pot and one of the 47n caps, stick it near the middle, turn the balance pot all the way toward that side, and then adjust the trimpot til you find the strongest octave.  Now that strongest octave will be waiting for you at that end of the balance pot.

[tomgoos]

Wow, these are all excellent replies. I didn't expect so much really useful comments!

There were several good suggestions for getting a more clear octave, I will look into those when I breadboarded this ringer. The extra trimpot in the mixing of the in an out of phase signal also seems like real a good idea. I will have a look at what the null and the filter mod are about. But I think I can guess what the filter mod is about. I have been thinking about LP filtering the input before feeding it into the ring modulator to reduce the number of sum and difference frequencies in the output of the ring modulator. That would make it less wild I think. Is it anything like that? Anyway, I will have a look.

About the positive/negative grounding for the tonebender. I have also been thinking about this and thought I could just build the pnp negative ground circuit that is available at GGG. However, I also read that there is a possibility that doing this could make the circuit prone to oscillations. I don't see why though. Is this a realistic problem or is it a 1% of the times case?

Cheers!

[mac]

PNP neg gnd Fuzz Face circuits may oscillate, how often and how we don't know, but I should go PNP positive ground. After all, the tonebender and the 21st are both pos gnd. Just build a separate PS and avoid headaches.

mac

[Ge_Whiz]

Er... The 21st schem I'm looking at (link above) is negative earth.

[mac]

"NOTE: this is the PNP version"... 

doh!

mac

[tomgoos]

I breadboarded both effects. I'm quite pleased with the tonebender although I haven't tested it on my tubeamp yet.

The 21st century ringer however is quite... how to put this... subtle. Maybe I did something wrong but I don't get a whole lot of octave. Just a bit. Any ideas how to get some more mileage or should I just get started on that scrambler?

Cheers,
Tom

[tomgoos]

The pnp negative ground tonebender works great also on perfboard. No oscillations. I'm think I will go for the scrambler now. I read in most schematics that it's normally built with darlingtons. However, on this page: http://www.guitarraonline.com.ar/lapedalera/octavadores/Scrambler.gif they used 2n3904 transistors instead. Will this work? I don't have the darlingtons but I do have the 2n3904's lying on my desk. The soundclips I heard of this guy sound really wild  I'm really curious!

[foxfire]

here is the schematic i used, http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/scrambler.php. it is a wild pedal. fun but wild.

[Mark Hammer]

Just came back from a vintage gear store where the owner tried out the Dist+/Scrambler with a $3500 '54 closet Strat and a BF Deluxe.  Sounded very nice and put a huge smile on his face.  I'm really impressed with the range of sounds available.  Everything from normal boost, to overdrive, to Octavia-like octave fuzz, to Scrambler madness, to beyond Scrambler madness and audio cave-in/meltdown  This is a box of 128 crayons, and far from the 12-color boxes of many distortions.  Just a really nice synergistic combination.

One of the principal reasons is that the Scrambler has a Blend control that pans between the clean-boosted input and the distorted output.  This lets you blend between the Dist+ sound on its own (which you can easily adjust for just the barest hint of coloration) and the potential sickness of the Scrambler.  The volume control on the Dist+ lets you dial in a signal level that nails the critical range for achieving good octaving, or push the Scrambler into pure audio psychosis.  The fact that you can predistort/compress the signal leads to more pronounced Scrambularity and more noticeable octaves than you'd normally get with a stock Scrambler.  And of course the Blend pot lets you sit the sickest sounds the Scrambler has to offer back in the mix so that they add texture to your sound rather than become your sound.  Of course, if you wanted to make it BE your sound, you could do that too.

Some notes on the "Dist+".  This one is modded to have: 1N4148 diodes instead of germanium, a .22 cap to ground instead of .047, a 2200pf treble-cut cap (instead of 1000pf) and a 100k output/volume pot.  So, it is a little bit warmer and noticeably louder and meatier-sounding than a stock Dist+.  I don't think one has to use this.  In all likelihood, any overdrive that can provide some compression via diodes and deliver up an output that is not too too fizzy will do nicely.  I imagine a DOD250 clone would also work nicely too.  The whole thing has 4 knobs and can easily fit in a 1590B.  I used the Tonepad layouts for the two effects, etching them onto a single board.

This puppy is making me really happy.

[foxfire]

i recently made both a scrambler and a 250 so i guess i'll have to try them out tonight.

[tomgoos]

I thought I'd write an update on my build. I breadboarded the scrambler. The schematic I found in my previous post was not so good. I used the factory schematic instead (without the mystery diodes) and it works perfectly. The 2N3904 trannies do the job quite well,but I also tried darlingtons (mpsa14) which works slightly better.  A bit nicer, more pronounced octave. I love this one. Let's see how it will work with my fuzz....

[niggez]

Im currently in the process of building an orange squeezer/green ringer in one box. Is my assumption correct, that a compression before the octaver will be helpful, just like the overdrive you used? My plan is to add 2 toggle switches, so that i can select either both of the effects, or only one of them to be active.

[niggez]

Would this work? I have the stomp switch wired to activate whats selected by the 2 toggle switches. So i can either use:
1. Only orange squeezer
2. Orange squeezer + Green Ringer
3. Only Green Ringer
4. Nothing (which would be useless to select with the toggles since i can use the stomp for that)

Does the wiring look correct?

[Valoosj]

I would use an On-On-On toggle for that. that way there is only 1 toggle switch to select the fx, and do the bypass/fx with the stomp.