custom made fuzzes and such

[reggaestylee9103]

hey would anyone know the direction to point me in to start making circuts strait from scratch? i don't really wanna build clones and wanna start making my sound unique. Even simple stuff too like boosters

[R.G.]

I think I saw a formal English lawn around here somewhere. 

Be prepared to do a lot of reading for a long time if you want to do something more than easter-egging.

[km-r]

and a lot of experience...

the word "custom" really sucks for me...

[John Lyons]

Not trying to be a jerk but "you need to know the rules before you can break them"
In other words how are you going to know if you are cloning or what different circuits sound like unless you build the clone first and then break it apart to find unique elements that add back up into "your own circuit"?
Every "unique" circuit out there borrows from at least one source.

Striving to be different is a great thing but electronics is math and science.
There are ways to do something but you need to know why things work in order to come up with something different without basing it of another's work, and even then there are hard rules that you will need to follow in order to get well working results.
You can't reinvent math....

john

[R.G.]

That's a good way to look at it, John.

Not many people know that Picasso, the darling of surrealism, was a naturally talented *realistic* artist to start with. Nothing could have been easier for him than to draw realistically.

That is, unless you believe the "your own beautiful reality" speech.    I have that archived for times when I need a chuckle.

[bside2234]

...Striving to be different is a great thing but electronics is math and science.
There are ways to do something but you need to know why things work in order to come up with something different without basing it of another's work, and even then there are hard rules that you will need to follow in order to get well working results.
You can't reinvent math....

john

I have also realized that it's important to know why things don't work too!

[Pedal love]

Not many people know that Picasso, the darling of surrealism, was a naturally talented *realistic* artist to start with. Nothing could have been easier for him than to draw realistically.

Thats a great point RG. Guys like Picaaso and Dali are great surrealists, but their strength lies in their ability to paint something realistic and alter it. The point is the same in electronics. You do need to get all the fundamentals you can, before you can start altering it to suit your world. An electronics instructor would always say that the cornerstone of electronics is math, so you really have to know your math and physics will help a lot too.

[petemoore]

I think I saw a formal English lawn around here somewhere.
  Something about simple instructions to get one of those perfect lawns you see at English palacial gardens...?
  Just prepare the dirt, plant the seed, care for, and roll it out once a week for 200 years.

[R.G.]

Aw, you remembered!!! 

It's one of my favorite stories.

Some things are not just quick tricks to be learned. Some things you actually have to work at.

[petemoore]

  I played with the grass every summer for the last countless years.
  This year I got all aggressive with the garden fork [after shoveling the tainted topsoil and rootgroups off], and started with new soil, new grass seed. The grass is now mowable, low maintenance, aggressive [ie nothing but grass], shiny, full and nice...finally.
  That worked so good and since I knew the weather would stay cool and damp, have completely [nearly] decimated all life forms from the front lawn using a roto-tiller and clump burials technique...the sod has nearly given way [after being piled, buried in 2'' of dirt, left to 'cement' in the rain, then chewed up good [the piles hold together so the tiller really gets it's chops in instead of passing clumps through].
  Planning to plant seed soon, like a few days.
  Custom Fuzz...most of the tricks [besides basic circuit topologies, and biasing] involve the relationship between gain and frequency, how much gain is applied to what frequencies, and clipping...what is the voltage swing of the signal compared to the clipping threshold.
  The guitar signal is relatively weak, not much can be done to it and have enough left to play with until it is 'boosted'. At that point various limits can be applied to it...diodes which limit output [by way of chopping off the +/- peaks of the signal swing = distorted waveform], tone shaping [using capacitors in series with the signal path to reduce bass .or. from signal path to ground to reduce high frequencies...how it's hooked up determines what it does...caps introduce increasing resistance to lower frequencies, where in the frequency range, and how much...these effects depends on the capacitor value, or how it is applied].
  What I call a 'Custom Fuzz' [which I believe is the path to your 'ultimate fuzz'] is a Fuzz of whatever ilk, whether it's 'ampfuzz' or from a dirtbox...it has been modified to suit the application and to make that application perform as best it can to the players preferences.
  Ideally that'd include everything in the chain of the signal path, because all these components influence the sound...pickups, cables, speaker, anything/everything inbetween.
  GEO, AMZ, all the links...search...google...old thread [since I mentioned components...] called somthing like  'What matters and what doesn't matter'...great thread.

[DougH]

Lots of bo-tweakers out there these days that blur the line between breaking rules and actually knowing what rules they are breaking to begin with. This reinforces the false impression that you can learn a few quick internet-tricks and be the next Porsche-driving botweaker.

Be careful of being sucked into this mentality, Michael. If you really want to design something new- learn some basic electronics and understand what is going on in existing designs first. Then you can go on from there.

[petemoore]

   I like using the 'water analogy' for electronics...quite often the things water can do quite analogously relates to what electricity can do:
  Be stored
  Be released
  Have the current limited [which can increase pressure]
  and having all these different things inter-related [ie if you have a huge current flow...it's gotta come from somewhere with pressure...probably decreases the pressure compared to teeny or no current flow].
  So...take water storage...for this everyone uses vessels, such as a glass of water or tank of water, there may well be alternate methodologies to keep water collected and prevent gravity from causing it to fall and flow...but if history has anything to say about it...on earth holding water is done with vessels...of course get into a 0gravity environment [no such thing AFAIK] and water holds itself together with gravity.
  So...there might be a new way to hold water that doesn't require a vessel...and new ways to deliver water pressure and current that don't require channels or tubes...but for the time being we are all using glasses and pipes to deliver pressurized water.
 

[R.G.]

Here's another way to look at it.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet.

Then there was the Roman philosopher who noted that "the gods favor the armies with the big divisions".

[frank_p]

The problem with the analogy with arts (painting) is that as long as you are naive with art history you will be full of motivation and produce some "naive art" that will be at least your own.  You may produce "interesting" paintings by the way that they are imperfect.  As your knowledge grow you begin to wonder how you could do something new that have a backbone.  When your mind becomes saturated with intellectual views, you frenetic way of producing may go away.

Picasso was saying: "I don't search, I find."

Well I guess you must do I for yourself.  "Traditional" painting is kind of stagnant now.   
Comparing with what has been done can, lead you a way, bring you challenge or bring lost of interest.

Perhaps a good way is not to think too much about "how to do it"; but just get into it.

Rainer Maria Rilke who was a poet said: "Sometimes I take a poem from somebody else and write the same text with my own hand, then it becomes a part of me".  So perhaps you don't see it the right way: even persons who are good at it like to "copy", but they do it in a way that they understand what they do (and they do it for themselves): they get into it as deep as they like, to bring some food in their toughts.  Once you have done it for a time while reading and learning some theory you may want to try your "own" design (even if some say it has already been done in some extent).  The goal is having the most questions as possible and as specific as it can be. Then you will know what work you have to do.  You will probably say to yourself: I have this to learn ,that to read,  make that experiment with that chip, mess with that piece of software, why it don't work as I predicted, etc...

Technology is a long term contract.  You have to find a way to get back to your bench and your "exercise books" as often as possible without becoming bored.

[ianmgull]

This thread is incredibly inspiring for people like myself who don't like the hard fast distinction between "technical people" and "creative people".

[solderman]

Hi
I Agree, You can't bend the rolls of physics. What you can do is to use contemporary technique in a different way than the obvious.
I have just finished the spring reverb project  (gaussmarcov.com) and what it struck me was that the gay who came up with the idée to connect "two speakers and two amps with a spring" must have been smoking something he was not aloud too.

Check http://www.zeta-sound.se/ only in Swedish but you can find picks and specs on small tubes.

If you for example use those tubes and the guts of an old used car stereo with cassetplayer you could make your self a tube based tape echo. If you cram it in a Hammond 1950BB you will definitely be on the "smoker side"

No I have not been smoking anything I shouldn't

[deaconque]

what it struck me was that the gay who came up with the idée...

I know it's a typo and I'm juvenile but it gave me a chuckle   

[solderman]

OK, I see it "came out" in a quite fanny way. It reminds me of when I was an exchange student in England and I asked my landlady what was up for supper. She answers "chicken". I meant to ask "is the chicken fried" but it came out "Is the chicken frightened"

She laughed for about an hour and after that all the food in the house was "frightened"

This one is on the house 

[axg20202]

OK, I see it "came out" in a quite fanny way.

The man's obsessed! :-)  Sorry, I'll get my coat.

[DougH]

This thread is incredibly inspiring for people like myself who don't like the hard fast distinction between "technical people" and "creative people".

I'm glad to see someone else thinks like I do.

Creativity and artistry exist on multiple levels in all walks of life. When in college I was told by some English majors that 'engineers basically learned how to follow rules and not deviate, whereas liberal arts majors learned how to create'. What they didn't see was that math and scientific principles were tools, paints & brushes if you will, used by engineers to create. And there is a lot of artistry in a good design.

Saying that there's a distinction between creative and technical people is like saying there's a distinction between people who like tomatoes and people who wear underwear... It's a false dichotomy.