Green Ringer, MXR Blue Box and Orange Squeezer order in a chain

[gigimarga]

Hello,

I've built these 3 stompboxes using the Tonepad's projects:

1. Green Ringer - http://www.tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=90 (i replaced the 47k resistor from the output with a 100k pot as a volume)
2. Orange Squeezer - http://www.tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=88
3. MXR Blue Box - http://www.tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=73

My order is Orange Squeezer (acting like a booster, too) -> MXR Blue Box -> Green Ringer, but the sound is almost unusable: too gated and too distorsed.

After searching the forum i found a post of Mark Hammer in which he said that  MXR Blue Box doesn't need to be boosted.
In another topic i found that Green Ringer sounds better boosted.
I like very much the combination of Green Ringer and MXR Blue Box (as i can hear in the clips made by B Tremblay and posted in this topic http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=37545.0), but i want to have more sustain so i can to use it for longer synth-type sounds.

So, what can i do?

Thx a lot all!

[B Tremblay]

Well, you've done your homework and already found the clips I was going to link in my reply when I read the topic!

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[jacobyjd]

I did something similar with my project--Orange Squeezer into Blue Box w/ some mods.

You may run into trouble with the Green Ringer at the end of the chain...in my experience, GR-esque effects don't have a lot of sustain by nature, and the Blue Box itself is pretty gated, so sustain is really a losing battle with these effects.

You could try Hammer's sustain mod--it may give you the effect you want, but it'll cause a lot of glitchiness on the octave down.

My OS oscillates when I turn it up to a certain point (I don't know if this is normal for that build or not...), so when running into the blue box, it does a better job of allowing notes to sustain.

I also added a clean blend, so if you place a distortion before the effect, then blend that signal into your OS/BB/GR in parallel, you may get more favorable results (i.e. the tone of the BB and GR, with the sustain of your distortion--the octave effects may wear off, but not your whole signal, etc.).

I hope some of that helps

[Mark Hammer]

Placing a compressor of ANY kind in front of either of these circuits will help to extract better performance from both.  The thought of either a Blue Box going into a Green Ringer, or the reverse order, makes my skin crawl.  Both interesting circuits and sounds on their own, but I think it is one of those pickles-and-ice-cream things; what is appealing on its own may not be so appealing in combination.

The thought of a Squeezer feeding both a GR and BB simultaneously, and mixing those two....well now that starts to appeal to me.  On several fronts:

• the two octave-related effects are not fighting against each other (one wanting to go up and the other wanting to go down)
• the prospect of having both an octave up and one or two octaves down at the same time (think EHX Microsynth)
• the prospect of having two blendable fuzzes to combine (the non-octave side of the BB's Blend control is simply overdriven op-amp)
• the prospect of separately processing one vs the other (e.g., an auto-wah after the BB, which is then blended in with an unprocessed GR)
• the possibility of bypassing either of them and having a true clean sound blended in with the engaged effect

Of course, at this point, we're starting to get into something a ittle more complicated...or are we?  Does experimenting with parallel processing require one to end up with a spaghetti plate of patch cables?  Not really.  Being able to do this really and truly consists of constructing nothing more complicated than a one-in-two-out splitter, and a two-in-one-out mixer.  You can find schems to adapt and simplify for both at Jack Orman's AMZ site.  Note that this does not require ANY modification to the GR or BB themselves.  If you tire of them or if someone offers you a price you can't refuse, they are each easily removed from the scenario.

Of course, if your intent is to never use the two effects at the same time, then the order doesn't really matter, as long as the compressor goes first.  But I strongly suspect that once you get a taste of parallel processing, you will be hooked.

[B Tremblay]

The thought of either a Blue Box going into a Green Ringer, or the reverse order, makes my skin crawl.  Both interesting circuits and sounds on their own, but I think it is one of those pickles-and-ice-cream things; what is appealing on its own may not be so appealing in combination.

Have you heard the clips in that old thread?  I may be biased, but I think they're pretty groovy sounds.  I was especially happy with how my take on the Chest Fever intro sounds.  Remember, the Octave Divider had a 'Ringer built-in!

[Mark Hammer]

I haven't listened to that clip, but I have my own Green Ringer, and a couple of Blue Box builds.  They are each fun but uncooperative in their own way.  I'm biased I suppose, but I look at them and the thought of hooking them up in series just seems like taking 5 hyperactive kids in the back seat and two dogs in the front seat on a drive downtown - there may be SOME fun bits in there somewhere, but the rest of it just seems too draining to want to attempt.  I honestly can't see that pair in series combination in a gig context. 

But builds of even the same circuit can vary.  You may well be able to get substantially more cooperation and predictability out of yours than I get out of mine.  In which case, more power to ya!

[gigimarga]

Wooow...thx a lot all...you're wonderful!!

@jacobyjd: What mods do you made on your Blue Box?
@B. Tremblay: Your Green Ringer sounds more soft than mine...do you made some mods to it?
@Mark Hammer: Why do you want to kill all my time with DIY fever (telling me about the parallel processing...) and to make my wife to leave me alone ? Thx a lot for your great explanations again! These days i am very busy, but the next week i will have some time to test that...

My problem is that the configuration OS->BB->GR sounds very distorsed and unclear...logically this configuration seems to be good, but practically isn't!

Thx again all!

[Mark Hammer]

My problem is that the configuration OS->BB->GR sounds very distorsed and unclear...logically this configuration seems to be good, but practically isn't!

That is because a guitar is not an oscillator sitting on your bench with a consistent waveform and consistent amplitude.  At the logical level it sems simple: divide by 4 then double the frequency.  But the guitar signal that feeds the BB consists of many fluctuations and harmonics that come and go, and the threshold mechanism for triggering the 4013 is not "smart" enough to recognize continuity of the note.  It is not like the human brain that can recognize the same word spoken, whether it is said by a child, a grandparent, slowly or quickly, with your mouth full or your mouth empty, whether from the best school in the city or from the poorest area of the countryside.

Similarly, the GR would work superbly at doubling the frequency, IF it was receiving a single steady sine wave as its input.  The trouble is that even though the BB outputs a single note, that note is not a pure sine wave.  It has MANY harmonics, each of which are treated as something to be doubled by the GR.

IF you turn the tone all the way down on your guitar, and pick cleanly in the right spot, using the neck pickup, and IF the OS is set for maximum compression, and IF the BB has appropriate filtering to make the output more like a sine wave, then you probably could feed that to a GR and get something more musical, because at that point the whole thing will be behaving as if you were using an oscillator instead of a guitar.  But that is like an eclipse; EVERYTHING has to line up properly for it to happen.

This is one more reason why I recommend parallel processing.  It does not depend on the "cooperation" of the effects quite so much.

[jacobyjd]

I grabbed my mods partly from Mark Hammer's response in a thread I searched for, partly from my own mind, and partly from the build reports on Tonepad.

The ones I used were the tone knob, 1/2 octave switch, a clean signal blend, and a decay pot.

Tone Knob: 10K pot between the output caps (C9 and C10 on the Tonepad board) --this was by far the slickest mod. I highly recommend it

1/2 octave switch: use a SPST to toggle in a jumper that connects pins 1 and 3 of the flip-flop. --I also recommend this mod--really cool.

decay pot: from this thread: http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=64649.0
     --I used a 250k pot in series with a 33k resistor, but the 250k pot doesn't cut it...I'm swapping it for a 500k.
     --This mod is...interesting. Not super musical, but it does allow you to dial in a little more sustain...it just makes the octave go nuts.

parallel clean blend: I added a 500k linear pot between the effect's input and output. When I turn it all the way down, the sound is ALL blue box. When it's turned all the way up, it's 50% blue box, 50% clean. This adds some clean (or distorted, if you put a pedal before the BB) attack to the overall effect. The combinations of sound you can get with this are as follows:
     --blue box only, so blendable fuzz and octave
     --clean guitar in parallel w/ fuzz (it's like fuzz...with ATTACK  )
     --clean guitar in parallel w/ octaves down (almost like a freaky jazz octave solo sound if you learn how to use it right...)
     --clean guitar w/ fuzz and w/ octaves down (busy, but useful)

additionally, I plugged my strat in and hit the phase switch on the middle/neck position (gives me a green ringer-esque octave up), and I got distinct notes of octave up (from the guitar), octave down (from the blue box), and a bit of the fundamental note.

Overall, you can do some really cool stuff with those mods. I agree that adding the green ringer after the blue box is a bit much. Parallel would be much more friendly, but if my out-of-phase octave up from my strat is any clue to how a GR would operate in FRONT of the OS/BB setup, you may have something to try there

[gigimarga]

Thx a lot both of you...you're very kindly!

[mattumbi]

I don't have a clip handy to post but a DOD envelope filter ->blue box-> high octave fuzz used to reside in an fx loop on my gig pedal board for big bad faux synth tones. I think its all in the context of the music one plays/ears of the beholder.

I wouldn't bring that rig along to my bluegrass gigs 

[gigimarga]

Tone Knob: 10K pot between the output caps (C9 and C10 on the Tonepad board) --this was by far the slickest mod. I highly recommend it

How you wired, more exactly, the tone pot: cut the trace between C9 and C10, put one lug to C9, other lug to C10 and the wiper to the volume pot?

Mark Hammer suggested another tone control here http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=39390.0, but i don't know what schematic he used.

[B Tremblay]

I'm biased I suppose, but I look at them and the thought of hooking them up in series just seems like taking 5 hyperactive kids in the back seat and two dogs in the front seat on a drive downtown - there may be SOME fun bits in there somewhere, but the rest of it just seems too draining to want to attempt.

Curmudgeon alert! 

To answer a previous question, my Green Ringer build is stock, but JD Sleep once commented that the sound clips of mine weren't close to his builds.

[jacobyjd]

Yes, that's essentially what I did--though not in the same way.

I didn't cut the trace--I simply lifted the leg of one of the caps, then ran a wire straight from it to the pot, then used one of the pads connected to the trace as the other send.

Those wires go to each side of the 10k pot, then the middle goes to the pot lug that trace was originally meant for.

[gigimarga]

Yes, that's essentially what I did--though not in the same way.

I didn't cut the trace--I simply lifted the leg of one of the caps, then ran a wire straight from it to the pot, then used one of the pads connected to the trace as the other send.

Those wires go to each side of the 10k pot, then the middle goes to the pot lug that trace was originally meant for.

Thx a lot!

[gigimarga]

To answer a previous question, my Green Ringer build is stock, but JD Sleep once commented that the sound clips of mine weren't close to his builds.

[Mark Hammer]

It happens.  Component tolerances.