I want to build a Boss CE-1.. (Can anyone help?)

[sevenisthenumber]

I cant find ANY info except a schematic for both versions. Does anyone have a layout?

[MikeH]

I had one of those on my bench a while back, and the guts were ICKY.  Just obcenely complex.  Sorry, no layout that I know of.  have you built a CE-2?  Just as good IMO, and you can do vibrato mods on it too.

[birt]

i have built one and will never do that again. parts are very difficult to find.
pm me your email for the original service manual that i got from roland. (if you don't put it online that is. i don't think those guys will like that)

[Mark Hammer]

What is it that you want this pedal to do for you?  It does a couple of different things, but was really aimed more at keyboards when first produced.  A number of other pedals do the same tricks.

Apart from complexity, the noise control sub-circuit will require some fine-tuning and tweaking; something you may not be up for.

[sevenisthenumber]

I just heard this:
http://www.musictoyz.com/guitar/pedals/retro.php

the chorus of course...

[Mark Hammer]

It's a nice pedal, though the mystique behind the CE-1 was never anything I really understood.  I repaired a buddy's stock CE-1, and my response after playing with it, post-repair, was "So?".  I was tangentially involved in the evolving (re-)design of the Retro-Sonic (they're made here in my city by a buddy whose full-time day-job is software quality assurance for Blackberry), and I can attest that it includes a number of mods/changes to the circuit to make it more compatible with guitar.  It is still the same basic circuit underneath, but there will be a number of things you need to do to make it play nicely with a guitar.  Other chorus pedals out there already do that.

The tone of any chorus pedal will be largely a function of the delay range selected by the manufacturer.  You can easily bump that up or down by changing the value of a single capacitor.  Of course, if it is the change in modulation form between vibrato and chorus on the CE-1 that attracts your attention, that's a different thing.

[MikeH]

I liked it ok as a chorus, but the one I had was NOISY.  Hssssssssssssssssssssss...  Not sure if it was just that one, or if they're all kind of noisy.

[Mark Hammer]

That was one of the things that Tim Larwill (of Retro-Sonic) tried to fix.

The CE-1 expects a low-impedance/almost-line-level source (hence the 50k input attenuation pot).  Plugging your guitar directly into it (or via a succession of unbuffered true-bypass pedals) isn't going to provide that.  The noise control is provided by a gating circuit that cuts out the delay signal when the signal falls below a certain threshold.  The time constants on the original gating circuit were questionable.  Tim attempted (and succeeded as far as I know) in both optimizing the S/N ratio by playing with the gain structure and input stage, and tweaking the gating circuit.  The original onboard power supply has been replaced with a 9V wallwart jack and supplementary onboard regulation and voltage-doubling to provide clean power and all the headroom of the original.

It is probably also fair to note that all-original CE-1 pedals are going to have electrolytic caps that are getting a little long in the tooth.  Of course, not knowing what you mean by "noisy" leaves the relevance of what I've noted above in question.  The point is that there are reasons for noisiness unique to a specific pedal, reasons which are part of how people tend to use them, and reasons which stem from the mismatch between their design and principal user group.

[MikeH]

That was one of the things that Tim Larwill (of Retro-Sonic) tried to fix.

The CE-1 expects a low-impedance/almost-line-level source (hence the 50k input attenuation pot).  Plugging your guitar directly into it (or via a succession of unbuffered true-bypass pedals) isn't going to provide that.  The noise control is provided by a gating circuit that cuts out the delay signal when the signal falls below a certain threshold.  The time constants on the original gating circuit were questionable.  Tim attempted (and succeeded as far as I know) in both optimizing the S/N ratio by playing with the gain structure and input stage, and tweaking the gating circuit.  The original onboard power supply has been replaced with a 9V wallwart jack and supplementary onboard regulation and voltage-doubling to provide clean power and all the headroom of the original.

It is probably also fair to note that all-original CE-1 pedals are going to have electrolytic caps that are getting a little long in the tooth.  Of course, not knowing what you mean by "noisy" leaves the relevance of what I've noted above in question.  The point is that there are reasons for noisiness unique to a specific pedal, reasons which are part of how people tend to use them, and reasons which stem from the mismatch between their design and principal user group.

Based on your explanation, it was probably a little bit of both.  It wasn't in the greatest of shape.  And the noise wasn't horrible, just enough to be intrusive, when playing quietly or with long pauses between notes.  It's definitely an interesting pedal, and a great collectors piece, but not really worth building, IMO.  Is the CE2 a different thing all together?  I always thought it was the same basic chorus, fine tuned for guitar?  I could be completely wrong about that though.

[Mark Hammer]

Well, it doesn't have vibrato, which is one of the differences, though obviously you could add that yourself.  What it does do, however, is shape the LFO output differently for vibrato and chorus, which is something that a stock CE-2, or indeed ANY of the subsequent Boss chorus units, does not do.  The chorus LFO is triangular, and the vibrato LFO is sinusoidal.  When it comes to modulation effects, the "turnaround" at the ends of the sweep is often a big part of what makes the effect seem more musical to the user.

The CE-2 uses a 102-stage chip while the CE-1 uses a 512-stage MN3002.  Does this matter?  I doubt it.  There may be different headroom available, but the circuit has so many other constraints on headroom (e.g., the switching FETs) that I can't see the BBD mattering very much.  Yes, 512 stages can yield different delay times than 1024 stages, but that is easily compensated for by simply shifting the clock range over.

I'm not in any position to calculate what the filter corner-frequency specs are, but it stands to reason that there might be some small differences in where the CE-1 and CE-2 roll off bandwidth.  Both will attempt to roll it off at a point where clock noise is kept out of the audio path.  If a 512-stage and 1024-stage device are both aiming for the same delay range, theory says that the filter corner frequency on the 1024-stage device will be an octave higher than that of the 512-stage device, which might be expected to have some role in the perceived "warmth" of the chorus.  Of course, like many other things, that too can be mimicked i a CE-2, simply by changing a few cap values.

[sevenisthenumber]

How can I get the tonepad CE-2 layout to sound like the CE-1.
I really want the CE-1 sound cause I love the Space Echo chorus and thats what it is..

[Mark Hammer]

How would you mimic it?  Well, for starters, you would need to figure out what the differences are in the filtering, principally the filtering that comes after the BBD.  Depending on whatever differences exist between the CE-1 and CE-2 filtering, you make the appropriate changes to the CE-2 filter cap/resistor values.

The next thing you would need to do is to figure out what the clock range (or the delay range) is for the CE0-1 and CE-2 and adjust the clock cap in the CE-2 appropriately.

The next thing on the list is to install a dry-lift switch to enable vibrato.

Finally, you would need to figure out a way to round up the triangle wave that normally comes off the CE-2's LFO.

All of this IS do-able, but don't ask me what the specifics are.  I'm not that clever.

[sevenisthenumber]

hmm. Thats a start!!!

[sevenisthenumber]

Its so crazy that no has made a PCB layout for this....