interesting project:Throbbing Gristle's Gristleizer !!

[mongo]

Hey! I just found this project in one of my favorite sites:

http://boingboing.net/2008/12/27/throbbing-gristles-g.html#previouspost

they have even a PDF with more info! I think this couls be made, now, if only we could come up with a NICE PCB for this...

http://rubidium.dyndns.org/cag/pdf/gep.pdf

and even some clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37zXCmsGZFk&feature=related

I'll have some more time during the summer so I'm tempted to give it a try.

ENJOY!

Andy

[John Lyons]

There is a project file for it at gaussmarkov.net

john

[mongo]

There is a project file for it at gaussmarkov.net

john

cool! I'll check it out

[GREEN FUZ]

Or you can buy one from here.

http://www.smashingguitarsasheville.com/endangered-audio

[frequencycentral]

There's also quite a few Gristleizer topics on the forum if you do a search.

[soggybag]

Or you can buy one from here.

http://www.smashingguitarsasheville.com/endangered-audio

Wow $375! For the Gristelizer. $47 for the PCB! I have one on the bench that I have been working on. I'll have to get back on it.

[R.G.]

Posted at GEO for years.

[frequencycentral]

Posted at GEO for years.

Got a link please R.G.? I looked and did a search but maybe it's titled differently? Thanks!

[R.G.]

Posted at GEO for years.

Got a link please R.G.? I looked and did a search but maybe it's titled differently? Thanks!

5/3/03 "The Gristle Box". Looks like I may have removed the schematic in a cleanup. I still have it around somewhere if you're hot after building one. I don't remember if anyone ever took me up on independently checking my layout work.

[R.G.]

The same circuit was a buildit article in "Practical Electronics" in July 1975. I have copies of that as well as my schemos and the one found in the crisandcosey.com
web site, which claimed the circuit as the original gristle box.

[Ben N]

A little surprising that it hasn't been updated with, say, modern opamps, even in Gaussmarkov's treatment. Seems like a pretty cool toy.

[R.G.]

Tee-hee...

Updating was the very next thing I did. I didn't bother to put that on the net since I got essentially zero response to my first posting of the layout.

[Ben N]

Well, RG, I'm moving this summer, and job-hunting in the fall, so there is virtually no chance I will build this beast any time soon, but I sure wouldn't mind at least getting a look at it. (Been listening a bit more to Nels Cline and Johnny Greenwood, you see...) Still, the odds of ever building it would certainly improve with duals or a quad, and transistors whose names don't begin with the letters "BC".

[frequencycentral]

Thanks for the link R.G., I missed it somehow. Looking at the schematic the thing appears to be an LFO (but going into audio range?) with some nice waveform options modulating a 2 pole VCF which is switchable to be a VCA. Which doesn't seem that special really. Am I missing something? It's difficult from the youtube to discern whats the Gristleizer and whats the slicer. The LFO looks interesting though, as a stand-alone. R.G.s layout uses a couple of dual opamps, maybe I'll breadboard it up this summer. I'm an admirer of Chris from TG, his Roland System 100m + DIY based modular evolved in a similar way to mine.

[soggybag]

Speaking of updating the Gristelizer. I notice it has 5 op-amps. If you updated this to use dual op-amps would have one extra, what would you do with this?

Mixer for straight and processes sound?

[frequencycentral]

I'm not familar with the filter (I assume it's lowpass?), but couldn't you use the 'spare' opamp to implement variable resonance or a highpass option? 



EDIT: Ah, ok I read the blurb, it's a bandpass fliter, so maybe use that extra opamp to mix the clean signal with the bandpass signal to have a notch reject filter?

[soggybag]

I've been looking at gaussmarkov and stobiepole schematic for the Gristelizer and just don't get how the envelope works?

There doesn't seem to be the typical control voltage created from a rectified signal thing that is happening in most common envelope effects.

The filter is also confusing me.

The original article has a switch that is labeled Filter/Envelope. My guess is that this should be Filter/Tremolo. There is no real envelope instead it's really VCF or VCA type effect.

Maybe an extra op-amp could be used to add an envelope? Probably need to add another switch and a few more parts.

[frequencycentral]

I think for 'envelope' read VCA. The filter/VCA is controlled by the LFO, there is no envelope detector/follower. I think you would need a dual opamp to add one, such as the modularised Dr Quack at GEOFEX for example.

[sean k]

I remember hearing Throbbing Gristle for the first time in the late 90's and thinking it was modern, just made as it were, and similar to massive attack etc, then my friend told me the tracks I'd heard were from the late seventies... Wow!

That whole kinda noise making thing has taken a long time to catch on and those guys were so ahead of the bell curve, I mean so far ahead maybe the bell curve hadn't even started 

I can see why then that such things have passed under radars. I like the idea that evrything thats going to be big in the future is actually around us now, but quietly waiting it's turn, and it's up to us to look in the dusty corners if we wanna get it cheap and before it hits the big time and the ticket price goes silly.

Anyways, I'm going to make it... With BC transistors and 741's and 2N3819's, well maybe not the BC's.

Maybe I should track down an old box and seventies caps and stuff then sell it on E-bay as one of the lost boys 

Friend of mine bought some 19th century muskets and had them carved up in maori designs on the stocks and we seriously talked about selling them at auction as genuine NZ landwars maori weapons... the rich don't know it's real and does it matter if it does the job just like an original?

[R.G.]

I can't remember where I saw this for the moment, but I recently came on something where a pedal maker was offering rebuilds of gristleizers and was saying that the original gristle boxes had finally died and that it was impossible to rebuild them.

I chuckled, then posted offering to make the newly-dead gristleizer work again, since there was no magic inside, just old parts and connections that could, in fact, be easily fixed.