Ring Modulator Idea

[soggybag]

Here's an idea I drew up for a ring modulator. I cobbled this together from several other existing things.

The idea here is control the level of the carrier oscillator with an envelope. I thought this might make some interesting sounds as it would give you control over the dynamics of the carrier frequency.

[Taylor]

I'm not very good at interpreting schematics yet, so I'm just going on the idea here:

If you're just controlling the level of the oscillator with the level of your instrument, this won't really give you very interesting results. Some ring mods already do this by default, to silence the oscillator when you stop playing so the designer doesn't have to worry about nulling the osc. What might be interesting, and maybe would achieve what you're after, is controlling the wet/dry mix with playing dynamics, so playing lightly would give you clean, but hitting hard would give you modulation. Or the other way around, clean on loud notes, clang on light notes.

You can also have fun with envelope controlled osc. frequency. Can be a little gimmicky, but fun. You still working on the Ring Modu-Matic, or have you given up on that?

[soggybag]

I was hoping to control how much oscillator was fed into the balanced modulator with the envelope.

[Taylor]

Well, I don't think it will have as powerful an impact as you're hoping, but I could be wrong. The volume of the oscillator doesn't have as noticeable an effect as varying the mix or frequency, but might still be interesting.

[soggybag]

I really was really trying to come up with an idea to control the oscillator. I needed to shut it off when there is no input signal.

The Ring-Modu matic I built works OK. Not as well as I had hoped. it could be a problem with my build. Which had a few mistakes originally. I think I fixed all of these, but. There still is a problem with oscillator not shutting off in a way that works well. It tends to start a little late and linger a little after you stop playing.

[Taylor]

Ah, well, that will definitely be fixed by using the input envelope to control the osc. envelope. I've heard conjecture that Moog's RM does this, from Paul Perry (maker of the Frostwave Blue Ringer), but no confirmation.

[soggybag]

I just had the idea that I could use a 13700 in place of the 3080. Using one OTA for the balanced modulator and the other to control the oscillator.

[Eb7+9]

It tends to start a little late and linger a little after you stop playing.

how about clamping the inside of your oscillator with a jFET ?
way faster ...

some OTA ringmod info here:
http://home.debitel.net/user/jhaible/additional_schemos.html