uhhh yeah, another muff a comin' ( video samples please check it out )

[DougH]

Yeah, I'm starting to think it needs a simple treble cut tone control on the end. I tried it with my windsor and it was more "toppy" sounding. That rolloff needs to be adjustable for different amps.

[DougH]

That stupid seesaw tone-control was 1/2 the reason I sold my old triangle knob "oh...you want bass with that treble? Sorry..."

I know, don't you hate that? That stupid stock BMP tone control is one of the worst IMO.

[joegagan]

yeah, seesaw is a great term. never heard that one. eric is always a funny cat.

[John Lyons]

I don't like the small sweet spot of the stock BM tone control either.
One thing I've been meaning to try is using a 50K pot and 25k fixed resistors at either end.
This way you would cut off the mostly unusable extreme bass and treble settings.
ROG props for that idea.
Either that or put some resistance between the low pass cap and ground making a shelved type
LP filter...and maybe doing something similar on the HP side.

I use a pot for controlling the mids on the BM circuits I've done. It's more useful than adjusting
the typically narrow bass/treble sweet spot.

Seems like the SWTC (stupidly wonderful tone control by mark hammer) would work great in
Joe's circuit here. A 10K pot with a .02ish cap connected to the wiper, signal to hot/3 and output taken off lug 1/cold.
The level remains fairly un affected and you only use a pot and a cap. You can put a resistor in between the
cap and ground to make the filter more of a shelved response.

[Eric H]

I use a pot for controlling the mids on the BM circuits I've done. It's more useful than adjusting
the typically narrow bass/treble sweet spot.

Makes sense.

Seems like the SWTC (stupidly wonderful tone control by mark hammer) would work great in
Joe's circuit here.

Another circuit I've been meaning to try, but I quit building before Mark posted it. This circuit looks like a perfect place to try that one.
I've been down all those roads (no knobs, too-many-knobs) and, like most people, am never satisfied ;-)

-Eric

[aziltz]

i JUST tuned into this thread.  is the schematic posted on page 1 what everyone is raving about, or have they're been some revisions since?

[joegagan]

no revisions.
everything sits on the breadboard just like it did in the video. there is a slight gaff, a .05 instead of a .1 between q2 and q3 ( zac, verify please)

our further development involved attempting to breadboard a near-identical sounding unit on a 2nd breadboard so that we can mod away without losing track of the original tone.

we used all matching components for #2, we still need to put 8 of the same trannies in. also , we had a problem getting the second one to work, and haven't been back to it yet.

before i try any tone controls, i am testing a clean blend similar to a sparkle drive as a sort of gain control. full wet will have to sound as good as the video tone to pass muster.

for the blender version, i plan to mount it in a wah casing and use the blend function. one knob on the side for level. i have procured two momentary (non locking)  on/on switches that will be mechanically lashed together, mounted at the heel down area wired exactly as a dpdt. when your heel is full down, true bp. when the pedal moves an eighth inch, the clean side of the blend is engaged. the trick will be making the transition from bypass to buffered as transparent as possible. no switch in the normal wah sw location. virtually no mechanical click,  should be pretty smooth. will let you know how it goes.

[DougH]

Maybe an NFB gain control (like on the axis fuzz and tycho) might be more useful than the stock BMP sustain control, too. I thought about trying that. A simple 100k pot with cap to ground shelving EQ (like on a guitar) would probably suffice as a tone control for me. The only point of a tone control AFAIC would be to match it to all my amps.

[petemoore]

  Cryptic language warning...
  Breadboard a BMP, right now, do not read below this line.
  Failure to do so could cause your BMP to sound like mine.
  It was like dunking under water, the sound turned into thudlike snorkel midrange tones...sorta speakin'.
 Gave the kind of feeling "can't this be right?'' when used.
 Now I hit that switch and it's the Fuzz ! As only a touch of the old mud-water rolls off there but a whole new beast [with teeth] emerged.
 Pretty amazing how 4 transistors could be dull, questionable integrity, slow sounding.
 But when fundamentally altered, they just whip right past the "my #1 Fuzz" I'd been moslty preferring the whole time since it passed up the DS-1, #1 spot is where the 'lit' BMP landed.
 I like the idea still, light *it up just enough then throw the gas on at a rate that doesn't [metered with compressors voltage divider] so it doesn't use up all the 'oxygen', then swamp it so there's no breathing room to keep up with oxygen demand until very relaxed [as the note sustains it ''breaks the surface''.
 *it: Whatever the limiting distortion's engine is, *it could be anything or even manything [circuit-wise.
 As far as tone and treble controls are concerned, deal with the bass so it swamps the circuit [or not]...get that figured out early on in the X process so the bass definition is or isn't disabled, this may requires very intuitive or extensive tweeekenning, to sprinkle in the LF rollof across some portion of the circuit, then figure out how the 'open the swamp bass' switch goes.
 with the bass opened up...the sustain knob starts being of use to reduce the bass swamping, we may not want that.
 You're speaker will need that treble control after you walks it.
 Make sure you can have too many HF's with the normal amp sound, when adjusting on thise HF control cap value and VR, [signal path-V/R-Capacitor-Gnd., across Vcontrol], at some point you may try the treble control on your amp as a way to let the highs 'scrape on past' everything...except the very last taming device.

[joegagan]

my brother used to talk about recording with engineers who came from the brit, or EMI school of thought. the thinking was, get the most high fi ( lots of upper end ) signal to tape, then you have the widest spectrum to work with later. thinking is that you can subtract without sounding too artificial more than if you add eq, which sounds artificial.

two problems. the artist has a tinny crappy tone in the cans, which we all know can be pretty uninspiring. second, you've put the faith 100% in the mixing engineers to get your tone right, often long after you've laid down your tracks if you are a sideman like my brother is.

this relates to what pete just said, i think, let the highs through all the way to the amp and deal with it at the amp. pretty nice, but you have to tailor all your pedals' eq to this equation for live multi pedal setups. for recording, i often use one pedal into an amp for specific part and tailor the whole sound around that pedal. so, for those instances, pete's method is fine and possibly preferable.

doug, you are correct, i am thinking of installing a jumpered socket on the output area with a trimpot to ground so that a tone cap could be installed to cut highs for specific amps. all this to keep it a one knob pedal  ha ha.

[DougH]

this relates to what pete just said, i think, let the highs through all the way to the amp and deal with it at the amp. pretty nice, but you have to tailor all your pedals' eq to this equation for live multi pedal setups.

This works fine if you can control everything with your guitar volume. If you can clean up to a decent clean tone and control different levels of gain, this works great. But with this design (so far) you're going to be playing full-bore all the time until you shut it off. Then you are stuck with a ho-hum tone from your amp because of the treble rolloff. Nothing wrong with a little EQ, if for nothing else, to allow it to work with different amps. I don't view it as a "tone" control as in "wow, I'm going to dial in different tones- scoop/push mids, etc". I view it more as an adjustment to make it more flexible for different setups.

[joegagan]

exactly. doug, you and i were already thinking the same way on this.

[joegagan]

also, in my case, i leave a brontoboost on as a preamp of sorts , which has a nice high end content, the treble on my vibrolux is usually on 2 or 3. so if i were to use this muff and turn the bronto off, it would probably fit in nicely. the biggest overall complaint about the bronto was that it was too toppy, which caused the tone dog mod ( which, among other things added exactly the type of tone control we are talking about here) to be created.

on the otherhand , some people's setups are perfect for high endy pedals. some really juicy tones result. (rip roy buchanan)

[DougH]

I used to do that with a Rangemaster. Kept the amp treble turned low and kept the Rangemaster on all the time. Great clean tones with the guitar vol on 5-7, then max it for juicy leads.

[Eric H]

If you're playing loud enough, most of the treble concerns go away ;-)

[John Lyons]

Interesting guitar/amp tone set up (Sabbath/Iommi/ramaster) talk:
So you play your amp pretty low treble Joe...

item 1: Iommi plays the neck pickup. You can see this clear as day in the video footage David posted.

item 2: Iommi plays with his guitar's tone knob rolled down, and opens it up during solos to enhance his feedback effects, and you can also see this in the same footage, and countless live performances. He rides the tone knob the way other guys ride the volume knob.

Put those two details together, and you would imagine his tone would be deeper than hell, but its not! Here's why:


Item 3: Iommi used really @#$%ing light gauge strings(by necessity), I mean crazy light, like .30 something low E. Buh bye lows!

Item 4: He said in an early interview he turned bass on his amps all the way down, so even if he is boosting low end on his guitar, its not making it past the amp's tone stack, but why would he do that? Because...

Item 5: Boosting an already filtered signal with a new heavy EQ curve is going to cause a higher resonance curve and give a much sharper frequency range. When it comes to filters and resonance, the slope of the filter has a dramatic effect on tone. A 24 pole lo-pass sounds nothing like a 48 pole, especially with even minor resonance increases. So what he did was cut his highs on the guitar, and amplify what was left of that at the amp, while simultaneously cutting the low end, which leaves...

Very sharp, resonant upper mids.

I'm pretty sure this is the Iommi tone formula, or at least, a significant part of it.

Full Thread:
item 1: Iommi plays the neck pickup. You can see this clear as day in the video footage David posted.

item 2: Iommi plays with his guitar's tone knob rolled down, and opens it up during solos to enhance his feedback effects, and you can also see this in the same footage, and countless live performances. He rides the tone knob the way other guys ride the volume knob.

Put those two details together, and you would imagine his tone would be deeper than hell, but its not! Here's why:


Item 3: Iommi used really @#$%ing light gauge strings(by necessity), I mean crazy light, like .30 something low E. Buh bye lows!

Item 4: He said in an early interview he turned bass on his amps all the way down, so even if he is boosting low end on his guitar, its not making it past the amp's tone stack, but why would he do that? Because...

Item 5: Boosting an already filtered signal with a new heavy EQ curve is going to cause a higher resonance curve and give a much sharper frequency range. When it comes to filters and resonance, the slope of the filter has a dramatic effect on tone. A 24 pole lo-pass sounds nothing like a 48 pole, especially with even minor resonance increases. So what he did was cut his highs on the guitar, and amplify what was left of that at the amp, while simultaneously cutting the low end, which leaves...

Very sharp, resonant upper mids.

I'm pretty sure this is the Iommi tone formula, or at least, a significant part of it.
http://stompboxes.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6041&hilit=Iommi%27s+rangemaster

[Wild E]

  Well, thanks allot Joe & Zac!!! Because of you I had to get a bigger breadboard and am wrapping up my FET project without any further experimentation! Your videos sound great. I wasn't too interested in fuzzes till now and am anxious to get started.
  I don't know the difference between diodes so can can anyone tell me how 1N914B would make a  difference? I too have a couple of super leaky Ge trannys I will try.
  Thanks again for posting this circuit. I suppose there may some refinements before I am able to start on it (accompanied by more videos, I hope ).

[joegagan]

thank you for the compliment, wild e. good luck with the breadboarding.


i posted one of the outtake vids at tinypic, , somebody tell me, is the audio better , worse or the same as the previously posted youtube vids. (same camera, mic, recorded exactly at same session etc, only difference is hosting site). thanks in advance for the feedback

[joegagan]

oops , link

http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=avsrpj&s=5

edit: in my testing the youtube wins the tone test hands down. both were loaded straight to each site from the raw avi files. i find that one stage of compression ( ie: youtube's compression) is preferable.

[Zzagar]

Wild E,
As far as diodes, in my experience, 1N914's provide some nice hard, but smooth clipping in the circuit. Joe and I experimented with these. 1N4148's were used in the original BMPs. Both of these diodes are SI and if you want to get a even harder edge try some 1N4001s. As far as GEs I've had good results but the sustain and amount of gain on tap tends to be more limited. It would be cool to mess with leaky transisors as diodes in the first stage and the 1n914s in the stages following or a combination of both the SI's and GE's in all gain stages. The modification possiblities are endless! Thanks for the kudos. Continue to post any results!