"Lo Fi" type DIY pedals

[timd]

Are there many other "lo-fi" type diy pedals out there? I've tried the Lo Fo Mo Fo, but I haven't really seen much else.

[RandomGlitch]

You can make any pedal lofi if you put a voltage starve on it!

[artifus]

http://www.geofex.com/FX_images/lofi.gif

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=98767.0

[WhenBoredomPeaks]

i think lo-fi is more about the lack of production skills than the sound of a single pedal
but when i see lo-fi i always think about cheap SS amps miked with some skype/mobilephone mic and heavy garage reverb plus sloppy playing
for example the most well-known (that means like 100 followers on tumblr ) lo-fi/bedroom album in my country was recorded with a laptop speaker, (both guitars and vocals) the amp was a roland cube15, cheap guitar. (think squier bullet) bad production, software drums and everything was drenched in reverb.

http://piresianbeach.bandcamp.com/album/piresian-beach-ep

[Mark Hammer]

Exactly what is meant by "lo-fi"?

Is it a distorted sound?  Is it the sound of AM radio through a 3" speaker?  The sound of a $19.95 walkie-talkie, or a CB radio?   Is it the sound of an old carbon mic, or a rotary-dial telephone handset?

Lo-fi assumes some reference point.  So what is it?

[artifus]

when i was growing up 'indie' music(*) simply meant that which was released on an independent label rather than a major and covered a wealth of musical styles but has since become a genre. a similar thing seems to be happening with lofi. lazy journalism and marketing, i guess.

some lofi actually takes quite a lot of production and can sound quite hifi, see dave fridmann, mark linkous and many others. i guess it comes from bedroom/garage four track low budget recording techniques. an aesthetic. some of my favourite bands were ruined for me by some prodoooser getting their hands on them and spending far too much time in a fancy studio at a record companies behest. all that distortion, hiss and noise can lend an atmosphere to a track, kinda like vinyl crackle. it can make you listen harder, trying to hear through the noise you pay more attention and can pick up on or imagine more subtleties in the recording and performance. sometimes. sometimes it can just ruin it. depends on the tune. *also* think of all the 'noise' that surrounds you as a listener at a live gig - amp hiss, crowd chatter, snare rattle, air con, etc., but if you're into the music you focus in.

(*i think 'you guys' call it college radio or alt rock)

*edit* added more rambling nonsense

[hannibal827]

+1 to the above.  I think of Pavement and Guided by Voices records when I hear lo-fi.  Mostly that "sound" resulted from "quick and inexpensive" recording rather than lack of skill or the deliberate search for grotty sound.

Pavement recordings, in particular, are very much not "lo-fi"--they just seemed a really stark contrast to overblown late-80s production cliches.

Stereolab even had en EP titled "Low-Fi" that was anything but--their recordings were pretty consistently clinical-sounding.

Ironically "lo-fi" wound up describing recordings that were actually more "high fidelity" than their major-studio counterparts, in that the performances by the musicians were pretty much unadorned and "as is," i.e. "faithful" to what was happening at the moment of recording.

I guess it would be possible to make a "lo-fi" pedal in the same way that Digitech made a "Grunge" pedal--but as with that pedal it would be anyone's guess as to whether the resulting sound fit a given person's idea of the purported "tone."

[artifus]

http://tapeop.com/ is a good resource of both hi and lo fi recording techniques. i like the way the interviews focus on the people rather than the gear. archives are worth a read.

[timd]

Exactly what is meant by "lo-fi"?

Is it a distorted sound?  Is it the sound of AM radio through a 3" speaker?  The sound of a $19.95 walkie-talkie, or a CB radio?   Is it the sound of an old carbon mic, or a rotary-dial telephone handset?

Lo-fi assumes some reference point.  So what is it?

In my opinion, its pretty much all of the above. It would be nice to have multiple "lo fi" pedals for live situations. Many bands run a lo fi pedal + a distortion for intros, bridges, etc - then kick off the lo fi to get back to a thick sound for some diversity within the tune.

[timd]

btw - Pavement is one of my favorite bands. Some of thier EP's had really sloppy playing - especially guitar solos - but they still have a type of "charm" to them.

[artifus]

check the tape op link above for interviews regarding the recording of slanted and enchanted and more.

[hannibal827]

It would be nice to have multiple "lo fi" pedals for live situations.

It would be pretty easy to modify the LoFoMoFo to do different things: treble cut instead of bass cut, different degrees of treble / bass rolloff, different diode for different "bad speaker" sounds, different "bad" transistor, etc.

The Z.Vex "Instant Lo-Fi Junky" seems to attempt an emulation of analog-tape anomalies, if you're looking for that kind of lo-fi.  Don't know if anyone has posted schematics of that, or if any DIY builders have put their own spins on it, etc.

[artifus]

lofomo and wobbletron? through a slowly lfo'd idiot wah? a tim e lofi combobox! the lofi wobble wah or wah wobble.

*actually* there was a recent thread about a wow and flutter tape emulation pedal but i forget from whom.

[Mark Hammer]

Exactly what is meant by "lo-fi"?

Is it a distorted sound?  Is it the sound of AM radio through a 3" speaker?  The sound of a $19.95 walkie-talkie, or a CB radio?   Is it the sound of an old carbon mic, or a rotary-dial telephone handset?

Lo-fi assumes some reference point.  So what is it?

In my opinion, its pretty much all of the above. It would be nice to have multiple "lo fi" pedals for live situations. Many bands run a lo fi pedal + a distortion for intros, bridges, etc - then kick off the lo fi to get back to a thick sound for some diversity within the tune.

Well, if that's the case, then what you want is a sweepable lowpass and highpass filter, with a wee bit of clipping.  What is distinctive about all the analog communications equipment I listed, is that they aim for the smallest bandwidth possible, while still maintaining intelligibility.  So, you want a highpas to trim back the bottom, and a lowpass to trim back the top, until you get a suitably restricted bandwidth that meets those conditions.

[Canucker]

First off I'll admit to being lazy and not reading ALL of the responses but if you want to make any effect you already own sound Lo-Fi what you need is an EQ pedal.....perfect if it has a volume slider......so many songs with a low fi intro are quiet and then full volume kicks in when the rest of the band joins....sorry if someone already wrote that but yeah totally true! Also if you can situate your pedals close enough...or wire something up....use the EQ tweaked to a low fi setting for clean and kick a distortion/fuzz/overdrive pedal at the same time as the eq and that way you go from lo fi clean to a big thick roar! I love doin that!

[gritz]

+1 on the Tape Op thing and Mark Hammer's point about "lo-fi in reference to what?" It is a very philosophical thing.

There's analogue butchery, like applying distortion, or limiting bandwidth via EQ, or introducing noise, hum etc. Maybe tape effects too like wow and flutter (do-able with a modulated delay line)

In the digital realm there's aliasing (which sounds a little like ring modulation in that it creates "false" tones that don't relate harmonically to the input) and bit rate reduction (crunchy!). There's a subset of Arduino fans who use the chip to maul audio to good effect.

It depends also whether you want to mangle something predictably, or whether you're looking for a really random effect. Some lo-fi fx are about emulating old gear (like tape loops, or classic digital samplers). Others are just about creating a "new" twist with your sound.

As regards dedicated pedals: hmmm, maybe there's a niche because I don't recall that many dedicated "fi-lowerers".

[timd]

I guess my perfect pedal for MY ideal use would be a pedal that -

1. Can be made without DSP or tape but still have the "wow and flutter" like tape.

2. Can be introduce some gravelly distortion

3. Has some type of bandwidth limiting  (like the lofomofo)

4. I could build easily

Keep in mind, I do realize how difficult this feat is!

[garcho]

Can be made without DSP or tape but still have the "wow and flutter" like tape.

PT2399

introduce some gravelly distortion

CMOS or mess with transistor bias

Has some type of bandwidth limiting

opamp filters are really easy to make. Have you ever seen a Forrest Mims book?

check out the LM567C for some FSU style, with very low parts count.

[timd]

For the PT2399 builds - I have used them to produce the "wow and flutter" of tape by turning the knobs, but is there is way for a build to modulate this while playing? And randomly much like real tape?

[garcho]

LFOs are used for this, whether they control a parameter with voltage or resistance via LED/LDR. I just recently made a double tunable band pass filter with the tuning frequencies being altered by simple opamp LFOs, via LEDs and LDRs. Even though the LFO waveforms were basically square waves, when set to different rates, the over-all effect sounded complicated and a little random.
Actual randomness, or rather, pseudo-randomness, is a lot harder to pull off. There are some pseudo random LFOs (Ken Stone, RG, etc.) but they're not random over long lengths of time (the way tape is). If what you want are little 'artifacts' or 'remnants' or singular events that sound like something is 'wrong' with the device, maybe some type of envelope follower thing could work. Have you tried Doug Deeper's 'Clari(not)' or Anchovie's 'Noise Ensemble'? They might give you the spark your brain is looking for.