PLL

[wildebelor]

Holy shit… the riff you first play in the demo is very cool.
I'm very intrigued!

[Holy Schnikes]

Progressing very nicely.

[Tristan]

Tristan had the same probs with the Dimehead, IIRC.

Yep, LaoWiz already referred to this video between the lines but this is basically also what I got from it, not much else (I don't play anything like the guy in the video though):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXx6nMSxS0w
My Pollyanna sounds about ten times heavier than that Dimehead PLL piece of shit.
Still curious what Lao can Jizz up from the PLL circuit though…

[LaoWiz]

Tristan had the same probs with the Dimehead, IIRC.

Yep, LaoWiz already referred to this video between the lines but this is basically also what I got from it, not much else (I don't play anything like the guy in the video though):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXx6nMSxS0w
My Pollyanna sounds about ten times heavier than that Dimehead PLL piece of shit.
Still curious what Lao can Jizz up from the PLL circuit though…

Yea, that video is really weird. The kayzer vids are really polished sounding and that video is like the opposite.

Today, I debugged one of the fabbed PCB boards that I got off of diystompboxes which is a faithful PLL clone. As stock, it sounds like the Dimehead. The Dimehead seems to have more sounds/interactivity with the controls. But both have a lot of glitchyness that makes it hard to dial in good usable settings. By adding one capacitor, this fucker cleans up a lot and tracks better. Fuck.

[LaoWiz]

Just a quick clip from iPhone again. This is the PCB that is the straight clone of the Schumann. If you see on the bread board there's a couple of green wires and tiny blue speck which is a capacitor. Without this cap the circuit seems to be less stable and starts to get really glitchy depending on the settings. What's cool is that this can go to another rotary for a few different cap values plus one of the settings can be without a cap to be like the OG.

This clip is just a fixed setting of just the multiplier and divider without the straight fuzz signal mixed in. In previous attempts, just listening to the multiplier and divider alone was not very pleasing sounding as tracking was all over the map. Adding in the fuzz signal would blanket some of this but I thought this sounded kinda of cool without the fuzz. Definitely harder to hear on the iPhone recording, but here I just hit some single notes and the Phase locked loop just kinda creeps up and does its robot swelling thing.

The only bad thing about this particular board is that it won't even fit in a 1590D so it's gonna go in a 1550G which is 9 x 6 inches. There will be room for extra additions which is great but definitely very pedal board unfriendly. I have two of these boards so I'll make one for myself and make the other to be available. I really hope the one I want to make available down the road will fit in a 1590D. Mostly likely a 1590D for a more stock version and a 1550G for the deluxe astro version.

[goroth]

Sounds great Lao!

[LaoWiz]

Sounds great Lao!

Thanks, man. It's a really addictive effect to tinker with. Now that I've played the Dimehead it would be awesome to play the original. With all of the old guitar synth schematics available online, it seems like an endless journey of synthy fun.

[AxAxSxS]

Damn man, Already thinking of ways to use this. Pretty wild sounding.

[Hyphen Nation]

please do a small batch of these….

[AxAxSxS]

please do a small batch of these….

I don't think he's done tinkering. Which can only mean good things.
Very keen to see where this takes you.

[Tristan]

Sounds cool, much more synthy than the Dimehead.
I don't think that vid of the Dimehead is too weird by the way, that's really what it does, sometimes I could magically reset the machine and it would track better again by flicking a few of those switches but more often it didn't work or after not so long a while I had to switch the switches back again to make it work, and so on and so on.
Did you try switching the Multiplier completely out of the circuit for the octave downs / heavies?
What did you think of the fuzz on the different PLL versions you have there, any difference between them?

[LaoWiz]

Sounds cool, much more synthy than the Dimehead.
I don't think that vid of the Dimehead is too weird by the way, that's really what it does, sometimes I could magically reset the machine and it would track better again by flicking a few of those switches but more often it didn't work or after not so long a while I had to switch the switches back again to make it work, and so on and so on.
Did you try switching the Multiplier completely out of the circuit for the octave downs / heavies?
What did you think of the fuzz on the different PLL versions you have there, any difference between them?

I actually like the Dimehead one a little more now but it definitely is hard to nail down great sounds. The biggest thing I don't like is that the face plate is so thick that the toggles don't have nuts on them so they are just attached to the circuit board and sticking out of the holes. Not very safe. It's really nice that the circuit board is small and fits in a nice size enclosure. I'm thinking mine will be pretty big!

You can't really take out the multiplier as it feeds the divider. You can just turn the multiply volume down. For fatter octaves the 1st multiplier setting is good. Lots of fat synthy sub octaves.

The fuzz is relatively tame in the Dimehead, the PCB version from the last vid, and my breadboard setup as you need a smooth signal for the PLL, multiplier, and divider chips to track well. After the signal is processed through those stages it hits a mixer which is the last op amp. It only uses 1/4 of that chip for that so there's room there to add some post fuzz to fuck it up some more. Yikes, lots mo controls and toggles and rotary switches!

[DannDubbleEwe]

...deluxe astro version.

[LaoWiz]

I just gave elevenstring's Dimehead one last go before sending it back to him. At first I shit my pants because no sound was coming out. Luckily, I switched the cords from in and out and it came alive. The IN is on the left when I'm used to it being on the right. I definitely don't recall this when I played it last week. Very strange.

Now, I have to take back anything I said about the Dimehead. For some reason today, it totally rips. I was able to get great tracking and a plethora of beautiful sounds. And the thing wasn't glitching all over the place like last week. Totally stumped by this as last week I really thought it sounded like poo and now I feel the opposite. Now, I want one.

[Tristan]

That's weird, did you change your settings or what happened?
I can't remember the in and out being the wrong way around either.