sparkle motion! (list now OPEN)

[theactionindex]

just want to get this out there in case anyone thinks that this will be some sort of vintage clone thing...

My dumble is severely disappointed by this news.

But seriously, the demo sounds awesome and I would much rather have you put your twist on things than a straight up clone. PUMPED.

[hazelwould]

Just outta curiosity. Will this be a smaller box or bigger box?

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

smaller baby.
125B sized with jacks, power at the top. at this point, i'm thinking $125 and i'm going to do a run of 15 to start because that's how many of those enclosures i have at the moment... if it goes well, i'll keep it in the production lineup and will probably bump the price up a tad. please no emails/pms about it yet, though!



i needed to order some dual pots for it that i didn't have and i just placed the order for the circuit boards, so it'll be 10 days from now or so until i have all the supplies on hand. in the meantime, i'll get the boxes all prepped up and ready.

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

ONE QUESTION...
in the case of the EQ knob - adding bass also adds distortion/gain and volume so in my opinion i would make this pot CW - bass, CCW - treble which is the opposite of how tone controls normally work... mainly because of the addition of volume.

which would people prefer?
CW - bass/gain, CCW - treble
CW - treble, CCW - bass/gain

[theactionindex]

It would make more sense to my ears to have CW-bass/gain/volume and CCW-treble, if that makes any sense. Either way it doesn't make too much of a difference, but that would be my preference.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I also think CW-bass, CCW-treble would make more sense, since you're dialing it away from standard and adding volume.

[hazelwould]

Agree with everyone else. Bass CW, treble CCW.

[Eric!]

Bass-CW

[univalve]

Agree with everyone else. Bass CW, treble CCW.

+1

[harpies]

Brian,

still planning on posting the schem? i've been thinking of putting a boost in my ghost box but I never settled on anything. this boost sounds ideal, and if I happen to have the parts around, I might do it up this weekend.

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

here you go sirs and madams.



large schematic here and reposted from my blog:
the transistor is any NPN germanium you have available; i check what i have on hand for gain and used ones around 100 hfe. i don't check for leakage, i just pop it in and use my ears... i can hear if it's overly noisy or not.

the 33k/50k pot *should* allow for a bias range of around 3.5v-6.5v, though it will vary slightly depending on your transistor. personally, i like the rangemaster biased a little lower than usual, but this setup allows for a pretty wide sweep with lots of tonal variations.
edit: if you need a higher or lower travel on the pot, change the 33k to either a 22k or 47k. if you want less range, use a smaller value (25k) pot, though you'll probably need to tweak the emitter (33k) resistor to get the sweep you want.

the EQ control is a dual-gang potentiometer and allows for a wide range of sounds - from trebly boost to full-range boost to heavy driven boost. when the treble switch is (on) it disables the first section (eq, A) of the eq control and will allow for a "standard" rangemaster sound. in this mode the control will still work at adding some slight heft to the signal, though.

lots of possibilities here!

edit: i forgot that the input/volume pots are both audio/log taper while the EQ and bias are linear.

[harpies]

you are a gift! thx!

[sevenSHARPnine]

Holy shit how am I just noticing this?! Interested.

[coldbrightsunlight]

That's awesome! Verrry interested still. Any chance of a clip showing some tweaking of the controls to get more of an idea of the range of sounds?

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

as soon as the boards get here and i build one up i'll make a demo