Colorsound - Vocalizer

Discussion regarding early stompbox technology: 1960-1975 Please keep discussion focused and contribute what info you have...
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DrNomis2
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Post by DrNomis2 »

pinkjimiphoton wrote:what do ya need to fix it up doc? i got tons of parts bro, maybe i can send you something?
pickups, switches, etc?


Basically, I need to replace the ZR Bridge/Locking Nut, Neck,String Saddle Screws, and sealed tuners, I've ordered a replacement Locking Nut and a set of 12 String Saddle screws from Billy Hyde Music in Stuart Park, yeah it's my Ibanez S420WK Electric Guitar that needs the new parts, the neck is an Ibanez Wizard II with 24 frets... :D

I went to check to see if the parts I ordered had arrived on Tuesday, while I was at Billy Hyde Music, I put a new Fender Mexican Standard Stratocaster on layby, it was on sale for $999.00, and I've got three months to pay it off, I put $100.00 on it so I only have a further $899.00 to pay off, will post some pics of it when I get it home... :D

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DrNomis2
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my favorite amplifier: Legacy Valve Edition 5 Plus
Completed builds: Ge PNP Transistor Fuzz Face, Si NPN Transistor Fuzz Face,Madbean Gruntbox, Paul Cochrane Timmy, Univibe, Baja Real Tube Overdrive, Klon Centaur,Frequencycentral Little Angel Chorus,MXR Dynacomp,BK Butler Tube Driver 5-Knob,Buzzaround-alike,Tech 21 XXL,Tonebender Mk II, Tonebender 3-Knob.
Location: Darwin NT Australia

Post by DrNomis2 »

pinkjimiphoton wrote:more stupid pedal tricks for your perusal. the vocalizer sounds much better louder than in this, but i didn't wanna distort the audio or wake my roomates.



Sounds cool, you can deffinitely hear the formants which get more prominent when you add a fuzz, or distortion effect, incidentally, sorry for the name change, the main hard drive in my PC died and I had to buy a new one, and then do a re-install of Windows 7 and when I got my PC back online I found that I couldn't log onto my hotmail account, long story short, I ended up having to re-register myself as a new member of FSB just so I could log in and post replys... :thumbsup

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pinkjimiphoton
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Post by pinkjimiphoton »

final tweaks done...see the "other" forum for deets..

sorry for the distortion, the soundcard in this laptop really blows.

here's the final:

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
Slava Ukraini!

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pinkjimiphoton
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Post by pinkjimiphoton »

suck. i need to replace that damned conductive plastic pot, or the vocalizer is useless.

dino on the other forum cloned the korg fk2 mr. multi, that has far better formants than this pedal does imho.
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
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Post by nightraven »

for some reason i have one of these pedals, does anybody need any photographs or measurements or is this project pretty much done and dusted already?
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Post by pinkjimiphoton »

yes please!!
the more info, the better.. we have cloned them, but whether or not they're right is anyone's guess...

could you up pix and b.o.m. if possible, and a clip with distortion on and off?

your help would be WICKED appreciated!!
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
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Post by digi2t »

Whoa!!

We've pretty much found all the info, gutshots, traces, etc., but what doesn't seem to be available anywhere (trust me, I've looked) on the net is sound and/or video of the original. We've already cloned it from the available info, but it's impossible to validate your build when you have no idea what the real thing sounds like. Sort of like the Project V :hmmm:

I did beg a guy in Italy for a clip some time ago, but he replied that he didn't have time :(
No matter how many times I cut it, it`s STILL too short!

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Post by nightraven »

here's a photo of the circuitboard, no light anymore so a proper photoshoot will have to wait for tomorrow

Image

excuse my very limited electronics knowledge in advance...

the little cluster of four ceramic capacitors on bottom left are 220 either side and 680 on the two in the middle (no unit indicators that i can see)
the blue electrolytic on the far right is 10uF, and the two others closest to it are both 2.2uF
the big blue one on far left is 100MF (does that make sense? it's kind of hard to read) and the smaller one next to it is 2.2uF
the small IC reads CA3080E/RCA 836 and the larger one is UA4136PC/F 7839/DJAKARTA
the green capacitors don't have values written on them, as far as i understand, the only two i can make out are one big one which is "G 2A 104K" and a little one which is "G 2A 472J"
the transistor is hard to make out as well but it seems to say "ME0491"
fuzz potentiometer is 10k linear and dates to 1980
wah pot is 22k linear

here's a little sound clip - clean, then vocalizer with fuzz off, then with fuzz on


hope that gives a rough idea about the pedal (not sure i'm a big fan of it i have to say...)
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pinkjimiphoton
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Post by pinkjimiphoton »

cool, nightraven....thanks. dino did indeed clone this (and invented some fine tuning hacks and tweaks worth looking at)

what's so cool is you HAVE one,,,,could you please make an audio or even better, a video of it?
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Post by nightraven »

there's a little audio sample in the post above..... or was that a polite way of saying my guitar playing sucks? :mrgreen:

i'll see what i can do about making a better demonstration
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Post by digi2t »

That's great nightraven! :applause: Thanks for the clip!

Just one thing though, it seems to me that our clones are more vocal than the original :scratch: Maybe Jimi would like to chirp in here with his opinion...

It sounds almost as if the transistor, or half the pot, is not working properly. The YOY sounds very thin and wheezey. I've encounted this on the breadboard, when you pull the transistor out of the circuit. You still get the YOY, but much weaker. The original sounds just like the clone though, if I yank the transistor out :scratch .
No matter how many times I cut it, it`s STILL too short!

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Post by nightraven »

here are the numbers for the transistor

C: 8.9
B: 8.8ish
E: 5.7ish??? it's strange - it just climbs up slowly across a whole volt and then back down again

battery is 8.94

what is it like in your clone?
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Post by pinkjimiphoton »

wow, thanks nightraven...now we know what the thing sounds like!

i swear i didn't see the clip...lol

your playing is fine...i'd say from the clip, we definitely nailed it with the clones...both dino's and mine do indeed sound a bit more vocal sounding, but that could be from us tweaking in the circuit a little bit, parts variations etc...
i used precision parts for everything but the wah pot itself.
dino used slightly different parts i imagine, and he really spent a lot of time dialing it in.

but i think we indeed nailed that puppy....thanks so much for the clip!!

it may have a bit less "yoy" but to my ear the fuzz is a lot less brittle on the original. sounds more like a mouthy wah than what we worked up.

i'll try and pull it out and get you some voltages bro...if dino doesn't beat me to it. we gotta get a hold of boris, too, cuz i know he wanted to build this up too.
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Post by digi2t »

From full toe down, and slowly lifting to heel down, the voltages sweep like this on mine;

E = 3.9, down to 3.6, back up to 4.6
B = 3.7, down to 3.5, back up to 4.6
C = 1.6, up to 1.7, back down to 1.0

Power supply voltage is 9.14v.

According to the schematic, you should only be seeing a maximum of 4.7v at the transistor. Check your voltage at pin 3 on the CA3080, should be around 4.5v - 4.7v. If it isn't, you've got a problem somewhere.
No matter how many times I cut it, it`s STILL too short!

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Post by nightraven »

OK, maybe i didn't have the cable plugged in last night because we're getting different numbers today (i say this every time - electronics is not my thing :lol: i stick to the guitar playing.)

these are all with the treadle toe down.

E: 3.86 toe down; 3.86 heel back
B: 3.53 toe down; 3.39 heel back
C: still really glitchy, starts climbing down from about 3v down to pretty much nothing until i move the treadle at which point it resets; with heel back it's a little more stable at approx 3.65 but still likes to jump around. is this OK for a transistor to do or is it a sign that it's shitting itself?

pin 3 on the CA3080: 3.87

my pedal does seem to have less of the dipthong on it, which i think i like, compared to your clones (sorry guys!) Boris made me a Dipthonizer clone ages ago and while it was fun playing with those sounds i felt the novelty wore off quite quickly. it's subtle here and sounds more like a really resonant wah with a bit of a Grey Vox Wah vibe to it.
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Post by digi2t »

still really glitchy, starts climbing down from about 3v down to pretty much nothing until i move the treadle at which point it resets; with heel back it's a little more stable at approx 3.65 but still likes to jump around. is this OK for a transistor to do or is it a sign that it's shitting itself?
This might be a sign the the pot is dirty, or defective. On the dual gang pot, it's the side that the Blue/Purple wires are connected to. Personally, I would diconnect the wire, hook up my DMM, and see how smoothly the resistance changes. If the reading jumps all over the place, then there's something not kosher with the pot. If it's smooth, then I would be looking at the transistor. You can use any germanium transistor here. I've tried AC128, NKT275, and Russian MP20B. All work the same, so grab any germanium transistor you have on hand, and swap it in there, if you want to test. Just watch the pinouts.

BUT... beforehand... I would try to bring up the reference voltage a bit. Looking at your gutshots, I noticed that your zener diode doesn't look like the one in the shots that I have. I'm wondering if someone changed it :scratch: . You're running almost a full volt below what the was deciphered on the schematic. Might also bring up the "vocal" side of things.
No matter how many times I cut it, it`s STILL too short!

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Post by nightraven »

digi2t wrote:This might be a sign the the pot is dirty, or defective. On the dual gang pot, it's the side that the Blue/Purple wires are connected to. Personally, I would diconnect the wire, hook up my DMM, and see how smoothly the resistance changes. If the reading jumps all over the place, then there's something not kosher with the pot. If it's smooth, then I would be looking at the transistor. You can use any germanium transistor here. I've tried AC128, NKT275, and Russian MP20B. All work the same, so grab any germanium transistor you have on hand, and swap it in there, if you want to test. Just watch the pinouts.

BUT... beforehand... I would try to bring up the reference voltage a bit. Looking at your gutshots, I noticed that your zener diode doesn't look like the one in the shots that I have. I'm wondering if someone changed it :scratch: . You're running almost a full volt below what the was deciphered on the schematic. Might also bring up the "vocal" side of things.
is it not a NPN transistor in there? since the pedal is negative ground as far as i can tell. if it's PNP then you'll have to flip my readings around :p

battery: 9.64
E: 3.90
B: 3.55
C: still all over the chart
pin 3: 3.91

i'm not even sure anymore which way round this transistor is, just noticed i've been contradicting myself in the last couple of posts :oops: the leg of the transistor that is giving me crazy readings is the one furthest to the right of the PCB (oriented like on my photo), closest to the wah potentiometer.

all readings with the toe down - pretty much the same as before but just a little higher because of the newer battery. give it to me straight, Doc, is she broken? :( or just a classic case of vintage pedal fuckedupness :D
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Post by digi2t »

Yes, the pedal is negative ground. No, it's not an NPN transistor. The PNP transistor is used for switching purposes only, it's not in the audio path. It gives a signal to the CA3080, which in turn acts as a variable resistor. You don't need to flip anything around.

As for the transistor legs, E will be the leg closest to the 2.2uF capacitor, C will be closest to the 10uF, with B being (naturally) between the two. So, C is the one that's erratic, according to your description.

If you're still getting erratic readings, please verify that your pot (purple/blue wires side) is functioning smoothly. If it isn't, don't worry, it may only need cleaning. If it is really buggered, you can replace it. I've sourced two different models from the UK, one of which is what Jimi and I are using.

If the pot is OK, then I would look at the tranny. Like I said, swap it out with any PNP germanium. Silicon will work as well, but the voltage curve is much harsher, resulting in a hard transition through the YOY. Germanium Has a softer "knee" if you will, resulting in a smoother transistion.

Last, but not least, change the zener. Your Vref voltage is low at 3.91v, especially considering that the battery is new. You should be sitting at around 4.7v, so swap for a 4.7v zener. Even a 5.1v zener will do in a pinch.

Pop the above, along with 2 Aspirins, and call me in the morning. :mrgreen:
No matter how many times I cut it, it`s STILL too short!

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Post by nightraven »

OK, i'll have to head to the shop to get some contact cleaner and when i do i'll give it a good squirt. the pedal was quite intermittent when i got it out of the box but a couple of sweeps up and down with the treadle cleared it up and it's been going good ever since.
thanks for all your help!!
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