One Control - Honey Bee  [traced]

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thehallofshields
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Post by thehallofshields »

I'm going to build a BJF Honey Bee Overdrive and am curious about this new SMD version put out by One-Control Effects (Chinese Company?), but designed by Bjorn Juhl.
http://www.one-control.com/honey-bee-bjfe.html

i64.tinypic.com/t8so5i.png

Based on the description the component values should be very close or the same, but the key feature is a 'Vintage / Modern' switch that goes from standard Honey Bee, to a lower-mids emphasized, throatier sound more suited to Humbuckers. My guess is that it swaps a couple components to alter the Frequency Response of the OpAmp feedback loop much like the Rat Reutz Mod. The demo's sound great and I'd really like to dissect this and incorporate it into my build.

The effect is an SMD board with standard 3PDT switching and visible traces inside a 1590B-ish enclosure.. The mod is the DPDT on the left side connected to C4, R10 and possibly others.
If anyone has one, it shouldn't be too hard to dissect...

Image

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daeg
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Post by daeg »

I know someone out there has been waiting for this one. :o

This is essentially Bjorn's Honeybee v5, with a switch to emulate the v1 Honeybee. It sounds fantastic. The quality of construction is absolutely superb, and the Gold / Amber Metallic enclosure is really stunning. A total joy to play. When comparing side-by-side to the Aion Electronics Procyon and the Honey Beest, I find the tone to be a little bit more crisp which I like, and the knee into the clipping range to be harder -- it is brighter and clips less smooth, but is more satisfying to play.

A few notes:
-- The 'Vintage' mode simultaneously removes the Treble boost from the JFET Output stage by disconnecting one-side of the 'Nature Control'., and lowers the fixed Capacitance in the Opamp Gain-Loop to 110n. This moves the corner frequency that gets max gain up. The overall result is less Treble and less lower-Mids.
-- The Output / JFET Gain Stage is biased unusually. This version adds a 1M Resistor (R15) to V+ which lifts the Gate Voltage to 0.4V. It then replaces the usual 5.6k Drain Resistor with a 50k Multi-turn Trimmer. I would not recommend using this method, and would absolutely caution against a 50k Trimmer if you don't use a Multi-turn. The range of operation is very narrow and I don't know why they did it this way. My unit was tuned somewhere between 6.5k and 7.2k.
-- The Volume control stage has some interesting things going on. It appears to be trying to balance a 'Treble-Bleed' with a 'Treble-Rolloff'; seeking consistent Treble across the sweep of the Volume control. This is new to the v5 Honeybee as far as I'm aware. Maybe someone else can comment on this.
-- I cannot identify the SMD Diodes or Opamp. There is no reason to assume this anything different than a CA3130ez and 1n400x Diodes.
-- The Opamp Diodes are Red LED's just like the v2 and onwards, just SMD this time around. They lit up bright from whatever small voltage my DMM put out when testing resistance.
-- The Capacitors were all double-checked with a Capacitance Meter. You can rest assured they are correct.
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OneControl-Honeybee-2018-10-24.png

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daeg
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Post by fuzzbunny »

Very cool!
Thanks for your great work and sharing the results!

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

Am I right if I assume that the 100n across pins 1 and 8 of the IC is actually 100pF? Would you suggest I try a smaller trimmer - say 10-20K?

I posted a vero layout at Guitar FX Layouts but i haven't built it yet.

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

AFAIK One Control is Japanese and the build quality appears to be quite good. The enclosures are very cool. I did have a Strawberry Red OD which died however but it was replaced under warrantee. I wouldn't want to try fixing one! Some of the ODs are excellent - the Lingonberry and Purple Plexifier in particular are amazing. In fact I wish someone would trace the Plexifier because I would love to try different diodes in it. :-) Tracing it is beyond me I'm afraid.

I have posted a vero layout at Guitar FX layouts under Contributions. I haven't tried it yet so it's still unverified.

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daeg
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Post by daeg »

HamishR wrote:Am I right if I assume that the 100n across pins 1 and 8 of the IC is actually 100pF? Would you suggest I try a smaller trimmer - say 10-20K?
Yeah my mistake on unit. The compensation cap is 100pF.

I definitely think a 10k Trimmer would be the way to go. Most 'Honey' pedals use a 5.6k resistor, and in this case, with the Gate lifted 0.5V, the measured resistance was 7-8k.
The best solution is probably a 10k Trimmer in series with a 2.2k-4.7k Resistor.

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daeg
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Post by daeg »

I may breadboard this in the near future. One thing I am curious about is whether the CA3130 actually contributes anything in this circuit.

In the Rat, the Opamp is actually clipping, so the poor slew-rate rounds out the otherwise hard clipping knee, and lowers the presence of higher-order harmonics (scuzz).

In the Honeybee, the Opamp swing is limited by Diodes (the Red LED's) and the Voltage swing won't even approach the Opamps headroom.
Also, is that compensation cap across pin-1 and pin-8 doing anything that it wouldn't do in the Feedback Loop (pin-2 and pin-6)?

What I'm getting at, is I'd really prefer to build this using a standard TL072, with a 100pF cap across the Inverting Input and Output instead of the obscure CA3130EZ.

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

Using your schematic I have drawn up a tagboard (posted at Guitar FX Layouts). I made a few changes - the 100pF compensation cap being one. The 22uF cap to Nature 2 should be 2u2 I am 95% certain - it sure sounds right. The 360K resistor to Vref should go between the 47n (C6) and the 15K (R11), not to pin 3 of the IC. I used a 47K resistor where you have 147K (R6) - is that a typo? Lastly, I just removed the 1M resistor (R15) on the trimmer - the Jfet simply wouldn't work properly with it there. Removing that 1M altogether lets the pedal work perfectly and makes more sense. I used a 20K trimmer and the sweet spot is easy to find by ear.

With those changes the pedal works and sounds amazingly good. :-) Both settings of the switch are very usable and quite different from each other. So thanks for your efforts because i really like this pedal.

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daeg
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Post by daeg »

HamishR wrote:The 22uF cap to Nature 2 should be 2u2 I am 95% certain - it sure sounds right.
I'm sure it's 22uF. I'll take a pic to confirm. Even at 2.2uF it's probably letting almost all Lows through, so maybe there isn't any practical difference.
HamishR wrote: The 360K resistor to Vref should go between the 47n (C6) and the 15K (R11), not to pin 3 of the IC.
I'll check on that. I might have made a mistake. There not going to be any practical difference though other than a tiny loss of Input Impedance your way.
HamishR wrote: I used a 47K resistor where you have 147K (R6) - is that a typo?
No. I believe this was a mistake was made in the early Honey Bee traces. I found a 147k in both the One Control Honey Bee and the Bearfoot Honey Beest.
I built an Aion effects Procyon with a 47k and I found it to be too dark.
HamishR wrote: Lastly, I just removed the 1M resistor (R15) on the trimmer - the Jfet simply wouldn't work properly with it there. Removing that 1M altogether lets the pedal work perfectly and makes more sense. I used a 20K trimmer and the sweet spot is easy to find by ear.
Great man. When I adjusted the trimmer to measure the full resistance, I had a hell of a time getting it to bias back. Even with a multi-turn trimpot it was challenging to get the JFET to pass signal. Why would anyone would design it this way.
I was panning on doing the same with a 4.7k Resistor in-series with a 10k trimpot. I'll probably end up going with a 20k to keep it simple just like you.
HamishR wrote: With those changes the pedal works and sounds amazingly good. :-) Both settings of the switch are very usable and quite different from each other. So thanks for your efforts because i really like this pedal.
I'm so happy that someone out there actually tested it out and built it. I've had a string a bad-luck with perf-board and will probably wait for someone to make a PCB.

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

Well I'm a little reluctant to change anything in my HB now but I might replace the 47K with a 150K if you say it should be 147K! Bjorn has used both values there in other circuits. I doubt it will make a huge difference. This is my favourite Honey Bee for sure, and maybe it's because I used a 2u2 rather than 22u at the Nature pot. :-) I'm not going to change that because it sounds spot-on for me.

This is what I love about building my own. I can take all the bits I like and change the bits I don't. Fab.

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

Well thanks to daeg I now have a One Control Honey Bee which I like more than other HBs I have built or bought. I found I was using the modern setting so much that I have now built one with only that setting - no switch to original version or anything. In this version you will see a purple 4n7 in the middle - in my latest version I have changed that to 1n to brighten the pedal a little and it seems to have worked. I don't like overly bright overdrive but I do like crisp - and this is crisp. :-) To me it actually sounds more like my tweed Deluxe cranked a bit now because it's not so dull. I'm playing it through a tweed Deluxe at low enough volume to be clean - still quite loud though. Hence the need for the pedal.
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One Control HBeee.png

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Post by oooscasianooo »

Hey HamishR!

I just built your layout above and am not getting any breakup/distortion when maxing the drive knob. I built your other layouts on the tagboardeffects forum and I'm not 100%, but I remember there being more gain than this?

I'm visually A/B'ing your modified layout with the one posted on the tagboardeffects forum, but nothing sticks out to me.

Just wondering if you yourself built yours from the layout above or just made value/cap changes from a different layout, perhaps?

Thanks for your contributions!

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caspercody
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Post by caspercody »

Did you connect drive pin 3 to drive pin 2

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

I just had a look at this thread - yes I have built several versions of this pedal and all have worked well. I was surprised to see that the original layout seems to have disappeared. So here is the One control version as per the schematic. I have finally tried it with 22µF on the nature control and it is actually better than 2.2µF, so I am certain that Daeg was right.

BTW yes you can connect pin 3 to pin 2 on Drive if you want - it won't make any difference. I'm sorry if anyone can't get the gain to work - have you included all of the links? Sometimes I have an issue where after I have cut off the component leads a little sliver of metal falls across the copper tracks of the vero board, causing a short. So even if you have made sure with your soldering a little sliver of cut off metal can cause havoc.

So here is a verified layout:
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One Control HB.png

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Post by oooscasianooo »

Thanks for the reply!

Per usual, builder error haha

Works well, now! And I dig this modified layout more than the original haha

https://www.instagram.com/p/BuVT9nYnNM5/

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HamishR
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Post by HamishR »

Wow - now that's cool! Great to roll your own isn't it?

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Post by oooscasianooo »

HamishR wrote:Wow - now that's cool! Great to roll your own isn't it?
hahah yeah, man, and thanks to guys like you! :thumbsup

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Post by Svullgo »

Hi, I built this using Hamish layout and I had the chance to compare it with an original and in the Vintage setting they sound similar but it lacks a lot of low end and distortion/overdrive in the modern setting.
I didn't have the opportunity to trace it I quickly double checked the component values and the only one that was different from Daegs trace was R15 (10M instead of 1M) which he recommends to omit but I tried with and without.
The transistor is marked 6D X with three lines above, could it be MMBF5457?

Has anyone built it and and have a lot bass in the modern setting?

//johan

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Svullgo
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Post by Svullgo »

I could borrow an original pedal and check the switch wiring and found some errors on Daegs schematic.
The difference is that the wiper on the nature pot is connected to ground on both settings and C14 is connected to pin 1 on the switch and not to ground.
With these changes it sounds exactly like the original.

Sorry for the bad schematic but this is the second schematic I have drawn (yet) :-)
One Control - Honey Bee.pdf
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