Conference napalm::guitar

    I built the dual limiter that PAIA sells, it's ok, but not great.
    I also built the phase shifter that was in Guitar player a number
    of years ago, it was a good shifter but not great, and boy did it
    eat batteries.....
    
    I'm interested in the flanger/chorus thing PAIA sells, anybody built
    one?
    
    dave
    

    I built the Ring Modulator.   Wasn't very useful except for strange
    sound effects.   Running a voice through it made it sound a lot
    like the computer voice in Emerson, Lake & Palmers Karn Evil 9.
    
    Didn't use it for very long with the guitar.   It had the effect
    of reassigning the notes on the fretboard, which of course made
    it difficult for me to play.
    
    A friend of mine and I called it the "wretching agonizer", a take-off
    on those hokey names that electro-harmonix used to give their boxes.
    We relabelled the 3 controls as pain, wretch and agony.
    
    The project itself was well documented and easy to follow although
    if I recall correctly, some of the parts which "can easily be found
    in any electronics store" weren't so easy to find.
    
    	db

    I just finished the "hot springs" reverb from PAIA, again not great
    but not bad, of course you need a mixer to get it to work right.
    
    Craig is from California and out there the electrronics stores have
    all of these "easy to find parts", when I lived in Sandiego it was
    a breeze to get anything even obscure parts as there were store
    that sold nothing but ic's etc.
    
    dave

    Speaking of "easy to find parts" (and slightly off the topic I'm
    afraid) does anyone know if something on the order of an industrial
    strength volume pot for guitars exists?
    
    In the process of learning a tune with a lot of repeated
    twisting of the volume knob, I seem to have worn out the darn thing
    (it's noisey and not always smooth to twist).  I'd like to replace
    it with something that is going stand up a little better.
    
    Preferably the replacement would go to 11, but this isn't a requirement
     :-)
    
    	db
    
    P.S.  Also, do they made a volume knob that DOESN'T also turn off
          the highs when you back off from 10?   I would prefer a volume
          knob that only affected volume and not tone.

    Dave,
     You can try this. Open up your guitar and spray WD-40 into the
    pot. I'm not kidding, I've done this to all my guitars and the noise
    is gone, I assume forever, it's been several years since I did this
    to all mine and I have had no furthur problems with the noise. To
    keep from losing your highs you have to raise the value of the pot
    to at least 1 meg ohm (audio tapers above 1 meg are very rare).
    This will help but not cure the problem. The problem is this: you
    are loading the output of the pickups (a high impedance device)
    they want to see a very high input impedance, when you lower the
    volume you are placing a smaller and smaller resistance in parallel
    with the input circuits of your amp, not to mention that your cord
    is beginning to act like a capacitor (capacitive filter) and when
    the right value is reached the high end gets filtered out. 
     Using an active pre-amp built into the guitar where the gain of
    the guitar is controlled via the feedback loop in the pre-amp rather
    than a droppiong resistor in parallel with the input of you amp
    is the best solution, however you now have to modify your guitar
    and add batteries (yuk!), increasing the chance that the instrument
    will fail when you least expect it, ie: at a gig.
     EMC pickups use this approach and from what I have been told they
    work very well, no high end loss as the volume is changed.
     Some other passive pickup systems (Semour DUncan etc.) are also
    designed to minimise this problem but short of the pre-amp solution
    there is no easy answer. The problem is more noticable in humbucking
    type pickups vs single coils.
    
    hope this helps......
    
    dave
    
    

    
    	Jump with a 0.01 uf cap from the wiper terminal to the input
    terminal (the one thats not ground) of the control - that should
    bring back the highs at mid volume settings.
    
    	Joe Jas
    

    I did some experimenting with the jumping cap approach and I was
    not satisfied, you get a real nifty high end boost, but then your
    lower end drops out leaving a humbucker sounding somewhat like a
    strat. I experimented with a number of cap values and tyhe best
    I got was using a .1uf cap, what I achieved was an increadable
    mid-range boost, talk about sustain, wow! however it was not really
    usable, but fun for a night of jamming.
    
    dave

    I built the PAIA reverb unit about five years ago.  The unique feature
    of this device is that it's really two spring reverbs connected
    out-of-phase; this results in that muddy 'after-tone' you get from
    a spring being nulled out.  Very much like the humbucking pickup
    concept.  I've used this 'verb to fool sharp ears into thinking
    I had a plate hidden in the closet.
    
    Of course, since the device was made by PAIA, the componenet quality
    was less than optimal.  I generally make it a practice to upgrade
    components wherever possible on PAIA stuff.

    
    	I've built wo PAIA kits.  A number of years ago I built the
    Pygmy ammp, which was really pretty nice except I blew up the IC
    (LM380 if I recall) while playing blues harp through it at incredibly
    high volumes.  It was easy to put together, though.  I also built
    the Gator noise gate which also works, but has some problems.
    Basically,when the gate closes it often makes a clicking sound when
    used with amps, although it seems OK with my mixer.  The Gator,
    by the way is the only foot pedal gate I've seen which allows you
    to gate a siganl with an external trigger, great for gated drum
    sounds!  It also can be used as an attack delay unit but the slope
    of the delay isn't really to my taste (this can be changed by screwing
    with the cap values in the circuit) and my EH Micro-Synth does it
    better already.
    
    As far as pickup loading, the cap bypass approach seems pretty common.
    I have two Peaveys with their patented tone circuit which does a
    good job of keeping the highs.  At around 9 or below on the volume
    control, the highs are vey consistent.  At settings above 9, it
    does get a little brighter.  I think maybe I'll open it up and see
    what they did.

    RE:8.8
    
    If just the bypass cap didn't solve your prob, try using a
    series resistor to prevent the downing of the low end (the resistance
    will control the level of the bypass). Lotsa luck.
    
    kdp