Fuxed

all im getting is a repeating pulse noise as if i was tapping on the tip of the input cable. i think i have checked every connection about 5 time and i have no clue what i did wrong.

Poast up detailed pictars.

Make sure that your electrolytic caps are in the right direction. Same with any polarity protection diodes and LEDs.

How did you build it, perf? Vero? PCB?

Are the electrolytic caps backwards on the layouts? Is the power supply diode also backwards? I have this feeling of impending doom that they are...

What layout did you use?

The first one i posted:
http://diy-fever.com/temp/timmy_layout.pdf

and yes the diode was backwards

works now!!!!

edit: pic added

Yarr, the polarity protection diode would need to be like it is in the layout, opposite, cathode/anode-wise, of the cap it is paralleled with.

So that makes it what, 4 forumites with Timmys/Timmy-clones now?

Not bad.

Edit: I think the fact that all of the forumites who have/have used one (tor, chris, knope and I as far as I know) play different music with different toanes, yet all really enjoy this pedal, sort of speaks for how awesome it is.

That is a pretty fine recommendation, thinking about it, for Rawk Distortron. I'm a fan of the Fulltone stuff myself, as are my bandmates. (OCD for me, Fulldrive for our other guitarist, and I want my bassist to get a Bassdrive. He likes my OCD on bass, too, as do I.) I find them fairly neutral in that the color of the amp seems to shine through, yer merely adding gane to it. But I haven't spent time with Tim. Perhaps I should. (That sounds kinky. )

The one thing I wonder is if it has quite enough dirt for when we really throw down. I've been on with clean or edge-of-breakup amps for a few years now (simply 'cause they're too horridly loud to crank live to get them as heavy as they will and be sensible and not drown out the drummer.)

That being said, I have other things for [schwarzenegger]Max Powah.[/schwarzenegger] And I did like boosting my Sparkle Drive when I had that. I do miss that pedal, more now as the older I get, the less gain I use. Usually. I'll use a guitar synth or a bitcrusher or a fuzz or something for Evil.

When I run my amp strictly clean, I can get ACDC style crunch from the Timmy at about 3/4 drive. With the gain turned up I can get pretty heavy rock tones, depending on how I EQ and how hard I am pushing the amp and playing.

I can also use it to boost my Mastotron to tighten up the absolutely silly amount of bottom end that thing can provide, and if I turn the gate up on the fuzz I get little to no noise. The G-Major is noisier than the Timmy running hot.

I would suggest sending you mine, but it IS a chris_d product, so while it sounds amazing I cannot vouch to how close it nails the Timmy tone (Plus I would miss the shit out of it .) From everything I have read and heard it is pretty much spot on, but as chris said (IIRC), it seems to have a tiny bit more gain on tap, but not anything I would say is drastically different from the stock model.

Mine, as does knope's, has the internal DIP switch modded to be external, to go between the different flavors of clipping, asymmetrical and such. I don't hear a huge difference between the clipping, but here is what Paul C. said: "by itself you wont really be able to hear much of a difference which side you clip hard. when using it stacked with another pedal that asym clips it will make more of a difference. you'd want to have one pedal hard clip the top, and the other hard clip the bottom. That's kind of what would happen in a preamp. You really don't know what side is being clipped hard in pedals unless you can see the wave on a scope. You have to go by your ears. Just turn them both on, and try a few positions, and you might find that it works a little pedal with 1 up or 2 up..."

Yarr, dev's pedlol is slightly grittier sounding than the one i built meseff. I have breadboarded a bunch of them since then though(i like to use them as booster stages when i am playing with new circuits), and dev's is actually more like the rest of them than like my boxed one. So i guess now i would say that mine seems to be less gritty, moreso than dev's being more gritty.

Aslo, that is all a microscope sort listening sort of thing. They all sound pretty much the same unless you A/B them.

Aslo aslo, my favorite clipper setting is no extra ones, i don't remember exactly how i did dev's, but that would probably be the middle position?

Eventually i am just going to build myself a two knob version of the thing, no extra clippers, just level and treble, with fixed gain as if at 1:00 and bass mostly off, as that is pretty much what i use it for 100%. Shit, i might even try to just build it into the Crate.

Yar, the middle position is straight up, also my favorite position.

<goes to play with his Timmy (it does sound dirty)>

Yup my favorite. The symmetrical seems to have bit more of grindier quality while the assymetrical and regular positions sound pretty similar. The middle position also seems to be a bit louder.

Also my Timmy hits ACDC levels of gain at about 1-2 o'clock. On the symmetrical clipping with the drive at about 3 o'clock it got a little nastier.

G'morning!

The Tim and the Timmy are both very good pedals. The basic circuit topology was made popular by the Tube Screamer. It's a VERY versatile and use-able circuit. The *secret* to the tone of the Tim & Timmy is two fold: How Paul C set the input impedance (very high. roughly twice what is commonly done) and how he approached the *tone* controls. He opted out of the 'traditional' tone control and used two different (and somewhat novel) controls. One for bass and one for treble.

The high input impedance is why the pedal stays *true* to the guitar tone. It allows over 90% of the guitars actual TONE to enter the circuit, where in MOST cases with that circuit topology (OCD & TS-9 being prime examples), roughly half the guitar signal gets through. When I say *most* or *half*, it's usually evident in the upper mid and mid high frequencies. Those places where we feel the tone is *alive*. THIS is why the OCD sounds "thicker"(lower input impedance and allowing more lows into the circuit than the TS, along with a *traditional* tone control). This is partly why the Tube Screamer has a mid-range bump. It's actually the LACK of lows that makes it seem that way. Paul put a *bass* knob in that part of the circuit that determines the lows (diode biasing loop). Sheesh. I hope that made sense.

That, combined with how he approaches the tone controls, basically means that you have only a handful of components the audio portion of the signal goes through. This makes for a rather transparent sound. We all know that the more STUFF you have to send a guitar through, the more the STUFF influences the sound of the guitar.

The only caveat to the Tim or Timmy (and this is debatable, due to how he does the distortion diodes and the value of his gain pot) is that there is less gain available. In circuit gain is a trade-off. The more gain you have, the more unstable and harsh the tone gets. This means that you have to do tone coloring within that portion of the circuit (usually capacitors to filter off some highs. The Tim and Timmy use something along the lines of a 19pf cap). The caps generally LOWER the absolute gain while softening the HF. Ultimately, you end up chasing your tail in the search for more use-able gain. Paul didn't bother with a "HIGH GAIN" pedal. He gives you a good MID/High sound. If you want more gain, you can always boost it.

I have a rather *unique* opinion on 'gain'. Don't get me started...


When I look at the TIM and the TIMMY, I see the basic Tube Screamer Circuit with several improvements I would've made had I designed it. That's not ego, that's *approach*. Paul took note of all the screamer mods out there and put what he thought were the best ones in there! He then put two different and intelligently thought out tone controls. The bass control doesn't CHANGE the tone, it UNCHANGES it. It allows more ALREADY EXISTING bass to come through. Cool, huh? The highs control works the same way, but in a different part of the circuit. It's very similar to the approach I used in the God Complex Series. If you look at he N(free)PD thread, torgeot quoted my explaination as to what it is and why it works.

And in doing all of the above, he created his own UNIQUE version of the venerable TS circuit. So, no...I'm certainly not saying it's a clone.

Personally, I think his approach to the tone controls & circuit impedence is SPOT ON. It's something I will design into more pedals.

Wow...I totally wrote an encyclo-freakin-pedia. Sorry bout that.

Those of you who built Timmy pedals with a couple of mods: WOOOT! AWESOME! Not that building a *clone* is awesome PER SE, but building ANYTHING is very very cool. From what I read, several mods were done for diodes, etc. That makes it UNIQUELY YOURS! Man, I love the smell of solder in the morning.

Random aside: I have designed a rotary switch (similar in concept to the TONE rotary on my GOD COMPLEX series) and subsequent circuit that will allow you to turn a knob and get up to 12 different diode/led combinations...It's an EASY mod that can be done to most Screamer type circuits. I have designed it into a new series(not in production yet) called the ABLE series. It's a proven concept. If any one is interested in seeing the MOD, let me know. I'm not sure how to post that stuff (pics or schems)...Imma gonna try this. It's a link to a photo album on my personal FB page. Fogive if inappropriate. Hope it works.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

The portion on the right with the circle the circuit with a 6position rotary, giving 6 different diode combinations. The PCB was a 'first run' or 'proof of concept' for the first pedal in the ABLE series, the DaVinci. SO...It was printed by hand and a little less than super clean like production PCB are.

I am contemplating printing JUST the 6p and 12p rotary circuits so that people can mod their pedals for a LOT more choices. I'm designing a pedal now (called the Daedelus) that will have TWO of these 12p rotaries, giving you 144 unique combinations of diodes/leds/etc. THAT is insane. Turn two knobs and dramatically change the character of the pedal.

I ramble. If anyone wants the schem or a .pdf of the actual 6p circuit to print, let me know. It's SUPER COOL.

See? solder gets me excited.

Carl

I agree, the timmy is definitely clever in its tone controls. One, the headsmack-obvious solution of sourcing the bass control from the feedback loop low pass circuit, and how it directly affects the very character of the distortion produced by allowing so much more low end than is necessary through the circuit. And two, the realization that even with this somewhat more novel bass control concept, that the treble control needed only to be one of the simpler passive designs available. Between the two, it does an awful lot with an awful little.

I actually like multiple bits of the Timmy circuit, and they have shown up in things i designed as well. The bass control, the treble control, and the series/parallel arrangement of the clippers it uses, i have found quite useful-sounding.

It also seems to me that you could probably sell a few of those tone/clipping switch circuits to modders. Make the board small enough and the implementation simple enough, and folks will be lining up to pop them in their Tube Screamers and Rats.

My own circuit designs lately have been more on focusing on reducing the options somewhat, to as little as they can be for affording as much flexibility as possible in as few controls. So the rotary idea seems to have plusses and minuses to what i could find useful. On the one hand, twelve clipping or tone options is a lot, and i don't know how likely it will be that all of them are going to see much use, but on the other hand, that is a lot of possible available flexibility, in one knob, so the potential is there.

I also like the idea that it is a mechanical simple switch, which is another thing that i like to utilize wherever possible to do deceptively complex things. Though of late, some of my thoughts have been leaning towards much sneakier, programmable, electronic, switching for altering circuit topologies more drastically with the push of a button or toggle. If i could do it with a reliable mechanical switch, i would totally aim to do it that way instead. That is more of a love of mechanical things on my part though, than a rational choice to go with a device for reliability or convenience. Too bad they don't make a low cost high voltage rated small format mechanical 14PDT switch though. Because, i would be all over that.

Hola!

I'm definitely about reducing controls. The simpler stuff seems to...ahem...be easier to get around.

Man, I think digital control of analog settings is a very cool way to go! ONE DAY...I will probably do that. Tooooo many projects, tooooo little time!

That, and I do believe my goflex hard-drive just exploded. Not truly related to the conversation here, but another example of how things always seem to get in the way of getting other....more interesting...things done.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!


I will revisit the diode switching roatary circuit and see about tagging that circuit onto a different project when I get the PCB made. There's no reason it can't fit into most other existing pedals if someone wanted to mod it...2 wires...two solder joints...voila.

In my explorations, I found that a TS style circuit is pretty much a TS style circuit. Two amplification stages. But, man...soooo many things you can do with that!

Those diodes (and other stuff that can be used as diodes) MAKE the sound.

Carl

Good times.

I'm about to build up a sonic titan as thats a pretty bitching pedal. So clear and defined and it can be stacked with other pedals for maximum tonal destruction. It cleans up well too and sounds better than most clean channels do on their own!

I have liked pretty much all of the 386-based distortions i have built. My favoritest one was the Krank Distortus Maximus, with a modded tonestack. It is very similar in topology to the Sonic Titan, but with an NPN tranny in front rather than the FET, and a full on tonestack.

The Sonic Titan wins for simplicity, but a flexible tonestack is also nice, opens up both ends of the distortion spectrum even more to different sounds.

My most recent distortobox currently has a 386 sandwiched between some opamp action. Makes a good sound, i just need to finish it. I got sidetracked by delays, which are too much fun to play with for anyone's good.

Yeah I'm interested in the 386 style dirt boxes and I want to build up some stuff on my bread board once I've familiarized myself with the titan. I certainly wouldn't mind sticking a bax stack onto one. Might need a recovery stage afterwards although the 386 does come in 1W output variants which should be plenty to drive through the stack without hitting the final output too much. Perhaps

Lately i have been all about active tone stacks. I like passives for trebles just fine(though it is more like a presence control the way i use it, than a treble one).

But for mids and bass i have really been into active controls.

I actually haven't liked any of the bax stacks i have tried yet, though i haven't done an active one yet. This is partly because i don't like my bass and treble controls to be in the same part of the circuit though, and i find a dedicated active mids cut/boost to be one of the more useful things available, rather than having it be a sort of side effect of moving the bass and treble controls around. I do vaguely want to check out an active bax though, maybe like the LM351 datasheet one that one of the folks at HC mentioned.

That said, the Krank DM powers straight through a completely non-optimized Marshall-style tonestack(with full-on amp-style values) without much in the way of output level problems. The only problem i really have with that one, is that because it uses the amp values, the impedance of the stack really fucks with the output frequencies in what i found to be a not-totally-useful sort of way.

Scaling the tonestack towards more pedal-like values minimized that interaction very well for the one i had on the breadboard though. In the end, IIRC, i wound up with a properly scaled Vox style two-knobber in there, as i haven't been finding passive mids controls all that great lately. I like the vox stack, because, it is fucked up how the bass/treb are interactive, but for the very specific cleansounds that i like, i can set it to get them. It is kind of a non-direct route to getting what i want, but it works, so i have done it, same as with the last amp i built. It actually isn't that great of a TS for overall flexibility, but it gets that one sound i want.

My next amp will have something fairly different in it though, i think.

I've never cared for the bax when I've tried it in amps before. Interesting you should mention active stacks as it was something I was discussing with a friend a while ago but then never really looked into too much so I'll look at the one you mentioned.

I dont suppose you have the LM351 data sheet with the active bax in? I'm sucking at finding it