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Total shot in the dark here..

Y' know on pedals like the Zoom Ultrafuzz and Zvex Fuzz Factory, there's a kinda gate knob which can be set to mute hum when you're not playing, squash the fuzz a bit, or just make it sound plain broken?

Any idea how simple/complex a circuit something like that'd be? I really wanna build one into a pedal..

Or would a simple noise gate pedal help me to something similar?

I have not ever seen any ZVex schems, so I can't say how they do that, but putting in a gate would probably be better accomplished with a noise gate pedal in the front of your signal chain. Putting one into an existing pedal won't be easy. Now, if you want to build one, the MXR Noise gate is pretty simple, and from what I've read sounds really smooth.

Sorry, I didn't mean put it into an existing pedal, I meant built it into it's own pedal enclosure.

I'm basically after the "broken" sound rather than a noise gate.. I've never really used a noise gate enough to know if it can get that sound. Maybe it's something to do with where it's placed within the pedal's circuit?

what about a Boss NS-2?

Well, there's always a problem with terminology in the field of Pedalology.

"Gate" means that it only allows a certain portion of the signal through. Sometimes, if you are building a pedal and misbias a gain stage, you will get what is called "gating", where only certain voltage swings come through. AKA "farting" or "burping".

A noise gate does the exact same thing, only controlled. In a noise gate, you set a threshold for signal level that is able to turn on a transistor, if it isn't able to then it doesn't turn off another transistor that is dumping the signal to ground. Well, there's several ways to do it, but that is the gist of it. Basically, you do the same thing as describe above, but instead of listening to that sound, you are using it to set the volume of the pedal. Like off if the signal isn't strong enough.

Turn a noise gate threshold up high enough and only small bits of the signal come through...whoa I just had an idea, a gate that instead of dumping signal to ground it sends it to a different output jack, like a splitter but it splits out strong and weak signals, and you could set up a different effects chain for each. You could distort only weak signals and keep stronger ones clean, or vice versa.

Anyway, you could turn up the threshold enough so that it sounded broken, I assume, but "broken" isn't exactly a technical term so I have no idea what you mean exactly. From this right here:

doog wrote:there's a kinda gate knob which can be set to mute hum when you're not playing, squash the fuzz a bit, or just make it sound plain broken?

This makes me think "noise gate".

I know what Andy means - spluttery and splatty. I'd say go with the penster and build this simple noise gate and have a play.

The MXR Noise Gate sucks. Kills any high end you might have. Mine did at least. I mean, I could always give it another shot one of these days... but thats just my experience. I used it for a while and it sucked. My Ibanez had about half of the Sustain it did when I had the pedal off.

Sickened, did you read WTF I wrote and understand what a noise gate does? You had the threshold too high, the decay of your notes went under threshold, and it shut the signal down. Exactly what it is supposed to do. Also, you normally don't want to have a noise gate running ALL the time.

The MXR Gate supposedly has a really smooth on/off, sounding more "natural" was what I'd read in reviews of it. Now, granted that was a DIY build of the original, so maybe they changed the current circuit, but unlikely.

PenPen wrote:
"Gate" means that it only allows a certain portion of the signal through. Sometimes, if you are building a pedal and misbias a gain stage, you will get what is called "gating", where only certain voltage swings come through. AKA "farting" or "burping".

Yeah, that! Farting and burping!

The gate control on the Ultra Fuzz I used to have (similar to the Fuzz Factory) could be set so it'd kill hum/noise when you're not playing. Crank it too high, and it just attenuated the volume.. but in the middle, you got some great squelchy stuff happening, with spluttering sustain as the note died off..

THAT'S what I'm after.

Aug wrote:what about a Boss NS-2?

Nice try, newb

Totally. Aug needs to up his game if he wants to post in here with the big booys.

Boss NS-2 indeed. That's almost sig-worthy

I'm impressed doog. Your talking about the sounds i got slated for about 2 years ago on JS.

Fran wrote:I'm impressed doog. Your talking about the sounds i got slated for about 2 years ago on JS.

Really? Not by me, I loves that shit. Maybe Hurb will sell me back my Ultra Fuzz at profit when Lady Buck starts shining down on me again..

Doog wrote:

Fran wrote:I'm impressed doog. Your talking about the sounds i got slated for about 2 years ago on JS.

Really? Not by me, I loves that shit. Maybe Hurb will sell me back my Ultra Fuzz at profit when Lady Buck starts shining down on me again..

Nah, you was always fair. I think it was a few other individuals that said i was "a fan of awfull tone", heheh.

Me neither - I never heard anything sept your punk band and your shred skillz

Mike wrote:Me neither - I never heard anything sept your punk band and your shred skillz

Your cool mike, i know who it was though.........

and "i hold more grudges than lonely high court judges". haha, a Mozzer lyric came in handy!

well, hell...I don't know...

All I've ever used for a gate is the MW Gate in Digital Performer.

If you find a gate pedal that has a side chain input id love to know

I wanna know who dissed Fran's TOOOOOONE

Mike wrote:I wanna know who dissed Fran's TOOOOOONE

Bastards

Nah, it was all back in the day so to speak.