Sunday 11 March 2012

ZVex Machine

Zach's info about the original:

I designed this new distortion generator, Machine, with some different limitations. Like try playing chords through it. Hmmm. But put it in front of any string of fuzz pedals, and try to make it disappear. Machine is actually a dual frequency-tripler circuit that uses crossover distortion for the first time in any pedal, ever. It generates the distortion of the wave in the sloped part of the cycle, instead of the peaks and valleys like all other distorters and fuzzes. In other words, it distorts when your guitar string is in the middle of vibrating, while it's swinging, not as it's turning around. That's the same place where your speaker cone is sort of coasting, between all the way in and all the way out. Where nothing is happening, this pedal happens. With Machine you can leave your favorite distorting pedals on and still add a new element of energetic grind.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that this pedal basically sounds horrible. It's primary purpose is to cut through. But like a wild man with a machete, it is not nice.

Knobs are In, which is drive; Limit, which clips the original waveform off at about the same size as the harmonics (if you want); and Out or Volume, which is output level. If the Limit knob is set to the right, the signal remains unclipped.
You'll notice the dynamic response is higher than most pedals. If you put a tremolo pedal set smooth in front of it you'll hear it sweep through it's wild frequency multiplying stages, or if the trem is set for square wave it will jump back and forth between crunchy harmonics. Conversely, you can get ringing harmonic effects using a dynamically freezing pedal in front of it like a compressor. The biggest drawback to this pedal is that of anything in your arsenal, it's the most likely to get you kicked out of the house by your mom, girlfriend, boyfriend, or wife. Or roommate or Dad. Or Grandma. Even your dog. Whine.     Keep in mind that this pedal needs to see a sloped wave in order to do it's thing, so an undistorted guitar signal going into it will allow it to generate the strongest harmonics.




16 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Excellent, thanks for your recent verifications mate

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  2. Hi guys,
    I've been a long time lurker on this blog and this is my first comment. I love this site, it's really inspired me to keep going with pedal building so a big thank you! Anyway, i made this over the weekend and found that the intensity pot needs to be a 5k reverse log to have a decent sweep

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  3. Been playing some more with this recently and i cant believe how much i love it, it actually snarls at you when you play open chords and on leads it screams like nothing else, amazing pedal.
    Thanks
    Dave

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  4. Finally got around to building this today, what an unholy noise. Swapped the Intensity to C5k as suggested by Dave. It sounds like a Devi Hyperion fed into a Gretsch controfuzz to these ears. Had best results putting a drum machinbe through it, the Tom Toms sounded crazy. Nice one.

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    Replies
    1. Its cool isnt it? It certainly isnt a base tone kinda pedal but i certainly wouldnt be without it either. If you havent already, try Tim Escobedo's triple fuzz which is on here as well, its like a more controllable somewhat tamer version of this.
      Thanks
      Dave

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  5. http://mirosol.kapsi.fi/varasto/boxes/MajoneesiKone.jpg

    That's Triangle BMP -> Machine. Not bad. Not bad at all.

    I should mention that i swapped the 1N34As for silicon, as the clipping was sounding unstable. 1N4148s make the "limit" control more subtle, but overall performance is much better.

    By itself - semi-useless. With big sounding fuzz in front of it - gold.
    +m

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  6. is it ok to swap the 1n34a with silicon 1n60p's?

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    1. I've built couple of these, and Si diodes give much better results in terms of crossover distortion. A lot harsher and meaner sound with Si diodes. I would recommend 1N60P or 1N4148 instead of the original Ge.
      +m

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  7. I built this with 1n4158s and it works but I don't feel like I'm getting nearly the saturation or distortion I'm hearing in the demo

    Is that just how it sounds with 4148s?

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    Replies
    1. Do you mean you built it with all 1N4158's (for both silicon and germanium diodes) or do you mean you used 4158's instead of 4148's?

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  8. Oops I meant 4148 for all four diodes

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    Replies
    1. Well silicon and germanium diodes do sound and behave differently in a circuit to me so I expect so. Schottky's may get you closer because of the lower forward voltage.

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  9. Right now there's definitely no octave and no craziness, although I can hear some crossover distortion happening. The limit control is very subtle

    I wish I would have socketed the diodes now lol

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  10. Alright. I just figured out what was wrong with this and it was a major face-palmer..

    Mammoth sent me 2N5306 instead of 2N3906. I was wondering why the hell my DCA55 was saying these were NPN Darlingtons with hfes over 20,000

    They sent me a bunch of 2N7000 instead of 2N3904 before too. Sometimes I think they just run out of a part and then send you a random bag of something else

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