Tuesday, 20 September 2016

Madbean Cave Dweller (2015)

Here is the newer version of the Cave Dweller.
You can find Brian's original project here.
Original info:


The Cave Dweller 2015is a total re-design of the Cave Dweller project from 2012.
While the original Cave Dweller was a simple and colorful sounding delay it had a few drawbacks;

it was pretty lo-fi, and darkened the dry guitar tone somewhat. This was due to the limitation of using only the PT2399 for both dry signal and delay signal processing. The objectives for the re-design were to improve the quality of delay and dry guitar signal without requiring as many parts as a full-fledged delay circuit such as the MBP ZP Micro. This is accomplished by introducing a new input stage for dry signal processing and also by adding additional filtering to the delay signal. The result remains fairly low in parts count without compromising on the delay tone.

24 comments:

  1. I literally almost cut the board for the old one this morning before work, and decided to wait till after work. Now I can build this one :P

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  2. To be honest the original Cave Dweller is one of the worst delays ever. It's has some ridiculous tone sucking going on with the dry signal. Now that they've added a blend it should be worth building.

    At any rate, nice layout Alex. I like the way you staggered the caps. Should go together really neatly

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  3. The cuts around bottom right between the 100n caps aren't the same on both boards in the picture.

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  4. Does the green led pulse in tempo of repeats?

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    1. The green led is there to improve PT2399 noise.
      It's not an external LED.

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    2. Worth noting that the clock out from the PT2399 is a dirty piece of ^&*%, and runs about 684,000 clock cycles per delay period. You can clean it up and just about get a reasonable clock out if you want to flash an LED by sending it through a couple of 4040s and some diodes. But it's a lot of extra parts for not a lot of extra benefit - you can see how over here :http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=104186.0
      I've actually used this on a PT2399 delay for eurorack, to get a clock out signal from it to sync other kit to, and it works..

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  6. Hi! Thanks for the post! I have a question, Can modulation and tails be added to this circuit?

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  7. I built this project and I get repeats, and all the knobs seem to be working fine, but all the repeats are distorted, at any setting. What can be causing this?
    I used all ceramic capacitors.

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    Replies
    1. Might be because you used all ceramic caps, they have a tendency to cause "hiss".

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  9. Great delay! Just made it up, and it it works first time! A touch hissy, but really nice sound nevertheless. One question - any way of outputting 100% wet signal (no dry)?

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  10. Hey I'm super new to building anything out side of simple fuzz pedals. ANd i really wanted this one to work, am I able to message my board somewhere and someone might be able to tell me what could be an issue with my board?

    Thanks!

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    Replies
    1. Post pictures and a description in the forum in the debugging section and I'm sure some people will try to help you out with the debugging.

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  11. Is there a way to increase delay time on this thing? Kind of like it but max time is a bit short.. Or if its just my build :)

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  12. Any issue with flipping the 7805 for a 78L05?

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    1. Actually I used 7805 because 78L gave me less than 4.5v, from that point I awlays use 7805

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  13. Just got this working today without running into any problems. It's a great circuit, fixes all the issues I had with the original cave dweller. No tonesuck or clipping, the mix pot seems to work better that the original as well.

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  14. Hi. Thanks for this layout. I've just completed it.
    I'm not getting any dry signal. The mix knob gives me silence on one extreme, and the full wet signal on the other. Any ideas?

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  15. Does this one fix the whole "when you add drive, gain or fuzz" it gets very muddy issue of the first one?

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  16. I'm not getting any delay, only overdrive distortion when on. The voltage readings seem low on the IC and transistors. Any ideas what to check?

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  17. Hi, probably a newbie question, the output on the left side of the board to LED - does that go to the positive leg of the LED on the board?

    Thanks

    Mike

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