Uber Rare Way Huge Purple Platypus Octidrive only about 120 or so made. Essentially, this is a Red Llama Overdrive and an octave effect similar to the Green Ringer. A very specialized pedal, its best use is to push your already driven amp into fuzz while doubling up on the upper octave. Discontinued way back in the late 90's, and no reissue set for release.
I will add one more thing. On the schematic from over at FSB there's a 27k resistor that seems to go nowhere coming off Drive 1. I've looked over the PCB a million times, and despite the thought it has to go somewhere I'm certain it's a dead end. Maybe to make a possible tracing more difficult.
bro.. can you explain what mean volume 1 volume 3 gain 2 and 3 and input .. how to solder input.. i know socket have three legs. but the layout just have one.. and the volume.. i know volume have three legs but the layout have one please help me..
ReplyDeletei mean potentio meter have trhee legs
DeleteThe numbers tell you what lug of the pot you connect to that location on the board. The gain pots lugs 2 & 3 need to be connected together, and have 1 wire going to the board.. Volume 2 is your output, as mentioned in the notes. Volume 1 goes to the ground row, noted in the layout.
Deleteyour respon is fast .. i love this blog. .. oh yeah.. how about the color.. it mean they are same potentio?
Deleteoh yeh.. i want to ask more .. what do you use to 9+?? you use battery .. power suply with travo.. or what? .. please tell me..(sorry im asking to much)
Deleteyes, all wires of the same color are for the same component (pot or switch), location, or connection. personally i only use power supplies unless it's some crazy vintage fuzz.
DeleteIzhar read this it'll tell you how to build it from start to finish. Its pretty comprehensive
ReplyDeletehttp://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2012/04/vero-build-guide.html?m=0
Tag it verified. It works. Really had a hell if a time getting the transistors just right but npn/pnp in the 250-350 range sounded the best. It even works with a super high gain Darlington npn. The diodes make a big difference too I tried 4148, 4001,bat85,oa7, d9b,d18 and some grey banded germanium freebies from an eBay seller. The bat85 and d18 sounded best. I imagine if this is anything like the green ringer that matching certain parts will yield the best octave up sound.
ReplyDeleteZach, I have looked far and wide and cannot find a schematic for this to check against. There are a few old gut shots on the usually forums but no trace. Or did you trace it ?
ReplyDeleteit's over at FSB. there's the 1 resistor that no one figured where it went, but since the pp and original rl use the same board you can follow the trace, which leads to a spot for a wire connection, which doesn't have a wire. i put the link in the description above too.
DeleteThanks, man went thru that same one on there like 6 times and just now saw the pdf link. hahahaha I appreciate your way huge layouts and all those wah layouts. You are kicking serious ass.
ReplyDeleteany time. if you look in that post at the board pictures you can see the resistor mentioned, and it goes to pad "B" which goes nowhere. i had been wondering if there was at one point some other connection that mr. huge got rid of at some point, but just left the resistor in, or maybe a possible mod you could have had done. but, they're just guesses.
Deletethanks man. the joy of being in med school and having finals. you need to get your head out of it every so often or you lose your mind. so for me i've been banging out a layout during my study breaks. have 2 more that i need to post, not wayhuge though, and few more in the works. figured i shouldn't just post them all the same day. haha.
The 27K does indeed go nowhere. I found a picture of a 98 unit, and the resistor was not installed. Call it an assembly error (someone on the line didn't get the memo). My thought is that maybe it was to serve as a tapering resistor, but was abandoned. I breadboarded it with the 27K going to lug 2, but that requires flipping lugs 1 and 3 around. There was no operational benefit to this setup.
ReplyDeleteSome added mods and notes;
- On the collector side of Q1 (PNP), inserted between the 10u cap and the diode, add (in this order) a B100K pot as a variable resistor followed by a SPST switch, both in series. The pot will act as an octave blend control, allowing you to dial in the amount of octave desired. The switch will allow you to turn the octave off if so desired. DO NOT do this on the emitter side, or else you'll get momentary audio drop out when switching on the octave. The switch idea is pure FTM. The pot idea comes from J.C. Maillet's Green Ringer project.
- The 33K resistor is too low, and may create a "step" in the gain dialed down low. 68K is better, and allows you to get right clean, with octave on top.
- Early units used Ge diodes, later ones Si. I found that Russian D9V diodes work nicely, giving a vF of close to 0.6v (almost Si in nature), with the gentle knee of a Ge diode. D9J might be nice too. The octave is sweet, with less harsh compression that a Ge diode gives when you whack a chord. It's almost Superfuzz in nature. I think they went with Si to try and tame the ringmodish nature of it when playing chords.
- I've tried a bunch of different transistors in this, and a 2N5138/ECG123A works really well. 2N3700 in Q2 is fine too. Don't go crazy in the gain here. Somewhere in the 150 range is best.
Been a while since I've been enamored with an octave fuzz, but this one won me over. I've given this to PMow to design a PCB. Unfortunatley, "Ultravoilet" was already taken, I guess I'll just call it the "Dead End Platypus".
Dang... forgot to mention...
DeleteAdd a 100u filter cap to the power rails. Up the 330u cap to 470u. It'll further tame any noise that the 4049 may produce.
Cheers Dino. I'll draw up another layout with your suggested mods. Sounds like it makes this much more versatile.
DeleteSorry to be a pain, but could someone let me know the ECB orientation of Q1 and Q2 please?
ReplyDeleteIts not clear (to me anyway!) which way they are wired up from the layout. If ive missed something obvious, apologies.
I have it all wired up, otherwise.
Cheers,
Adam
hey adam. i'm surprised it wasn't caught before. i updated the layout with the transistor pinouts. cheers
DeleteHi Zach - Thanks for the reply. As it happened, in the interim I looked over the schematic and worked out how to orientate the transistors. I am relieved that I got it the correct way round!
ReplyDeleteIve not had much time to play with it yet (or trial various pairs of silicon), but it seems to get quite 'spluttery' with higher gain settings. And with some of the pairs (2N2222 and opposite number) there is a variable drop in volume with the notes. Is this normal for a fuzz unit?
Cheers,
Adam
So there's a 100k from the power rail that just goes to ground, it's actually supposed to connect to the uphill side of the diodes on the same time as the + side of the 22uf.. I just ran a jumper from the power rail in between the 1.5k and 100k there at the bottom. Works like I think it should. I did Dinos mods to it by adding a cut at the bottom row 3 holes in, with a toggle across it, a b100k pot from row M to N at the far left bottom, and then bringing the 10uf bottom leg up one row at column 12.
ReplyDelete