Disclaimer/Suggestions:
I don't think these mods do everything that has been asked about the Moodring, but I did find them to be useful for making it quite a lot different than the stock build, way more into the ambient noise direction. Keeping T1 set lower seems to help a lot with the "white noise" issue I have read about. Perhaps ditching the Muff tone stack and going to the Rub-A-Dub Deluxe or Tenebrion style tone control would allow you to run it even lower for less hiss. Enjoy:
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-muwsYJAvMKA/VO4wNCaGC-I/AAAAAAAAB1I/Vt4QTKleBCY/s1600/Moodring%2Bmods.png)
Starting at IC1A, an input level control, lifted straight from the Dirtbaby build doc, 1M will give some boost and grit, 500k is about unity gain at 95% rotation in my build, a hair of boost beyond that.
Next up, don't connect lug 3 of the dwell pot to the PCB pad 3, run a wire with a 1k5 resistor to the signal side of D3 and D4, now you have a delay line feedback loop as you'd find in a normal PT2399 delay circuit, yay! Don't forget to put a 47nf capacitor across lugs 1 and 3 of the pot.
Replace the Space pot with 25kB for longer delay times if you want, you can go 50kb but there will be a lot of PT2399 pssshhhhffffttt on the longest repeats. Also a good idea to put a 1k5 resistor between lug 3 of the pot and pad 3 of the PCB here.
Lastly, create a new "Dwell" control by building the little circuit between points A and B as shown. I built mine off the pot and shrink tubed it all together. This is lifted straight from the Tenebrion, which was lifted from CJ's Box-of-Hall IIRC. Makes a nice post-reverb buffered feedback loop, gets fun with droning self oscillation.
Very cool work Tim, look forward to your build to compare to the original. I have yet to take mine off my board to mod some.
Cody
This looks pretty interesting.
I think c14 can be adjusted too, Jon has 56nf as the value in the Hamlet, might be a little better as I am running the moodring tone control pretty bassy to keep the PT2399 noise less pronounced
Thanks for all the ideas! I'm gonna build one as soon as the pcbs are available.
Just thinking of another possible mod. Do you guys think it'd be possible to have the wet signal distort in a nice way? I'm thinking of the recent Caroline Meteor that seems to belong to the same reverb family.
Has anyone else tried these mods? The OP seems to not be around any more.
If anyone knows, does the new Dwell control sound pretty similar to the stock moodring as long as the pre-reverb feedback control is all the way down?
I'm about to build mine and I'm looking to get as much flexibility and crazy ambient sounds as I can, but not if I have to sacrifice too much of the original character of the device.
Nope, I haven't build mine yet. Can't wait though.
I plan on adding a 2nd footswitch (momentary) to have infinite feedback or mix or both, but that's it I think (and socket a couple caps around the PT2399 chip, should it be too noisy)
Oh yeah socket R31 in case I want more feedback.
Also I just thought of something: it should be possible to add modulation to the PT2399 with a simple veroboard (like the mod part of delay circuits, Multiplex or De Profundis etc.) I wonder how it would sound! Any thoughts about that? :D
So I built my moodring stock a few weeks ago and have been experimenting with these mods since and I decided to take it one step further.
I liked the delay feedback mod and the replacement dwell knob but the successive repeats of the delay werent as distinct as I expected. Of course I shouldnt have expected them to be more distinct based on the setup of the circuit because after the first couple they get smeared over by the reverb but I didnt think of that.
So I made an on-off-on switch to inject the straight delay into the output mixer via trimpots to set 2 different levels for delay volume. If I was building this from scratch I would have a knob for the delay volume copied from the Ring knob with a bigger resistor after it but I dont have space and I have to make do with a switch.
While I was at it I changed the dry kill switch to on-off-on and added another trimpot for a partial dry kill to attenuate the dry signal to the level set by the pot. Attenuating the dry raises the relative volume of the reverb and doubles the amount of relative dry-delay volume ratios available.
Im super stoked about having the straight delay signal for several reasons.
1: You can turn off the reverb and use it an almost fully functional tradional delay
2: The Straight repeats can be added to the reverb to give even more ambience or cacaphony.
3: Setting the delay (with repeats or not) somewhere between 0 and the amount of delay given by the reverb brick allows you to shorten the time between when you play a note and when the pedal responds with its own sound. Normally the minimum time is fixed to what length of reverb brick you have and you can only add to it with predelay, not subtract.
4: I often like to kill the dry for an even spookier sound but the delay between when I play something and when I hear it really screws me up. Now I can kill the dry and use the delay signal as my new ``dry`` and set the delay time to (almost) nothing or a delay short enough that my brain can compensate for the timing.
(http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc27/isitaboutabicycle/Moodring%20mods.png)
Quote from: Boba7 on June 03, 2016, 01:34:51 PM
I plan on adding a 2nd footswitch (momentary) to have infinite feedback or mix or both, but that's it I think (and socket a couple caps around the PT2399 chip, should it be too noisy)
Hey,
Did you end up adding a second footswitch? I'm currently populating my Moodring and this would be interesting. Some kind of "infinite" reverb would be awesome. I always like oscillation stuff. ;D
Quote from: Jebus on August 23, 2016, 06:56:05 PM
Hey,
Did you end up adding a second footswitch? I'm currently populating my Moodring and this would be interesting. Some kind of "infinite" reverb would be awesome. I always like oscillation stuff. ;D
Yes I did! I used a momentary dpdt to short lug2&3 of both the feedback pot and the mix pot. The internal trimpot helps get the exact amount of volume/feedback you want.
I changed the tone section a bit (to get a slightly flatter response), so it affects the way the feedback pot behaves.
Quote from: Boba7 on August 23, 2016, 08:51:40 PM
Yes I did! I used a momentary dpdt to short lug2&3 of both the feedback pot and the mix pot. The internal trimpot helps get the exact amount of volume/feedback you want.
I changed the tone section a bit (to get a slightly flatter response), so it affects the way the feedback pot behaves.
Nice! Any chance you could make a quick demo of it?
I dont have much time right now, but when I do I'll try to record something!
Quote from: Boba7 on August 25, 2016, 10:31:36 PM
I dont have much time right now, but when I do I'll try to record something!
Awesome, thanks!
Hey, I'm sorry I recorded a clip yesterday after adding modulation to the predelay PT2399 (which sounds just AMAZING to me!), but I totally forgot to record a clip with the slam switch. :-\
At the end of the video though you can hear it oscillate. I'm not sure I'll keep the slam switch, I'm not sure I'll use it, I may as well put the modulation on a footswitch.
Anyways, here's my early build report: http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=23642.0
Quote from: Boba7 on August 29, 2016, 03:35:13 PM
Hey, I'm sorry I recorded a clip yesterday after adding modulation to the predelay PT2399 (which sounds just AMAZING to me!), but I totally forgot to record a clip with the slam switch. :-\
At the end of the video though you can hear it oscillate. I'm not sure I'll keep the slam switch, I'm not sure I'll use it, I may as well put the modulation on a footswitch.
Anyways, here's my early build report: http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=23642.0
Thanks! :)
Thanks so much for these awesome ideas. I did most of them (I didn't change the tonestack or make the Dwell circuit), but I am so happy with the pedal. Here's a video demo of mine (actually I only had it on my board for a few days and then my brother wanted to or myself).
https://youtu.be/O9ooKkkPlaQ (https://youtu.be/O9ooKkkPlaQ)
Joel
Quote from: Boba7 on March 23, 2016, 01:07:14 AM
Thanks for all the ideas! I'm gonna build one as soon as the pcbs are available.
Just thinking of another possible mod. Do you guys think it'd be possible to have the wet signal distort in a nice way? I'm thinking of the recent Caroline Meteor that seems to belong to the same reverb family.
There are clipping diodes in the feedback loop: D3 and D4. The build doc says these are to prevent overloading the Belton Brick's input. What if you changed the diodes from LEDs to something with a lower forward voltage? You could add a pot in series to the diodes to act as a grit control.
I'm also interested in something like this. Has anyone tried something like this? Any part/value recommendations?
I'd love to hear more about it too but I don't think I have time right now to try it... Plus my Moodring is pretty much set right now with the modulation circuit in it... don't think I could or would want to add a grit control... Or maybe I could... :)
I know this is an old thread but I ended up printing up some PCBs from the moodring schematics and have been toying around with some of these mods.
Using the notes by timbo_93631, Boba7, and neandrewthal, I came up with the schematic changes here. This is the first time I've ever did any mods beyond just basic routing switches so any questions or advice is welcome. I'm still waiting to receive a parts order to finish this build.
Input LevelI implemented the original input level pot but it just wasn't that usable for me, especially because if you wire the pedal in buffer bypass, it's always on. So the two options are permanent boost (buffered) or a volume jump when engaged (true bypass). This doesn't work for my need since it's going to be joining a host of other pedals on my board and I don't need it to pull double duty as a drive pedal. I ended up just reverting back to madbeans initial R3 value of 470k.
New DWELL Knob (reverb feedback)When I wired it up with timbo_93631's replacement DWELL knob after adding his FEEDBACK pot, the reverb was very faint. I wasn't sure if it was the placement of the
A route or the additional cap that he put on lug 3 of the 250kA, but when I moved the route back to the original location (right after R30) and got rid of the 100n cap he added, my reverb came back to life. I thought about moving the
B route to after the IC but I was happy enough with my results.
Dry Delay MixAfter axing the Input Level pot, I had an extra hole drilled in my enclosure that needed filling and neandrewthal's idea of putting a dry mix of the delay signal on a knob sounded like the best option. I took his idea of copying the RING knob with a bigger resistor and breadboarded with the components I had around.
With the parts I had around, this configuration allowed me to pretty much kill off the dry signal when the pot was at 0% and have a very good standalone effect volume all the way up to 100% if I kill off all the reverb mix (RING knob)
I only had 100nF and 4.7uF caps and the 4.7uF took way too much off the signal. I would have liked to try the 1uF similar to the RING but the 100nF sounded clean to me.
Likewise the next values of resistor and pot I had were 382k and 500kA and both killed way too much of the signal. Going down to a 50kB made it impossible to get rid of the dry delay signal.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Gs3hX5eUCs6AJJKsv_FfvN2btV9w3usVPY1CS3By0zSN_rL6oeFvtCOm16UUdSrkslLV2_hLmlRESeBSBGWiM4_8OHxbUvwaOy4MXdFKvYNSFBAgMB-tW9Rt1Q8oki-x3mALgpT-AT4PtDHnBf6pLWRR19Y2hYqpG79b1hgG01fc4rkpgFM75reT_fgvA3syXc-BK183Q0l5lWrFMD-t1ihGf9WpF7srtyxFVFcJ64R7wJpOMWR3we6tk1lu9i4voyybu92qqEOM9bo2gkEf8XWCXV909ThHRNu6Pl_YZoV6qRpCFJXFYLkOX6QlvAHabWchJKquSGPqIS8sZgLpC5G03PL934O-Urt0N9txUL1q6HjzAsC7KfHMMUZ2u0vUDEY2vQrpsGL8BUaKCyh_poFg8dhdRwHA7Dt3EwzI1-BzlKO920QpQ0YGncCmtKxka8Rgvlwm4F3LQqH9hMdwwpnvDRw0uyCx_PjMhTSM9mZeSnDQv6927KHVBCmTnYjwVPLhuJzcMxl-ueyHnFvL9CLSOiYZSsh3CL1Aqa5yRKo4bTaZBBsN8cC4Ov7mMgMNtCkeAGFEFxrjQ9AmNVqJBECgMiwe9z5k9LY7Fhl4sYWtn7CCTq8q7nLzWr00EtxwR15Rej7CL7WO7zJhWeAYbIoD-3PLOE1h5X5V=w978-h884-no)
Mods SummarySo I think what's left is a bunch of knobs which are very usable and the possibilities of using the pedal in a variety different ways
- SPACE (Pre-delay) - 25kB for longer values. I think this could actually be even longer. I accidentally wired up a 100kB and there were some cool things you could do with it if you wanted.
- DWELL (Reverb Feedback) - The new knob by timbo_93631 made a little more similar to bean's original
- MOOD (Reverb Tone) - this is still stock
- Dry Delay Mix - with RING all the way down, you have a delay pedal!
- FEEDBACK (Delay Feedback) - same as timbo_93631
- RING (Reverb Mix) - this is also stock
- Slam Switch - still waiting for my DPDT but I will probably short both FEEDBACK and RING pots like Boba7 mentioned but shorting the dwell could be useful too