Paul Cochrane - Timmy  [traced]

General documentation, gut shot, schematic links, ongoing circuit tracing, deep thoughts ... all about boutique stompboxes.
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snail
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Post by snail »

IMO the biggest achievement is allready done by Paul C, which is reputation and brand awareness. This means that most of his potential costumers already know and apreciate his work. If he ever decides to launch a booster, a fuzz, a non TS OD or even a theremin I'm sure people will be all over it.

Amongst the people who apreciate pedals, there are us tweakers DIYers who rarely or never buy a pedal, those who buy clones and those that buy (more o less often) the boutique pedals. (I'm generalizing, but you get the picture, right?)
You won't get any money from the first 2 groups, but the more important group is sweet with you.

So cheer up dude! :D

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Post by kev01 »

Refering back to Pauls comments, I collect overdrives and hope one day to own one of his. I also like to mod and tinker, with that being said I think his price is fair and by not gooping thigs up he has shown he has nothing to hide. I myself came up with a dropped D tuner for a floyd rose years before Eddies D-tuna ,but guess what , everyone thinks I copied it. I guess I'm saying there is only so many ways to skin a cat. Paul seems like a nice guy but threre are those who make a living without ever having an orginal idea.

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The Pup
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Post by The Pup »

Thanks for the schematics...I got rid of my Timmy within a few weeks...not my cup of tea. But I did like the tone control circuit. Cool!

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Post by briggs »

The tim is a great sounding OD, I knocked one up on breadboard the other night - I love the preclipping bass control, very simple yet effective. I'd been using a very ham-fisted approach before I discovered this simple trick!

Again - Top work Mr C!
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Post by JHS »

The difference between a good and a bad OD is touch response.

All ODs are 1-trick ponies, different is only the distortion structure, the overall voicing, output level and the voicing of the tonecontrol(s) if there are any.

Impotant is that an OD matches your equiment and that you like it's sound.

I like the TIM a lot, only a few parts and no sound-killing gimmicks, quality parts, good detail solutions in the circuit and a fair price.

JHS

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Post by StickMan »

This is probably all redundant at this point, but...

At $100 a pop, there's not likely to be anyone cloning a Timmy and undercutting Paul's price and hurting his business.

Now, on that issue, I think Paul's a least a little nuts. Hype-riding or not, if there's a waiting list for a product then there's a good chance there's room for the price to go up. It just makes sense, and I think I'd be tempted to increase price to the point where the waiting list shrank noticeably. I think people understand supply & demand, and there wouldn't be a backlash.

As to the schematics themselves? As Doug said, there's more to learning than just hanging out on forums and surfing the net. That being said, I find that one of the best ways to learn is to look at good circuits and try to understand how they work. I'd say that the Timmy definitely qualifies as a good circuit. It's simple, yet contains a number of really good ideas into a small number of components. It's certainly worth studying and learning from, because it sounds great. Paul's comments about how he designed it are even more valuable, in my opinion.

Are a significant number of people going to build one from the posted schematics, instead of buying one from Paul? I can't see that happening. Personally, I might build one on a board, just to hear what it sounds like but then I'd be just a likely to order one from Paul if I wanted an actual unit for use.

Like I said, not much new here, but maybe hearing another person say it will make Paul feel a little better about this.

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Post by paulc »

StickMan wrote:This is probably all redundant at this point, but...

At $100 a pop, there's not likely to be anyone cloning a Timmy and undercutting Paul's price and hurting his business.

Now, on that issue, I think Paul's a least a little nuts. Hype-riding or not, if there's a waiting list for a product then there's a good chance there's room for the price to go up. It just makes sense, and I think I'd be tempted to increase price to the point where the waiting list shrank noticeably. I think people understand supply & demand, and there wouldn't be a backlash.

As to the schematics themselves? As Doug said, there's more to learning than just hanging out on forums and surfing the net. That being said, I find that one of the best ways to learn is to look at good circuits and try to understand how they work. I'd say that the Timmy definitely qualifies as a good circuit. It's simple, yet contains a number of really good ideas into a small number of components. It's certainly worth studying and learning from, because it sounds great. Paul's comments about how he designed it are even more valuable, in my opinion.

Are a significant number of people going to build one from the posted schematics, instead of buying one from Paul? I can't see that happening. Personally, I might build one on a board, just to hear what it sounds like but then I'd be just a likely to order one from Paul if I wanted an actual unit for use.

Like I said, not much new here, but maybe hearing another person say it will make Paul feel a little better about this.
Thanks for the post. You know - it really wasn't about being worried about guys not buying the pedals because they could make their own. To me what it was really about was feeling beat up a bit for things i'd not done. I didn't see this coming, and some of the claims made here just really freaked me out. I've tried very hard to be honest, and fair with this stuff. To sit back and then read some of the comments just floored me.

As to the price thing - I am going to have to bring that up soon. The cost has gone up a bit just to be able to make them. There's a lot of dealers wanting them, and I'll have to figure out a more retail price structure. It's scary though. I just see threads about an evil price hike in the future...

Right now I'm just trying to figure out how to make this fun again.

JHS - thank you for that post. That means a lot to me to see you say that.

Everybody have a blast on New Year's Eve. Take a buss if you're out drinking, and watch out for those driving.

Later, PaulC
Tim & timmy pedals

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Post by madbean »

Esp. those who are drinking AND driving the bus.

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Post by soulsonic »

Yeah, drinking and driving is rough. I got kidnapped and forced to party this past Wednesday and the person who was driving us around was drunk the whole time. Not cool.

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Post by briggs »

Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?
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Post by soulsonic »

They don't allow cigarettes on aeroplanes... oh wait, you meant something else didn't you? :lol:

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Post by briggs »

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Post by The Rotagilla »

Has anyone who rolled your own Timmy tried different diodes? I'm thinking red LED's instead. Just curious. Thanks.

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Post by madbean »

I set mine up with (5) 4148's in a fixed assym fashion

--> -->
<-- <--
------>

I think an spdt to switch between that and 3mm red led's to ground would be useful. I recently tried some glass 1N4004's I found for diode clipping (in a different circuit) and I liked those.

You only need 500k on the drive pot, too...maybe even 250k.

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Post by paulc »

The Rotagilla wrote:Has anyone who rolled your own Timmy tried different diodes? I'm thinking red LED's instead. Just curious. Thanks.
If you increase the clamping threshold (led's etc...) you might need to lower the gain of the output amp. It's easy to overdrive that section if the input level comes up. This can sound pretty nasty. I've got it set to not clip with the 4 diode set up, but much more input level and it will. The inverse of that is if you like the sound of a lower threshold you can increase the output gain for more output.

This kind of goes with a lot of other pedals. Loop diodes/ diode voltage clamps (output to ground) etc... You'll see people playing around with different diodes, and sometimes making a statement to the effect that led's or something else with a high threshold sounded "splatty" or "harsh". A lot of times what you're hearing is not the sound of the diode clamp, but the higher output signal overdriving what comes next in a bad way. You should listen and scope out the signal when dinking with these things to make sure you're not getting "bad" distortion because of a level increase.

BTW the "tim" uses a 500k gain control. I went with the 1M in the timmy to add a little bit more on top because it didn't have the boost section of the Tim.

Later, PaulC
Tim & timmy pedals

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Post by analogguru »

There´s a sucker born every minute - and too many of them end up in the bootweak pedal biz.

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Post by paulc »

analogguru wrote:anybody heard something about copper/red timmys before?:

https://cgi.ebay.com/TIMMY-pedal-by-Pau ... 0232201428

https://cgi.ebay.com/TIMMY-CUSTOM-PAINT ... 0211277923

analogguru
I have :D

My pedals are painted by a friend who works at a toyota body shop. He's done a bunch of custom paint jobs on these things. It's been a while since the last one though. Back when Hurricane Katrina hit a bunch of builders and other guys put up pedals for a relief auction. That was important to me because I had family there, and my grandparents house was destroyed. I put up 10 with custom paint jobs that the buyer would pick with it being said that there wouldn't be any more custom timmy paint jobs. I've not done any since because it wouldn't be cool to sell them now because of what the guys paid for those. All the custom timmys are a couple of years old.

Good find though... That color is called "burnt copper" I always liked it, but i wont use it on timmys now because of what I wrote above.

Later, PaulC
Tim & timmy pedals

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Post by sosodef »

toyotas nice cars :horsey:

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Post by MoreCowbell »

sosodef wrote:toyotas nice cars :horsey:
You think Toyota "cars" are cool...I just bought a Toyota Bass !!!

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Post by sosodef »

sweet, although somewhat shocking.

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