Paul Cochrane - Timmy  [traced]

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

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timmy #40 gutshot dipswtich
timmy #40 gutshot dipswtich
timmy01.jpg (39.15 KiB) Viewed 2275 times
timmy #40 gutshot board2
timmy #40 gutshot board2
timmy02.jpg (48.23 KiB) Viewed 2275 times
timmy #40 gutshot swithc
timmy #40 gutshot swithc
timmy03.jpg (42.6 KiB) Viewed 2275 times
timmy #40 gutshot board1
timmy #40 gutshot board1
timmy04.jpg (46.02 KiB) Viewed 2275 times
timmy #40 gutshot serial
timmy #40 gutshot serial
timmy05.jpg (27.83 KiB) Viewed 2275 times

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vanessa
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Post by vanessa »

Goop_buster wrote:
modman wrote: About the similar circuit:
The author "vanessa" at diy stomp suggest tubereamer as a similar circuit and he is not far off....
PaulC responds:
This is my timmy pedal - it is not a simple TS work alike. Also the design was made in 1997 - a bit before the tubereamer if I'm not mistaken
I started up that thread and I thought it would be pulled down in a New York minute. I was surprised to see that it went on, and on, and on. There seemed to be a double standard on dissecting this pedal over say a Zvex.
I really thought it to be very close to the old ROG tubereamer. The dirt is that people say the Timmy and the TIM side by side are not the same tone wise.

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Post by estragon »

vanessa wrote:I started up that thread and I thought it would be pulled down in a New York minute. I was surprised to see that it went on, and on, and on. There seemed to be a double standard on dissecting this pedal over say a Zvex.
I really thought it to be very close to the old ROG tubereamer. The dirt is that people say the Timmy and the TIM side by side are not the same tone wise.
I agree with the double standard issue at Aron's. Not only Timmy's thread was kept, but also I couldn't believe my eyes when the MI Crunch Box was publicly dissected with schems and layouts, despite being an "in production pedal made by a friendly forum member of a small company with decent retail prices, good quality and finishing, etc, etc, etc."

Setting that side, and for the record, could you please confirm the value of Timmy's mica cap? 47pF perhaps?
Last edited by estragon on 24 Jul 2007, 19:23, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by briggs »

The double standards have been there for a while. At least here everything is a target :wink:
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Post by modman »

http://www.rockinn.co.jp/maniac/a1_p_cochrane.html

Yes, they are two different pedals. Should have made that clearer
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Post by vanessa »

briggs wrote:The double standards have been there for a while. At least here everything is a target :wink:
Too bad for me this site just started up I would have been all over this back in the day (maybe good for you? :lol: ). This is the site I always wished the 'other site' was. I'm sort of in my twilight of my DIY pedal building. These days I've been playing a lot of acoustic guitar (blasphemy I know). I really like that this site is DIY for the sake of DIY. Way to go, and I hope that the powers that be can't ever shut it down.

8)

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Post by estragon »

Vanessa, based on a previous thread at Aron's I assume you actually had a Timmy on your hands. Could you please confirm the value of Timmy's mica cap? 47pF perhaps?

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Post by vanessa »

estragon wrote:Vanessa, based on a previous thread at Aron's I assume you actually had a Timmy on your hands. Could you please confirm the value of Timmy's mica cap? 47pF perhaps?
No, I was going off that photo and what people described of the unit. It sounded/looked like a Tubereamer with some mods (partly the reason why I brought it up over at Aron's). That post earlier by Modman seems to confirm that he did not come up with the idea back in 1997.
I would guess you could find the value via ebay photos. Paul did not go through the trouble of gooping his components. They are all labeled, you just need a close up. Let me know if you find anything, I'll do the same.

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Post by estragon »

There is a japanese site mentioned earlier in this thread that has around 9 pictures (different from the one that appeared at Aron's). Luckily all box capacitors have their values readable, but unfortunately the mica cap is not visible from the side with the markings. Best guess is to assume it lies within 47-100 pF, however I was curious to know if Paul C. did actually go for something different.

Cheers.

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Post by Goop_buster »

estragon wrote:There is a japanese site mentioned earlier in this thread that has around 9 pictures (different from the one that appeared at Aron's). Luckily all box capacitors have their values readable, but unfortunately the mica cap is not visible from the side with the markings. Best guess is to assume it lies within 47-100 pF, however I was curious to know if Paul C. did actually go for something different.

Cheers.
The rat-style treble filter is pretty effective for dialing out any excessive harshness and on the other hand you may want a very transparent sound if you are going for mostly clean boost with just a hint of grit. I say perhaps try to start out even lower than 47p.
I have acually built one using those pictures once but do not remember what values I ended up in some places.

I think that analogguru is probably right about that I got the diodes and swithes wrong in my schematic (may be just one or 2 in series instead).
perhaps easy to see here:
http://f.hatena.ne.jp/toy_love/20070414015241

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Post by vanessa »

Goop_buster wrote: I think that analogguru is probably right about that I got the diodes and swithes wrong in my schematic (may be just one or 2 in series instead).
perhaps easy to see here:
http://f.hatena.ne.jp/toy_love/20070414015241
I think he means that they are not being shorted in your schematic.

Also there seems to be a couple different versions of his Timmy. I'm seeing one with a few diodes and another with just a couple. Maybe an attempt to get it to sound more like the TIM?

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Post by Goop_buster »

vanessa wrote:
Goop_buster wrote: I think that analogguru is probably right about that I got the diodes and swithes wrong in my schematic (may be just one or 2 in series instead).
perhaps easy to see here:
http://f.hatena.ne.jp/toy_love/20070414015241
I think he means that they are not being shorted in your schematic.

Also there seems to be a couple different versions of his Timmy. I'm seeing one with a few diodes and another with just a couple. Maybe an attempt to get it to sound more like the TIM?
Yes, I think I have read that later units were changed into having a similar diode configuration like TIM.

Anyone: Feel free to edit in improvements/changes to the previous schematic and post :D .

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Post by madbean »

I own both the TIM and Timmy pedals and enjoy them quite a lot. Paul is a very nice guy and took the time to talk about DIY with me when I ordered my first pedal from him a couple of years ago. I never reversed them, but the build quality on mine is really good and would be a snap to draw a schem from.

I like the pedals, but they are not the "go-to"ones for me anymore. I've used both on some studio recordings and the TIM has a really nice presence about it with both channels engaged. However, I think I prefer a traditional tone control (or none at all) to his bass-treble cut designs. It's just too tempting to fiddle with them, when what I really want is just one great, identifiable sound out of each pedal I own (hey, versatility is over-rated, right?)

That being said, the nice thing about them regardless of their simple and straight-foward design is that the few components lend themselves to excellent stacking capabilities.

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Post by estragon »

Hi madbean,

Perhaps at this point what's missing from Timmy's puzzle are the value for the mica cap and pots.

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Post by madbean »

The silver mica is 100pf. The gain pot on the original was 1MB, but in later ones he started using 500kB. I don't know the values of the treble and bass cut pots.

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Post by estragon »

Great info about the mica cap. My best guess for the Treble pot would be 10KB and then 100KA for the Bass pot (based on the posted circuit values around these elements).

Also, does anyone know if the GAIN pot had a stopper resistor (something between 4.7k-33k?) to limit minimum gain? Based on the pictures I see no resistor to limit minimum gain mounted on the perfboard.

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Post by madbean »

Now that I think about it, there must be more to this. The gain on the Timmy behaves more like a blend. Fully down, it's totally clean signal, then as you dial in it blends gain smoothly. At least, that's how I remember it.

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Post by estragon »

madbean wrote:Now that I think about it, there must be more to this. The gain on the Timmy behaves more like a blend. Fully down, it's totally clean signal, then as you dial in it blends gain smoothly. At least, that's how I remember it.
Your description is consistent to not having a stopper resistor, where close to min you just get a unity gain buffer from the first stage.

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Post by briggs »

madbean. Do you recon you could draw up a scheme for timmy? I fancy a pop at building one.
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Post by madbean »

hey guys...i might be able to swing that...i got a lot goin on this weekend but if i scrounge up some time, then bomb's away!

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