All-Star Reverb  [documentation]

Original effects with schematics, layouts and instructions, freely contributed by members or found in publications. Cannot be used for commercial purposes without the consent of the owners of the copyright.
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induction
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Post by induction »

I guess the first thing to try would be measuring voltages on the pins of the brick.

For what it's worth, my brick didn't always work on the breadboard. Sometimes I had to pop it out and then reinsert it. So maybe reflowing the solder on the brick connections will help. Can't make any promises about that though.

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Post by biliousfrog »

I couldn't get it working at all so I bought a box of hall PCB and another brick...got that working with the old brick and regulator in it (so they were ok). I then stripped the all-star vero and rebuilt it without the tails and it works perfectly.

So I've solved the two-in-one switching scheme by having two complete reverbs anyway :D

The all-star sounds so much nicer than the box of hall, even with the heaven within mods. I'm about to fit a dwell control to it in the hope of making it a bit more usable, it sounds very digital to me where-as the all-star is very warm.

I am noticing some modulation through the reverbs. I think that's one of the reasons why this verb is better than the box of hall - the modulation is subtle and adds to the sound rather than adding an undulating vibrato on top of the mix. I find the modulation on the box of hall quite unpleasant at higher reverb settings.

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Post by induction »

Excellent! Glad you got it working and glad you like it.

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Post by biliousfrog »

Image

So...I found some surf green and amber tint in the shed :D

Once I'd wired up the T/B switch on the all-star it was popping really badly and I couldn't get rid of it so I went with buffered bypass (which I'd prefer anyway).

It was a bit of a squeeze fitting both circuits in but they kind of interlocked - the belton from the BoH PCB fitted under the All-Star vero and it all squeezed into the centre section between the switches with the PCB hanging over the middle pots.

The BoH is set to a short, subtle verb and the All-Star maxed out - when they're both on you get lots of ambient goodness....especially mixed with volume swells, some modulated delay and poly-octave...yummy!

While wiring it up I made the mistake of swapping the reverb out and output wires....caused some headaches but also gave me 100% reverb, which was very cool. I might experiment with that further down the line.

Many thanks Induction - really excellent reverb. :thumbsup

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Post by biliousfrog »

Damn, I guess I spoke too soon. There seems to be a lot of the reverb signal/ hiss bleeding through in bypass. I can dial it back by turning the reverb knob down and the damp control noticeably changes the bypass tone. I'm wondering if I can come up with a t/b that doesn't thump or a way of filtering out the hiss.

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Post by biliousfrog »

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I said it was tight in there....

My solution to the background hiss in bypass was to put a 470nf cap to ground on pin 2 of the reverb pot - it's wired up to the switch. It pretty much kills off the tails but it's a "soft" off rather than the hard one that true bypass often has. The tails are still there but the high-end is rolled off in bypass so they aren't as obvious. Unfortunately the hiss is still there when the effect is engaged, a cap can be used on the reverb pot at all times but it reduces the amount of wet signal so it's a trade off - 100nf seemed to be the lowest I could go before it stopped being very effective - it does let more of the tails through though.

There seem to be a few mistakes on the switching diagram so I've knocked up another with the filter cap that I'm using, I hope you don't mind.
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All_Star_switch.png

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induction
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Post by induction »

A couple of thoughts.

Hiss: I notice your output cap is reversed. That may be the cause of the hiss. That one is probably compromised now, so I would throw it away and replace it with a fresh one.

TB pop: The reversed output cap might also be the cause of your true bypass popping. Alternately: Did you include 1M pulldown (in red on the layout) when you tried true bypass?

Buffered bypass: If you remove Vref from lug 3, you will be very likely to get popping. Point B on the schematic sits at Vref. If lug 3 floats, then engaging and disengaging the effect will usually cause an instantaneous DC offset of about 4.5V, and a very loud pop. I know this from personal experience. :wink:

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Post by biliousfrog »

induction wrote:A couple of thoughts.

Hiss: I notice your output cap is reversed. That may be the cause of the hiss. That one is probably compromised now, so I would throw it away and replace it with a fresh one.

TB pop: The reversed output cap might also be the cause of your true bypass popping. Alternately: Did you include 1M pulldown (in red on the layout) when you tried true bypass?

Buffered bypass: If you remove Vref from lug 3, you will be very likely to get popping. Point B on the schematic sits at Vref. If lug 3 floats, then engaging and disengaging the effect will usually cause an instantaneous DC offset of about 4.5V, and a very loud pop. I know this from personal experience. :wink:
How did I miss the output cap? balls.

As for the reverb connection on the switch, I removed it while trying to remove the hiss as it didn't seem to do anything so I thought it must have been a mistake (like the LED+ connection)

I had the resister on there for TB, snipped it off after switching to buffered.

Thanks for looking over it - hopefully the output cap will sort it. :oops:

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Post by induction »

Yes, you are right. The switch should connect to 'led -' not 'led +'. Damn.

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Post by biliousfrog »

Changed the cap for a new one and corrected the orientation - didn't change anything unfortunately so I'm back to using the cap on the switch to kill off the reverb signal. I wonder if it's a dodgy brick?...it's something in the reverb circuit as I can turn the hiss down in bypass by turning down the reverb control.

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Post by induction »

Does it happen at all settings of the dwell control?

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Post by biliousfrog »

induction wrote:Does it happen at all settings of the dwell control?
The dwell doesn't noticeably affect the hiss - the damp changes the tone slightly and the reverb turns it down/off

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Post by induction »

I suspect the hum may be related to the wetter mod. Mine doesn't hum at all, but I recall that when I breadboarded the BYOC (which has a gain of 8 on the wet signal) I got a lot of hum, even in bypass (buffered). The original All-Star has unity gain on the wet signal, and the wetter mod has a gain of around 2.2.

I haven't built the wetter mod (I designed it at the request of another forumer), but I wonder if the extra gain is causing the hum. You could try replacing R9, R10, an R11 to reduce the hum. I get much more reverb than I will ever need with the original, but that's just me.

Original (wet gain = 1):
R9 = 10k
R10 = 39k
R11 = 39k

Wetter mod (wet gain = 2.2):
R9 = 22k
R10 = 82k
R11 = 47k

Middle way mod (wet gain = 1.5):
R9 = 15k
R10 = 56k
R11 = 47k

If that doesn't work, then maybe the brick is noisy, or maybe you're getting capacitive coupling in some of your wiring. Or maybe it's something else entirely.

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Post by chi_boy »

So I put one of these together and all I can say is WOW! The sound is just fantastic. The verb seems to last forever and borders on shimmery. The controls are very versatile and give a lot of dimension to the controls without going overboard. This was going to be an experiment, but this one is getting boxed for sure.

The real purpose of this build was to experiment with the power supply and the regulator grounding scheme. As it turns out, the experiment was very worthwhile and the end product is quite nice. I wish now that I had allowed for the tails option, but that is the nature of experiments I guess.

These are some of my build notes:

1) R14 was removed from the schematic posted at FreeStomBoxes.org due to problems with the regulator resulting from that resistor. This build includes that resistor but with a significantly reduced value of 33R. If you do not wish to include that resistor to remain true to the original design, you must jumper that position.

2) R17 is added to this schematic and is taken from the BTDR-2H datasheet. R17 may be omitted if desired.

3) This build includes a somewhat different grounding scheme for the 5V regulator and the PGND connection of the BTDR-2. The components and configuration around the regulator were taken from other designs and the Belton datasheets for this and some other components they sell. You can be the judge to decide if it makes a difference.

4) The pads marked ISO and GND located just below C11 on the board may be jumpered to defeat the ground isolation noted above. The experimenters may want to put a switch between those two pads to see if any difference is made by the isolated grounds.

And if there are no pictures, it didn't happen, right?

Cheers,
George

http://home.comcast.net/~gprause/pictur ... ar_Sch.png

Image

Image

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Post by MacHeath »

Great thread guys, was considering building a BYOC Reverb but now I have to build me one of these!

Has anyone tried building the All-Star Reverb with the new BTDR-3 brick yet? Seems to have the exact same specs as the BTDR-2, but with the option of adding a decay control through a 10k dual pot so you can dial in your short/medium/long decay! Would be a nice addition, with only minimal changes to the veroboard layout :)

Info sheet with specs of the BTDR-3 can be found here: http://www.tubeampdoctor.com/images/Fil ... MODULE.pdf

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Post by smackoj »

Great stuff amigos. I love the sound file and would like to know if someone would make a pcb available? I'm very interested but prefer the quality and quiet of a pcb without the wire nest and the associated cursing that follows. 8)

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Post by p.eat »

It seems that chi_boy has some pcbs left:

http://home.comcast.net/~gprause/

I have bought several pcbs from him and all were great.

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Post by chi_boy »

Actually I'm all out right now, but I did to a run of PCB's with the tails option. I just received the last of the parts to finish it and will be testing this week.

I wasn't planning to keep making these for sale since this is a fellow DIYer's design. The first batch was sold with Induction's consent, and if the tails option worked I would contact him before selling the leftovers. I could stock these for sale, but I would want induction's ok first.

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Post by Kirshman »

Hey. I don't know if anyone is still watching this thread but I was wondering how to wire 2 of these in one box. I'd love to have a regular and wetter mod in one bb both with buffered bypass with tails. Anyone know how to wire that up? Thanks

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induction
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Post by induction »

Kirshman wrote:Hey. I don't know if anyone is still watching this thread but I was wondering how to wire 2 of these in one box. I'd love to have a regular and wetter mod in one bb both with buffered bypass with tails. Anyone know how to wire that up? Thanks
The simplest thing to do would be to feed the output of one circuit to the input of the other, just as if they were in two separate boxes, except the connection between them is hardwired. It should be very easy to do, but let me know if you need more detailed instructions.
chi_boy wrote:Actually I'm all out right now, but I did to a run of PCB's with the tails option. I just received the last of the parts to finish it and will be testing this week.

I wasn't planning to keep making these for sale since this is a fellow DIYer's design. The first batch was sold with Induction's consent, and if the tails option worked I would contact him before selling the leftovers. I could stock these for sale, but I would want induction's ok first.
Sorry, I guess I missed this post. If you're still interested, you have my blessing to stock pcb's of this design for sale.

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