Cheap & very nasty ring mod.

Here's a ring modulator I knocked up this morning.
Basically it consists of a couple of audio transformers that I had laying around, plus 4 diodes.The carrier signal is provided by the casio PT-87 (yep I got it as a Christmas present in 1987) & the Fuzz factory is in use to counteract the voltage drop across the diodes.
This thing sounds awful, like, THE worst sound you could think of conjuring up, mainly thanks to the PT-87's ability to auto play songs with a built in ROM card reader, so in essence - you get a ring mod thats playing a tune & doing all sorts of crazy things to the output signal.If you think like me though, sometimes you're after that "geez the world IS coming to an end" kind of tone - this is perfect.

I'm going to keep working on this one - the carrier suppression currently sucks, & I'd like to add an internal oscillator so the keyboard doesn't have to always be hooked up.
More to follow, as it comes to hand...

We need sound! :grin: :mrgreen:

Yeah ah, sound clips.....

well in its current incarnation, I dont have any sort of idea as to what to play with it, it truly sounds as though a dalek is dying....thats about the closest description I can make....so, anything I do play, doesnt have any bearing as to the output that SHOULD be coming out of it, which makes it a bit hard.
I'll try to come up with some sort of simple melody & post it later on.

OK well, Im about to head out, but I thought I'd just try the ol' distortion+ as a booster instead of the fuzz factory.much more pleasing ring mod sounds - though, carrier suppresion remains a problem....think I need to match the diodes....

Throwing a LPB-1 after it on the breadboard would only take a sec if you have the parts. Just a suggestion. Also, soundclips would be great for sure.

Thats great just like some kind of rig from my studio I love the old casio with the z vex fuzz.
I have been picking up the old casio stuff for years at garage sales and such. They used to be everywhere and are now getting harder to find. Fun Fun Fun. Keep up the experiments.

oooh yeah, its nasty.
I haven't had time to work on it, so I thought I should record at least some audio.....
I dont think this really shows what it can do ( ie, you can really make it sound trippy by having the keyboard play "chopsticks" for example, while you attempt to make sense of what you're playing.
1st 1/2 is the casio set to "organ" second, its set to "trumpet". I think trumpet sounds much nicer, though - this is subjective, YMMV.
Oh yeah, I wanted the most horrible sounding effects pedal I could make, this is coming close.


Whoops! the link might help!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt50Z9kki2A

cheers,

S.