Timmy?

[JohnnyCrash]

I've got extra parts laying around (no enclosure or 3PDT switches though) so I figured I'd start another project.

Got lotsa respect for Paul C and am constantly hearing shining reviews for the Timmy, so I figured I'd take a stab at building one.

Only problem is I keep reading how transparent it is. I know it's not boring because everybody loves theirs... the thing is, I've got a million amps and all sorts of pedals, I'm not sure "transparent" is something I want right now.

I'll still probably build one, but I wanted to hear from you guys first. What do you guys think?

[tjk3052]

I recently built one. It's nice, but the distortion on mine is kinda fizzy, almost torn speaker sounding. I made my own vero layout, but I'm pretty sure it's right.



I'm using it as a clean boost now but I hope I can get it sounding better. I tried a 4558, TL072, and the 4559 ICs and they all sound pretty much the same.

[Blue Whale]

Howdy JohnnyCrash

Yes build one; it's a great opamp based diode clipper circuit for driving a good valve amp. It's transparent in respect to not altering the inherent timbre of the guitar, what it does is add a nice mix of driven harmonics which when driving a good valve amp really work well for the musician in getting a great guitar tone.

I'd suggest that you first go and play a Danelectro Cool Cat and see if it's for you, as they are readily available to be road tested at those evil guitar retailer shops.

You can still find the original that caused all the controversy, however you can set the dip switches in the new ver2 similarly, plus more to boot ... the Dano schematics are floating about for a comparison to Paul's Tim & Timmy pedals.

#:o)

[JohnnyCrash]

Originally Posted by tjk3052

I recently built one. It's nice, but the distortion on mine is kinda fizzy, almost torn speaker sounding. I made my own vero layout, but I'm pretty sure it's right.

I'm using it as a clean boost now but I hope I can get it sounding better. I tried a 4558, TL072, and the 4559 ICs and they all sound pretty much the same.

Thanks for that layout. I have one with a clipper and a feedback switch, but not sure which layout I'll use just yet (need to find more, compare them, and then pick).

I've got so many extra 4558 and TL072 chips it's not even funny!

Fizzy distortion? I'll note that. Anymore opinions from those who've built or own one? I'm still not sure if I'll build one just yet...

[11 Gauge]

Originally Posted by JohnnyCrash

Anymore opinions from those who've built or own one?

I think that the term "transparent overdrive" is misleading, or perhaps that the Tim/Timmy pedals really deserve to be described or defined more appropriately.

It might be best to back up a bit and consider what Paul was shooting for when he first started refining his design. He had NO intentions or desire to build a TS derivative. In spite of the pedal's current structure, it should not be viewed as one.

...The Tim started out more like a simple op amp boost. As time went on, Paul added EQ circuitry, and eventually the clipping diodes went in primarily for the purpose of clamping at higher drive levels, which he apparently added for the purposes of flexibility. The Tim also has a boost function and an effects loop built in. The Timmy was a bit of a spinoff - no boost, no loop, etc.

The Timmy has the following attributes that make it very un-TS like:

- He futzed with the biasing circuitry to get the boosting/clipping a little closer to optimal - it uses a 8.2K/10K voltage divider. Very similar to the 27K/33K type of thing that you see in the Hot Cake and similar pedals.

- The treble cut circuit is basically analogous to a Rat's filter. It's a low pass that happens after the clipping stage.

- The bass cut is basically a "blender" that drops or raises the HP filtering on the clipping stage, either to above or below what a TS is fixed at. The cool thing about it is that it's gain independent, unlike a Zendrive's "voice" control.

- The second gain stage provides nothing more than an unclipped boost. And the first stage does the same thing with the gain control at minimum.

- The "hardwired" set of clipping diodes are a "true" parallel/series configuration - that is they are pair of parallel diodes, in series. This allows the signal to be clipped/clamped at both the singular voltage conduction figure (~550mV) or a cumulative one of two in series (~1.1V). The difference is subtle, but it's there nonetheless. And when used in conjunction with the singular diodes on the dipswitches or toggles, you get other shades of clipping/clamping that are subtle but different from other pedals.

I personally like the Tim/Timmy for amps that are not lacking in midrange, and are already breaking a sweat just a tad on their own. And I personally like it for low gain duties - not as a booster or a heavy gainer. I don't really care for it with amps like my Deluxe Reverb. IMO, as long as the amp has some decent mids, you can dial in a Timmy to give you a lot of different options to your base tone.

...Other than being uninspired with it into BF/SF Fender amps, my only other gripe is that I tend to spend way too much time spinning knobs when I change the amount of gain. It's so flexible that I have a hard time settling on the sweet spot. And in a situation with the rest of a band added in, I have to re-tweak the dials all over again. Just a minor bit of whining, the truth be told.

[tjk3052]

I took a chance today to really wring out my Timmy clone, something I really hadn't done much before. I think my disappointment with the clipping had more to do with operator error than the pedal. If the bass and treble cut knobs aren't up high enough when the gain is turned up, it doesn't sound good at all (IMO). When the gain is all the way up, it sounded best with the bass cut at max and the treble cut near max, and I hadn't been setting them nearly that high before. 11 Gauge is right, there is a sweet spot that you have to find each time you change the gain.

I also played more with different chips. The 4558 and 4559 sounded most alike, I think the 4559 maybe sounded smoother. The TL072 had more of an edge to it which wasn't as good overall, but sounded kind of cool at certain settings.

I think this will be a pedal I will like a lot as I get to know it better.

[JohnnyCrash]

The technical aspects are interesting (especially the Treb/Bass controls).

Use for a midrange amp seems appropriate since I like mid-heavy amps (not many BF's in my herd).

So far I'm still impressed with Paul's technical prowess, but am not hearing a lot to convince me to have a Timmy on my board... I have limited resources and limited time... though the Timmy gets so much hype (sometimes for reasons that do not justify I build one) that I'm still torn... argh!

I'll sit on making a decision for a while...

[11 Gauge]

Originally Posted by JohnnyCrash

Use for a midrange amp seems appropriate since I like mid-heavy amps (not many BF's in my herd).

Paul designed and tweaked the Timmy for use with his gigging rig, which was a Marshall head with a 2X12 cab, if I have my facts right.

So it was designed with overt midrange in mind.

[JohnnyCrash]

Originally Posted by 11 Gauge

Paul designed and tweaked the Timmy for use with his gigging rig, which was a Marshall head with a 2X12 cab, if I have my facts right.

So it was designed with overt midrange in mind.

That is my rig too. My gigging rig is either of two "Marshalls" and a 2x12" cab. That BOR I built was supposedly designed with Marshalls in mind... IDK, I don't want to waste my resources. I could build a Timmy or... or what?

So far I'm still torn... I'm leaning towards doing it, just so I know what all the hubub is about.

[Blue Whale]

Here's what Paul Cochrane has to say on the interactive controls on the Timmy:

"Having to turn the tone knobs when turning the gain up is what the pedal is about. It's meant to not have any preset voice to it that's normally done for good OD tones. You set the voice depending on where you set the gain.

A good rule of thumb is to start off by setting the gain/bass/treble to the same setting, and tweak from there. Have them all at zero for a flat booster, set them all at 12 o/clock for a lite overdrive, and set them all cranked for a medium distortion.

If you just crank the gain without cutting out the bass/treble it can sound pretty bad!

myspace.com/paulcaudio"

And here's what Paul had to say about the design process of the Tim pedal:

"I wanted something that could be a flat booster first, and then get up to crunchy/rhythm levels of distortion. We all know that to get good distortion you’ve got to do some common things – roll off the bass pre clipping to keep things from being flubby, and then roll off the high-end after the clipping to smooth things back out. If you don’t do that you’ll get some nasty sounding overdrive. The common thing is to preset this so things never sound bad, but then things will never sound flat for the clean boosting side of things.

So while there are things out there with pre this, and post that controls there are not many (and none that I knew of when I made the design) that have both. They’re pretty much one or the other – you don’t see a lot of designs with tone controls split up into different areas of the circuits. I did this because it allowed me to have a flat response when I needed it, and yet I could still shape the EQ pre/post for the clipping sounds.

The other thing is I didn’t want the type of bass control that changed the gain as I was rolling out the bass. That’s where the cap mixer on the opamp came from. It’s different from the fatscreamer article you posted, and it also predates when you saw it.

Another big difference is it’s a shelf type filter instead of a first order type. While there are cap mixers out there i never saw one on an opamp - they all used things like you showed. throw me a bone here, I didn't pull that off of anything - I thought about it based on what i needed in a bass control.

Yeah the treble control is like what you find in a rat, but again there was thought behind why I used that. That’s a very common thing that I saw in books at school long before I tweaked my first pedal. I was trying to keep noise under control. I didn’t want any active boosting of EQ. My degree is in audio engineering with minors in electronics and acoustics. A major rule in audio is “cut before boost”. I never needed more treble than what I had. If I needed it to sound brighter I’d roll off the bass instead of boosting the treble. In something like a screamer the highs are rolled out to smooth out the distortion, but then there’s an active treble control to bring the highs back in. The problem is that’s boosting noise along with the highs. I wanted a control that if I needed things brighter I wouldn’t boost anything – I just wouldn’t take them out to begin with. A simple 1st order variable filter fit the bill. There was no need to try and find something that would impress people more. "

And further to the whole quest for Timmy, Paul is planning a revised Tim/Timmy due out soon. Words from the man himself:

"What I'm working on now is the "12th anniversary" model. The joke is everybody has a "10th year" model, but I'm so slow I missed it, so mines going to have to be the 12th. I need to get it out before May 2010 though, because then it becomes 13 and that wouldn't be lucky!

It's a total redesign - not just a tweaked Tim with some new options. It's really a different pedal, but it sort of has the same goal. Clean to mean with pre/post eq controls. It's using some fets for gain stages/buffers. Inv opamps and charge pumps. There's some switches to revoice the tone controls to help work better with different amps/guitars, and a tricky loop switching thing that I think the pedal stackers will really dig.

I've never bought into the boutique thing, so there's some things I'm going to change on the build to help speed things up on the construction. PC mounted pots (maybe jacks)/ftswitches with little pc boards and ribbon cables to speed things, and make easier to replace if the switches go bad. Powder coated instead of painted ... This is all open to change, but it looks how it's going to turn out."

Looks to be pretty exciting. I guess he's taking preorders #:o)

[ibodog]

I did a vero layout last year with a feedback loop (http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/ma...geViewsIndex=1). After playing with it I don't think the feedback loop really did much for this design. A guy could try taking the feedback from a different spot and play with the tuning of the feedback filter, but ultimately I couldn't come up with anything better sound wise than just removing the feedback loop and using the EQ controls as Paul intended.

Paul made me a custom Timmy last fall in a 125B case with 3 external toggle switches. Sort of an intermediate design between the old Timmy and the coming new one. All of the toggles are 3 position switches and when they're all in the middle the pedal is a "stock" Timmy circuit. First toggle is for the clipping diode options. Next one sets the frequency of the bass control. Last one sets the frequency of the treble control. He did this to make it work better with my Fender Princeton amp. The treble switch really did the trick for the Princeton - two different positions to lower the treble cut off point. I imagine he's just switching cap values where the 10nF cap (C5 on the above linked vero layout) is for the treble control, but I haven't taken it apart to verify that.

[Dirty Steve]

Timmy!






Sorry. Couldn't help myself. Very immature. Won't happen again.

[JohnnyCrash]

Originally Posted by Dirty Steve

Timmy!






Sorry. Couldn't help myself. Very immature. Won't happen again.

HAHAHA!!!

"Lib la, Lib a la... TIMMY!"

[Moonibopper]

Thank you so much for the layout... it works great... one question I had is, if I don't want the feedback switch, I still need to jumper D9 and C18 in the layout right? Also, instead of having an On-Off-On DPDT switch for the clipping section, I can wire two SPST switches for the same effect right? Thanks!

Originally Posted by ibodog

I did a vero layout last year with a feedback loop (http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/ma...geViewsIndex=1). After playing with it I don't think the feedback loop really did much for this design. A guy could try taking the feedback from a different spot and play with the tuning of the feedback filter, but ultimately I couldn't come up with anything better sound wise than just removing the feedback loop and using the EQ controls as Paul intended.

Paul made me a custom Timmy last fall in a 125B case with 3 external toggle switches. Sort of an intermediate design between the old Timmy and the coming new one. All of the toggles are 3 position switches and when they're all in the middle the pedal is a "stock" Timmy circuit. First toggle is for the clipping diode options. Next one sets the frequency of the bass control. Last one sets the frequency of the treble control. He did this to make it work better with my Fender Princeton amp. The treble switch really did the trick for the Princeton - two different positions to lower the treble cut off point. I imagine he's just switching cap values where the 10nF cap (C5 on the above linked vero layout) is for the treble control, but I haven't taken it apart to verify that.