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2021-01-23 22:21
@atomanth
Do you have a signal tracer? If so input a signal (I use my phone's music player and a 3.5mm to 1/4 cable) and trace until you loose sound. My guess is that you have a wiring error, extra ground contact or broken connection hidden somewhere from the rehousing. I found no other errors or defects on the PCB besides the aforementioned missing trace at R18/R22. Also, make sure to set T1 & T2 trimmers to 50% and fine tune once your other issues are resolved.
2021-01-24 08:42
thanks for responding. The voltages at T8 are:
pin 1 - 5.86
pin 2 - 1.49
pin 3 - 0
After adding the jumper as described above, I have good signal on the recovery side all the way to output. When I trace the signal from the guitar input jack, I have signal all the way through to both reverb outputs. The signal seems really weak though. I am not sure how much the signal should be amplified, but I’m getting roughly the same signal voltage at the transformer output that I am putting in from the signal generator. This is with the dwell control at max and the mini pot at minimum, which gave me the most signal. On the scope, the signal looks very distorted at these settings.
is it possible that I have a bad pcb? If there was that open connection on the recovery side, I’m wondering if there is something printed incorrectly in other spots as well.
2021-01-24 12:35
HI there,
Then T8 is working just fine. This transistor has a trimmer to set gain through effect-this is to make up for the loss at the passive mixing point at the gate of T8.
You should be able to increase levle by adjusting this trimmer?
At your service
BJ
2021-01-24 19:56
That trimmer seems to work to increase the make up gain after the reverb effect. My problem is that I have a very small signal driving the reverb before the transformer. If I input a signal from a generator at 100mv 400hz, at the transformer output I get 70mv at max drive settings. Do I possibly have a bad transformer? The signal is very strong at the primary, but weak on the secondary side. I get a resistance of 1.5ohms between the secondary and ground. I think that seems ok or an 8ohm transformer, but I’m not sure.
2021-01-26 18:43
Hi There
Voltage at Primary should be a whole lot larger than voltage at secondary ( something like 1/75 outof primary voltage but the secundary can provide a whole lot more current which is needed to drive the 8 Ohm load.
In fact signal voltage at secondary should be very small - now can the transformer drive an 8 Ohm tank?
This output is really only useable when driving an 8 Ohm load
So it would difficult to say anythingelse than above before you have tried if the transformer can drive an 8 Ohm input tank
The Capacitor output is a whole different story btw
At your service
BJ
2021-01-26 20:58
thanks for the reply. I’m lost then. I seem to be meeting all the right conditions to have this thing working. I have signal on the input side all the way through the transformer out. I have lots of signal voltage at the transformer primary as you described. I have tried an 8ohm tank, a 10 ohm tank, an 800ohm tank at the capacitor output, and I’ve tried multiple sets of cables. I can’t seem to drive any tank enough to get signal back into the recovery side. If I plug a signal generator directly into the recovery side, I get signal all the way to the output, just as I would expect. Is there any suggestion that I may not be looking at? Grounding issue with the tank or cables?
Sorry to keep bothering with this. Everything seems just fine and I’ve troubleshooted everything I can think of.
2021-01-26 22:21
Hi there,
This is a fairly simple circuit so there are limits to what can go wrong. I will try to help as best I can- so hang on in there
There could be a number of things
Ground needs to consistent through system since signal passes relative ground
I must ask also, because I have had one or two broken tanks that can you verify the tanks are OK and working?
One tank I had there was a short between the wires that went to input transformer to strings-this was caused by a little metal flange that was supposed to hold the wires in place.
Shorts are difficult to measure in such low impedance systems though 😉
However I’ll ask Albin for the version pcb you have and have a look at that, just because
However from what you tell me:
Recovery amp has considerable gain because the output from tanks are weak
Can you tell me the voltages at T6 and T7 respectively?
If you’d run a signal generator into recovery stage the output would be heavily distorted if all works as it should.
Anything learnt on this will apply to discrete transistor stages in general, so there is an additional benefit
At your service
BJ
2021-01-26 23:59
here’s what I have at those transistors:
T6
E - 1.007v
B - 1.603v
C - 3.810v
T7
E - 3.2
B - 3.81
C - 5.47
The tanks are good. I’ve tested them with current amps and did so again before I replied to this. With a 25mv signal directly to the recovery input, I only get distortion with the trim pot all the way up. I can clean it up by turning it back 10% of the way.
thanks again for spending time on this with me.
2021-01-27 09:03
Hi There,
Thank you,
Let’s see how this can be figured out
In faultfinding it is always best not to assume just methodically test
OK so recovery stage is working just fine
With the types of tanks you have the transformer output is the way to go. The capacitor output is meant for driving tanks with 600Ohms to 2,5K IZ
So looking at transformer output that is powered by a push/pull amplifier TR1 sets the bias for the push/pull output pair. For max swing start with TR1 fully off and then increase and you can watch the output swing at the primary while doing this and you’ll see.
You said earlier you have a weak signal driving the the reverb before the transformer so what kind of input do you have driving the Universial Reverb driver?
If the circuit is inserted at a point of low signal you could build a preamp similar to T8 circuit and power that from +A-in case you have a J113 lying about. This would at max gain amplify by a factor 9
Further the output from the tank should be about 5mV at so the recovery amplifier needs quite a bit of gain
At your service
BJ
2021-01-27 19:56
Well, I finally got frustrated and tore the whole thing apart again...and found a little sliver of wire bridging the connection from the power inlet ground and the pad that connects to A+. I’m sure you figured it was something stupid like that, but humored me anyways. Now I have plenty of power to push the tank. It’s really great. I actually housed it in a box big enough to fit a short tank internally, then I put a switch in place to move the signal to the jacks and it works great. So now I can use it for a nice splashy ambience with the internal tank, or I can hook up a long tank for some serious drip.
Thanks again for the great support. Sorry it was something so simple.
2021-01-28 19:34
Happy to hear it's up and running. If you can still access the board would you mind posting the voltages at T1, T2, T6, T7 & T8? I'd like to compare them to my build once it's complete. And I'll post my voltages as well for future reference. Thanks.
2021-02-17 17:29
I'm very close to moving forward with this reverb but haven't been able to find any demo/comparison of this circuit. Is it similar to a stand alone reverb unit, an amp reverb circuit, or is it's own thing entirely? Thanks for any help describing what this would sound like.
2021-03-24 17:45
Hi,
I recently finished to build the Analog reverb kit (including the blue tank) and I notice some bad distortion when setting dwell 1 fully clockwise and the other two : dwell 2 and mix anticlockwise at minimum.
Is it something to be expected? The amount of distortion remains the same regardless i'of the trimmer settings.
Thank you in advance for your help,
Regards,
Cesar
2021-04-01 22:13
@bjf hello Björn,
I am currently building a reverb tank using your universal reverb driver kit and I would love to clear something up.
I really want to add an EQ section to this circuit and get crazy with it. My idea was to build your wonderful Sea Blue EQ circuit and place a HPF in front of it and a LPF after it, to reduce noise when the highs are boosted. Creating a little 4 knob eq section (fixing the volume on the SBEQ)
My question, as a noob, is this: where can I connect this circuit in with the Reverb Circuit, so that the EQ section only affects the wet reverb signal before it is mixed together.
Also, maybe related: what are the “tone” and “aone”(?) pads on the universal reverb pcb? I don’t see anything in my build guide about those pads.
Thank you so much!
Peter
2021-04-02 15:25
Hi There,
If you want to EQ the reverb the moist strategic point of doing that is before reverb driver and connections to Dwell can be broken and EQ inserted.
Below some ideas that might be of use to you
This is something I suggested in a post in another thread:
Oh tone control for reverb is definitely possible by just adding desired filter outboard inserted at Reverb level control.
I'll have a talk with Albin about making a tone control modification kit and getting schematics up for those that have parts lying about.
Worth mentioning is that the reverb effect from a typical tank has a fairly narrow bandwidth and low frequency reflections have tendency of causing mud whereas high frequency reflections a tendency of causing shimmer: therefore most effective would a treble control be and also limiting low frequency response to make effect appear more as shimmer
A difference between tanks is also how high up in frequency they go so it can be useful to have control for brightness.
Slight caution is again that tanks have limited bandwidth so boosting treble a lot after recovery can be just amplifying noise therefore
making a sort of bandpass boost can allow boosting the relatively important part of response i.e. highlighting where there is energy but not heating for the crows.
About SBEQ currently there is no official DIY kit, which may change in time
Here some information
There are filters in the circuit to let trebleboost bend off at about 7KHz and highpass filter to let bassboost bend off at about 100Hz where maximum boost peaks are created
As mentioned above a tank has very limited bandwidth
That siad you can certianly add EQ and SBEQ if you wish ahead of tankdriver-this way you can control what is reverbated and because you are ahead of the reverb noise is less of an issue.
You can also eq after Reverb recovery amplifier and the eq the complete reverbated signal, but boosting here will upset mixing balance and also amplify noise where there is no signal or very weak
So consider mild filtering preferably passive with maybe a an amplifier to make up for losses: consider the active bandwidth which for reverb signal is maybe 200Hz to 3KHz -ofcourse there is energy above an below but mostly
higher up if there is ample energy
At your service
BJ
Bjorn Juhl
