The U-235 is a "clean" octave down based on the CD4046 PLL chip.
It tracks very well both with guitar and bass.

It has three modes:
1. One octave down
2. Detuned (in between one and two octaves down)
3. Two octaves down

Here's a quick phone demo using the bridge pickup on my SG.

The New Wave is basically a stand-alone LFO board that can be used with synths or other effects to modulate the sound with various waveforms.  It doesn't make any sounds on it's own.
​
It has one CV output that can be toggled between 4 modes:
1. LFO 1 - square
2. LFO 2 - saw/sine/ramp
3. Sample and hold
4. Sequencer (3 or 4 steps)

The Sonic Reducer has also gone through a complete overhaul. It's also easier to build, and has no longer any need for a JFET. :)

This PCB has gotten a facelift, and is now green to fit the name. Circuit-wise it's the same.

The PCB has also gotten a facelift.

Four new versions of old projects are released and now avaliable in the webshop.

I also have new 3PDT-boards with LED + CLR in stock.

3 PCB projects has been updated and are now avaliable in the webshop. :)

The Into the Unknown has been updated to solve the ticking issue that some people were having.

The first Subspace Transmission PCB suffered for below unity output volume. This has now been fixed with the new PCB.

The Corruptor has been updated significantly to be more than just a ring modulator. It's now also a octave fuzz!

If you don't have any CD4070 chip at hand you can use a CD4011 chip to homecook one XOR gate our of four NAND gates.

But what if you don't have that either?

​Surely you must have at least one CD40106 or a CD4093 chip laying around. We can use "Mickey Mouse Logic" that I have mentioned before to make four NAND gates out of four schmitt trigger gates by using diodes and resistors, then connect them together to form a XOR gate.

It's possible yes, but silly. The amount of components required is rediculous.
​There are other much easier ways if you want to use a schmitt trigger chip...  :)

With a schmitt trigger gate we can make a simple edge detector shown to the right. However, it's only producing a pulse each time the input goes high (or only the opposite), so it's not really what we want for an octave up effect. It basically just changes the pulse width (this is how Tim Escobedo's "PWM" works).

So how can we turn this little circuit into a frequency doubler? Simple, we just need two of these and one inverter. One edge detector for the negative edge, and one for the positive edge. Then we simply invert one of the pulse outputs and sum them together and we have a frequency doubler. :)

This is not really CMOS related, but I thought I'd just give a quick and crude explanation of how an octave up circuit works using rectifiers. It's probably the most common way of making an octave up circuit for guitar effects.

​Simply put, the signal gets split into two signal paths (one is being inverted), then two rectifiers (one per sinal-path) cuts off half the waveform and then both rectified signals gets summed together (so in a small way it resembles the schmitt trigger method).

​I won't go into any more detail about this method.  There's plenty to find out if you google about half wave and full wave rectifiers. A rectifier octave up circuit is what I'm using in both the Eagle Claw and Sidescroller Fuzz.

And last but not least, here's a video that shows the waveforms on a scope. The yellow line is our original square wave and the blue line is the pulse ouput from the edge detector circuit. I'm playing around with the pulse width, and as you can hear, it changes the sound from full to thinner and more nasaly sounding.

Update 2016-12-20: Updated the info for the 2.5 version

Here's a minor update for the Arcadiator.

Changelog:

• Optimized circuit
• Improved schmitt trigger
• Fixed clean blend mod

​Read more about the mods in the build document.

The Modboard
Also released is this small LFO trianglewave daughterboard.

It can be connected together with the Arcadiator to modulate the pulse width for even more C64'ish sounds...
Many Parasit Studio boards will have Modboard connections in future revisions that will allow for new crazy sounds.

The modboard can be used to modulate just about any pot in any circuit that is set up as a variable resistor. You just have to experiment with the type of vactrol (or LED+LDR) to find the one to best suit your purpose.

Wookie 2010-2016
Alittle over a month ago I lost my pet, my best friend and companion that I've had for the last 6 years. Her name was Wookie, a wonderful and very special dog.

She could do a ton of tricks (some that she came up with herself). She loved to take long walks, jump up on things, swim, play and training (agility). he was very social and loved to just hang out, even when I was recording bands. She would often fell asleep at the feet of singers while recording  (even screaming vocals). She always knew when we were planning stuff. Even when we talked quietly she could pick out words out of long sentences and get totally psyched for something to happen. She was very intense (alittle bit of a nutcase in a good way) with all her emotions on the outside. Easily stressed and fragile but very fun, warm and loving. Wookie my sweet darling, I love you and I miss you.

Because of her passing I kinda lost my inspiration for pedal building and breadboarding new things, so that's why there's been very few blog updates lately and I apologize if I have been slow to reply when people are asking for help. I hope that some inspiration will return to me eventually because I have alot of ideas that I have not explored yet.

Ray Wilson 1955 - 2016
I would also like to dedicate this post to Ray Wilson - A true DIY legend within the synth DIY community and the creator of Music from other space. He recently passed away, and it saddens me alot. He was a big inspiration to me and his book Make: Analog Synthesizers got me interested in making pedals with cmos. It has a very brief but good chapter about cmos uses that led me to buy the CMOS Cookbook and without it I would not have come up with ideas for many of my pedals. I also was in contact with Ray a few times and he always wrote excellent replies (I still have a Subcommander Guitar Synth PCB waiting to be finished). Thank you Ray for your great contribution to the DIY community and for being a true inspiration. Rest in Peace.

edit 2016-04-26: Limited edition fully assembled pedals now avaliable!

Here's a new DIY project - the Xor'cist stutter fuzz and ringmod. It's now avaliable as a PCB and as a fully assembled pedal.

I have been wanting to do a CMOS based squarewave stutter fuzz (a choppy on/off type tremolo) for quite a while. I have also been thinking about doing an extended version of the Corruptor ringmod (without the over-the-top sequencer of the King Corruptor) so I decided to combine both these ideas into one circuit and this is the result. :)

It can do fuzz, ring modulation or a blend of both. With the stutter engaged it will do stuttering fuzz, stuttering ringmod or alternating between fuzz and ringmod (depending on the mix knob setting). The momentary stutter footswitch can be disengaged and the LFO can be off/on/gated.

The Xor'cist uses a CD4070 XOR chip (hence the name) to achieve both the ringmod and the stuttering effect. It's basically the bastard big brother of the Corruptor.

PCB and complete pedal avaliable in the webshop

Here's a new DIY project called the "Subspace Transmission Fuzz"

This is a fuzz with a recording and playback feature based on the ISD1820 voice recording chip. It can record up to 20 seconds and the playback can be repeated and pitched up or down. It's perfect for playing along to your riffs and coming up with new ideas, or why not make a short repeating loop and pitch it down for some sick drone sounds!

Please note that it can't be used to do overdubs because of the limitations of the chip and the repeat is not fluid, but it's still pretty awesome what a 14 pin dip chip can do. :)

I hope you like it!
​/ Fredrik

PCB avaliable now in the shop

Update 2016-03-16: I added a vero layout
​
It has been a slow start to 2016, but a few new projects are finally coming together. Here's a new DIY project - The Sentient Machine.

It's a resonant lowpass filter modulated with an LFO. It has a couple of different voice settings, a standard wah sound and a special vowel sound. At slow speeds it makes a cool spacey sweeping sound reminiscent of a phaser, and at minimum depth and medium speed it almost sounds like a tremolo.

This circuit is pretty advanced, but it's a straight forward build. The PCB is made to fit inside a 125B enclosure.

The madman Savvas (@tagboardeffects) submitted a vero layout. Thanks! Please note that it's not yet verified.

PCB avaliable in the shop

Getting artwork onto the enclosure has always been a big challenge for me and it probably the hardest thing to do yourself. I started out with bare boxes, later using dymo tape, ink stamps, toner transfers and finally etching. I have never liked waterslide decals, especially the way it looks after a bit of wear and tear (even with several layers of clearcoat). I know some people use epoxy to cover the enclosures to create good protection and a shiny look, but that is too time consuming and messy for me. Etching is great, because it will never wear off, but that is also very time consuming and the result is kinda hit and miss for me (I guess I need more practice). It also involves chemicals that can stain you favourite clothes...

For my Arcadiator builds I outsourced the faceplates (which were silk screened), but the fiberglass material used was not very scratch resistant and the quality of the silk screen was poor. I probably had to throw away about half of them...

All this considered, and since i'm not longer building pedal for myself only, I decided to buy a laser - The Emblaser by Darkly Labs is a cheapest laser avaliable on the market (around $1000 AUD + shipping and import taxes and about $100 more in software if you will be using raster based graphics) and was first made possible through kickstarter. The laser comes in parts and you have to assemble it yourself. Many of the parts are 3d-printed and you can see where Darkly Labs had cut corners to be able to offer a laser at this price.

​Unfortunatley my laser came with several bad parts with misdrilled holes, which led to days of frustration because of alignment issues. I contacted Darkly labs and they sent me new parts that solved my problems. Next up was actually getting artwork done with the laser. It's was a very steep learning curve, but luckely my friend Jimmie at Reaper Pedals made me a very helpful instructional video. Thanks!

Making faceplates for Into the Unknown

Jimmie's instructional video (in swedish)

For the faceplates i'm using a two layer plastic material called laserply. The actual engraving time is about two hours for engraving and 12 minutes for cutting. The engraving leaves a horrible smell of burnt plastic, so I will probably build some kind of box with air conditioning that goes outside.

VERDICT
Good things: Good results, cheap (for a laser), small footprint
Bad things: Poor quality control, weak laser, steep learning curve, limited use of colours

I wouldn't recommend it for the average hobbyist, but it's a decent alternative for a small company, if you have the patience.

Update 2015.12.04
Pedal and PCB released. Info updated. :)

Here's a really fun and versatile circuit, avaliable both as a complete pedal and a DIY project.  Into the Unknown Guitar Synthesizer Deluxe - this is basically a expanded version of the 0415 guitar synth, but with alot more controls and a few new features. It's a pretty big project with 8 pots and 3 switches, but with a low component count.

It can do brutal fuzz, theremin sounds, synthy octaves down and up, flanger'ish modulation, drone'ish noise and oscillation and more...

​Here's a demo video (complete with cheesy intro)

0:00 - Intro
0:27 - Fuzz
0:43 - Fuzz with one octave down
1:00 - Fuzz with two octaves down
1:11 - Fuzz with one octave up
1:23 - Fuzz with two octaves up
1:34 - Both octave down and up
2:02 - Fuzz Flanger
2:41 - Various modulation settings
5:21 - Theremin sounds!
​6:13 - Self oscillation / drone noise

1. Theremin sounds + one or two octaves down

2. Fuzz Flanger with varying strenght and speed

3. Brutal fuzz double tracked with programmed drums and bass
With alittle flanger effect in the "intro"

4. Single note "chords" with a ringmod'ish setting + octave down
Only works on certain notes, depending on the setting

5. Self oscillation (by turning down the gate pot) with filter sweeps
Reacts to the guitar controls and LFO. Perfect for drone'ish noise

6. Octaves up+down (same as 0415) + squarewave modulation
​The warp pot controls the character of the modulation

7. Fuzz + octaves down and up and trianglewave modulation

There is no EQ post processing on the guitar in the sound examples, only a touch of reverb and a limiter on the master.