LIMBO II

[univalve]

Ok, i think i will be down for this!

[TheGuacamoleXplosion]

Hi Jonny,

I've been playing around with the In Limbo I for some days now and I love it. Still, the Limbo II looks very tempting ... 9V power, 100% wet mix, special chorus/vibrato mode all sounds great. Also, the In Limbo I works great with my guitar, but not with my Novation Bass Station II synth, so the gain control might come in handy to handle the line level.

So, here's some questions and suggestions for the LIMBO II.

Questions:
1. Do I understand right that you ditched the sine and sawtooth waveforms in favour of triangle? Not a bad decision IMHO, though I would have prefered sine AND triangle :-)
2. Same for subdivisions: Looks like 8th/25% was sacrificed in favour of 8th triplets/33%. True? Good to have triplets. I would however prefer 4th triplets (66%).
3. You wrote "Longer delay time 900ms vs 550ms"; my In Limbo I does about 900 ms already, though it starts sounding very Lo-Fi at those long delay time settings, see my demo below at 8:23. So, what's the difference then?
4. Are the chips still the same (4 Panasonic MN 3008)?

Suggestions:
1. Expression Pedal
=> It would be great to be able to control the delay level via expression pedal (from the currently available options – Feedback, Delay Time, Mod Speed, Mod Depth – I could do without the Depth)
=> Also, controlling the gain via expression pedal could be fun. It could give you the effect of trails bypass: You play a phrase and bring in the delay with the expression pedal controlling the gain; than you go back to zero gain, and the delay keeps on trailing, but the guitar signal is no longer fed into the delay. Great to highligt certain notes. Also great for dub reggae.
=> What I would love most would be a Strymon/Line6 M5 kind of expression control, where you can use the expression pedal to blend between two completely different settings of various knobs. Like, heel is a single repeat without modulation and with a low delay level, toe is Feedback near oscillation plus some modulation plus higher delay level. No idea how your digital controlled analog circuit works technically, but if this would be possible, it would be great. Could also be used to have a Strymon style favourite switch (external footswitch hooked up to the Exp pedal input that gives you 2 presets).

2. Delay time control
=> In case of subdivisions other than 4th, I would much prefer the blinking light to show the tapped tempo (and not the tempo of the current subdivisions); this would make it easier to check, without playing, if the delay is still in time with the drummer.
=> It would be REALLY great to have LEDs indicating the currently selected subdivision, like on the EHX Deluxe Memory Boy and the DMMTT; so that I always can see: Okay, when will I tap quarters now, I will get 8th triplets (or whatever). Could be a RGB LED with different colours per subdivision, or one LED per subdivision, whatever is easiest to implement.
=> Also, I would suggest "soft takeover" for the delay time knob: When the current delay time was set by tapping, turning the delay time knob should do nothing until the position is reached that equals the current delay time; so you can do soft manual delay time tweaking starting from a previously tapped tempo (maybe it's easier to understand what I mean if you watch 7:55 to 8:20 of my demo)
=> I guess on the Limbo II, you still select subdivisions by holding the tap tempo footswitch and turning the delay time knob, right? I would suggest to do it the other way around: Turning the knob selects subdivision. Turning the knob while holding the tap tempo footswitch tweaks the delay time. This way, you could easier switch between, say, 4th and dotted 8th on the fly, like on stage between two songs; and manually tweaking the delay time is something that I normally only use for "delay time glide / UFO" sound effects, mostly combined with feedback near self-oscillation; so it would make sense to combine it with holding the tap tempo knob (that cranks the feedback). Others may prefer the way it currently works; so the ideal solution might be to have a switchable delay time knob behaviour (like, hold tap tempo and turn knob CW or CCW on power up to select behaviour).


Here's the demo:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnHYa7oMIeA[/youtube]

Best wishes
Sascha

[mysteriousj]

Questions:
1. Do I understand right that you ditched the sine and sawtooth waveforms in favour of triangle? Not a bad decision IMHO, though I would have prefered sine AND triangle :-)

Yeah it's just a case of not having enough room to add another pot. I can look at doing a little setup procedure to switch out the waveshapes between square/sine/triangle/sawtooth. To be honest though it can be pretty hard to hear the difference between sine/triangle modulation.

2. Same for subdivisions: Looks like 8th/25% was sacrificed in favour of 8th triplets/33%. True? Good to have triplets. I would however prefer 4th triplets (66%).

There was a printing error on the limbo mk1, the subdivisions are actually the same(eighth was just missing a 3 after it ). I may look at doing some kind of setup thing again so you can program in a few different subdivisions settings.

3. You wrote "Longer delay time 900ms vs 550ms"; my In Limbo I does about 900 ms already, though it starts sounding very Lo-Fi at those long delay time settings, see my demo below at 8:23. So, what's the difference then?

On the mk1 I let the delay time go to about 900ms on the knob and 1500ms via tap tempo, I just love the lofi sound of it. The actual delay time without clock noise etc is 550ms for mk1. Read below for more deets.

4. Are the chips still the same (4 Panasonic MN 3008)?

Nope, it uses 3 x MN3205/V3205 and 1x MN3207/V3207(for chorus/vibrato), it will just depend what I have in stock whether it's MN or the coolaudio.
So in delay mode there's now 1k + 12k = 13312 stages. (in delay mode all the delay chips are in series)
For the mk1 there with MN3008s = 8k = 8192 stages.
So 13312/8192 = 1.625*550ms ~ 900ms

Thanks for all your other suggestions. Some of them are pretty easy to implement. The soft point should be pretty easy to implement and yeah.. I did think about having the subdivision change as the default.. it's always tricky though because I know there's a lot of people who hate tap tempo.

Yeah controlling the effect depth over expression/CV would be great. It's just a matter of cost really. I wanted to keep things under $300USD and to do add the depth I'd need to change the microcontroller cause I've run out of IOs, then there's the cost of the VCA circuitry and the increase in cost in terms of my build time. It's something I'd love to add but not just yet.

[Dandolin]

So, Limbo I is already unutterably awesome. Limbo II takes it in some exciting new directions.

I know there have been a lot of questions asked and answered, but I would love to know whether there is any real possibility of making the implications of this statement real with respect to Limbo II:

"It would be really easy to make a Trigger In to Ext Tap converter so you could use it with a lot more delays... hmmm..." (from the delays w/ trigger in thread: http://ilovefuzz.com/viewtopic.php?f=149&t=47070&hilit=triggered&start=15)

[Dandolin]

Hi Jonny,

Here's the demo:

Best wishes
Sascha

Dude, awesome.

[mysteriousj]

Yeah you got me now pictures of cute bunnies will make me do anything. In less than two weeks I finish exams!!

[Dandolin]

Yeah you got me now pictures of cute bunnies will make me do anything. In less than two weeks I finish exams!!

Ultimate success on exams!

[Boba7]

Hi! Just suscribed here to say this delay looks really amazing. The demo of the 1st version above sounds great, and with the new different options, it really will be crazy good! Very possibly the best delay I can think of. Currently I have a Cusack Tap-a-delay that I love, but I'd love to add a Limbo II...
Good luck with your exams!!

[mysteriousj]

Aww thanks. Five more days to go and then I'm freeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

[SecretMachine]

Oooooh. this sounds interesting.

[univalve]

Was there any info why the brand name is switched?

[mysteriousj]

Was there any info why the brand name is switched?

The old name was really just a place holder until I thought of something better.

I didn't really think of something better but decided to change it anyway.

[TheGuacamoleXplosion]

Hi Jonny,

Here's the demo:

Best wishes
Sascha

Dude, awesome.

Thanks :-)

[Tristan]

Great vid indeed!
I want one of these so bad.
No quarter triplets right? (that's my favourite subdivision setting on the DMM550TT)
I think I'll be able to do it with the external tap in though.

[Dandolin]

The blue is moar mysteriouser, but the bicycling ghost was one of my favoritest ILFatars evaar.