ilovefuzz.com

Hey all,

I wasn't sure where the best place was, it's a bit of tech, but it's about modding.. I have emailed Infanem, and I'll hear what they've got to say but the basic gist is this:
I've got a Second Voice Deluxe which I bought new, sold, re-purchased because goddamn that suboctave is meaty... But something that keeps it from being the best pedal it can be to my mind is that (if you've never used one) the general/master bypass is linked to the fuzz circuit, and the fuzz circuit has to be engaged to either of the other two footswitches to be engaged. Those are the harmony and suboctave circuit. So for example, I can have the fuzz and suboctave on at the same time, but if I want to turn off the fuzz and keep on the suboctave, I'd have to turn the fuzz knob down manually because if I turn off that master circuit, the suboctave goes off as well.

So potentially you have three parallel circuits, but it's limited because the fuzz has to be engaged because that's the master circuit.

Is there a way to re-wire the pedal to have those three separate switches operate independently? I have no experience myself with circuits, but there is a guy here in Seoul who does great work for reasonable fees, but I don't know enough about the circuit to know if it can be re-done in this way.

Any insight would be really, really welcome.

I'm pretty sure those different octaves are part of the fuzz sound itself, as that's how Phase-locked loops work.

Inconuucl wrote:I'm pretty sure those different octaves are part of the fuzz sound itself, as that's how Phase-locked loops work.

This.

Relying on the architecture of the Schumann PLL, in analog circuits, that squarewave fuzz is essential to the octave functions. Without it, the PLL wouldn't be able to track. The PLL needs that squarewave to latch on to. In the Schumann, the initial signal is squared up (fuzz), and then fed in two directions; to the octave sections, and straight out. Yes, there is a volume control for the straight squarewave, and controls for the octaves, but at the end of the day, the octaves are always based around that initial squarewave. The better (stronger) the squarewave, the better the tracking too.

If you want pure octaves, then I suggest going to a digital platform, i.e. Digitech Whammy.

True, from the top of my head I don't know any octave fuzz pedal that also does clean octaves and is able to switch between the two.
The only way I can think of to get this kind of functionality is to get a 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre, Aguilar Octamizer, Boss OC-2, EBS OctaBass or Iron Ether Subterranea (those are the best and heaviest pure octave down pedals I came across so far) and feed them into your main fuzz / drive.

Yea, if I want actual octave down that's clean, I go vGuitar (but requires GK-2/3 pickup/hex stuff) or Eventide. There really isn't much substitute for the $$, it's processor intensive and not cheap to do right.

Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I got an email from Ken at Infanem this morning more or less confirming what you're saying. The enclosure's not big enough to add a dedicated footswitch to drop out the fuzz, but he did say a toggle could be added that would allow the whole thing to stay on while cutting out the fuzz, the advantage being that there wouldn't be an alteration in volume.

Thanks for explaining a bit about how the circuit works; I feel enlightened, if slightly disappointed that the mod probably isn't possible.

You could always re-house it. Have a bigger enclosure prepped for it, and then do your mod. Use the old enclosure as a template for the original holes, and add your new ones.

Make the fuzz knob controllable by expression pedal?

Connecting my Goatkeeper to the Second Voice Deluxe makes my guitar do crazy Brostep shit.