NPD: Passive Volume Box/Attenuator

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NippleWrestler
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NPD: Passive Volume Box/Attenuator

Post by NippleWrestler »

It's what JHS calls a Little Black Amp Box, except better designed.

I had an hour free with some leftover parts and had wondered about these pedals that seem to be making a splash. They sit in the FX loop and operate as a master volume, so where you'd have say delay -> reverb -> amp, you'd splice this between the last pedal and the FX loop in. Not an attenuator as such because they don't interface with the power amp or have any kind of loading ability, they just take the signal and either keep it as is, or send some to ground... a volume control.

However, I added a treble bleed circuit to the volume section to retain the highs you'd otherwise lose (just like in a guitar volume circuit, you lose high information as your turn the volume down) so with this Volto you keep the clarity while you keep your own sound, just at a volume your neighbours might prefer and since treble affects perceived volume you can go right down and still sound pleasant.

Since this box used to be a Ruby amp and had 2 controls and a power jack, I made the other section a passive tone control, again just like you'd find at the guitar but whereas that information is at the very start of the chain, this is at the very end. One use I have found for it is rolling off a just a smidge and it removes any hiss you might have from an overexcited gain circuit and since the cap is pretty beefy you can roll it all off and sound like you're underwater.

So, overall, this does what it should and does it better than most due to the treble bleed I added. I just wanted to see what the fuss was about and there's not much to the circuit so didn't take very long to sort out.

Image

Masking tape labels.

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Volume + Tone = Volto.

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jeremyb
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Re: NPD: Passive Volume Box/Attenuator

Post by jeremyb »

Nice! I laughed the other day at the JHS one on facebook where its just a volume pot and two jacks, bet it cost a fortune too!
Slowy wrote: That's the problem; everything rewarding is just such hard work. Regret takes much less effort.

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NippleWrestler
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Re: NPD: Passive Volume Box/Attenuator

Post by NippleWrestler »

jeremyb wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:27 pm Nice! I laughed the other day at the JHS one on facebook where its just a volume pot and two jacks, bet it cost a fortune too!
The guy bought it for $100. Used. I felt quite bad for him honestly, he wasn't to know. There's a lot of these sorta thing all over reverb and Etsy these days going for silly money. I guess if you have a non master volume amp and FX loop it might come in handy.

It was an interesting experiment though and I just wanted to see if the design could be improved upon. And it can.

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Re: NPD: Passive Volume Box/Attenuator

Post by jeremyb »

The beauty of the katana is even though you can set the output to 0.5, 50, 100 Watts, you can also dial down or boost the effects loop send and receive volume!!! Incredible.
Slowy wrote: That's the problem; everything rewarding is just such hard work. Regret takes much less effort.

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