Manny Silverstein Throb Bass Effect Design

The Throb (working name) is a combination of a tremolo and distortion effect for bass (and guitar). The circuit works with the use of a 555 timer sending signal to the gates of a couple of JFETS to adjust the audio signal flowing through the design. The circuit runs on two 9V batteries.

Schematic:

Theory of operation: The 555 timer is setup in a configuration to output a square wave ranging from 0V to +8V. The diodes fix the duty cycle of the square wave to 50%. The 50k potentiometers there are one dual-ganged pot that controls the frequency of the square wave the timer puts out, and effectively the rate of the tremolo effect. Op-amp U1 is used to invert the signal from the timer, because for the JFETS to properly work as voltage controlled resistors I want them to see a range of 0V to -8V for their gate voltages. Following U1 is a simple low pass filter to smooth the timer waveform. A pure square wave results in audible pops between cycles in the output. This smoothing filter resolves that issue. Op-amp U2 is a simple variable inverting amplifier. Adjusting the gain affects how distorted the output signal will get, as well as allowing the user to adjust for different input levels (a passive guitar VS an active bass for instance). Op-amp U3 is the real heart of the design. When JFET Q1 has a gate voltage close to -8V, it acts as a resistor with a very high resistance when compared to the 2.2k resistor also in U3s feedback path. In this scenario the signal does not go through the diodes and the op-amp acts as another simple inverting amp with very little distortion. When Q1s gate voltage is closer to 0V, it acts as a resistor with a small resistance when compared to the 2.2k resistor, and the signal is run through the diode and clipped, causing very audible distortion. With this being another inverting amp, the phase of the original signal is restored. One issue with this configuration is that when Q1 is at a high resistance, this op-amp will have a gain of x2.2 for the clean signal, while when Q1 is at a low resistance, the level will be clipped at around 600mV due to the diodes. This is a partially favorable result, as I want the effect to sound less like a standard tremolo where the volume is modulated, but more so a modulation between clean and distorted signals. Naturally a distorted waveform at equivalent voltage level sounds louder than a clean one, so having the clean signal boosted beyond the distorted will help accomplish the desired effect. However, a gain of over 2x over the distorted signal is too high. A solution I thought of was to use another JFET as a variable voltage divider, feeding it the same signal as Q1. Q2 accomplishes this. With a gate voltage of close to -8V Q2 acts a resistor with very high resistance, making the parallel combination with the 680 resistor look like close to just 680, forming a voltage divider with the 220 resistor. When Q2 has a gate voltage of closer to 0V, it has a small resistance and the voltage division here is minimal. The final stage is a tone control. The 50K potentiometer adjusts the boosting/cutting of high frequencies. As this stage is a passive design, its never actually boosting high end, but rather cutting low end in a way that strongly resembles the shape of a high shelving filter, and has a very similar audible result.

As of the writing of this report I have built this circuit almost exactly as shown on perf-board. A few small things not shown in the schematic: an LED to ground right after the smoothing filter of the timing circuit to visibly show the rate, bypass capacitors on the power lines for op-amps U2 and U3, and additional 22K resistors in series with the 50K potentiometers in the timing circuit, there to give a more desirable range of timing frequencies.