Voicing Control Mod

[rarebitusa]

Well I'm guessing a few folks may have thought, now wouldn't it be cool to have chan voicings foot switchable? On some dual channel Mesas like the Stiletto I find the desire to switch often between say Tite Clean and Crunch on Ch 1 and Tite Gain and Fluid Drive on Ch 2. Especially live this comes in handy.

So using these little relay boards from Muzique I was able to test out a mod that allows this in a fairly simple fashion. Just routing a few of the mini-toggle wires to the relay is all that's required. Found a few easy points to grab the 12v power and gnd to power the relay board. Since I don't use the Solo function the plan is to re-purpose that jack for the relay control. Here's some shots of the successful bench test.

The mini toggle selects between one voicing and the relay control for the remaining two. The relay board also has an LED indicator for state.

relay pcb

A hand drawn schem is below.

One drawback is you're kinda locked into having a footswitch to get to the 3rd voicing. There's plenty of room to mount the little 1x1 PCB which can be done with double sided 3M foam. The mod is easily reversible. I'll get to a full implementation in a bit.

 

[domct203]

This is the part of guitar playing I really enjoy. My soldering station is alway on my bench. Guess I should have gone the tech route LOL.

Dom

 

[rarebitusa]

This is the part of guitar playing I really enjoy. My soldering station is alway on my bench. Guess I should have gone the tech route LOL.

Dom

It's never too late!!! At one point was thinking of building a tube amp kit to learn on, but I picked up the Stiletto for far cheaper then one of the good Plexi kits, so I've used this amp to experiment with. But I've fallen in love with this beast. I've inflicted damage on it recently so I'm learning more and more by intended and non-intended actions.

 

[domct203]

I think I have built 90% of the pedal kits from B.Y.O.C., haven’t bought an assembled cable in decades, guitar, TRS, MIDI, XLR etc.

I had been thinking about an amp kit, was looking at the Marshall 18W TMB kit but might just go with a Champ.

Dom

 

[rarebitusa]

I think I have built 90% of the pedal kits from B.Y.O.C., haven’t bought an assembled cable in decades, guitar, TRS, MIDI, XLR etc.

What's your fav DIY pedal to date??

 

[domct203]

What's your fav DIY pedal to date??

I really like the old BYOC TS808, and the analog chorus. Their parametric EQ is a solid pedal too.

Dom

 

[bandit2013]

@rarebitusa,
When you get the oops fixed, I was going to ask if the switching triggered the strobe mute circuit. Based on the design, it looked like it would do such but was curious if that actually happened.

 

[rarebitusa]

I was going to ask if the switching triggered the strobe mute circuit.

hmmm, it seemed ok with the benchtest didn't notice anything unexpected but TBH more rigorous testing is in order, once the smoke clears

 

[bandit2013]

I look forward to learning how things turn out.

I sort of wish that Mesa had planned for mode switching with their amps in general. Even with the more modern midi control, no way to change modes on the channel except for the toggle switch. I can see the problem with that, more I/O required, more relays and other stuff to take up board real estate. I could only imagine how many buttons on the footswitch if they did that.

Looking at the last page in the schematic, it appears the FX loop is controlled by a single switch. You could make that switchable too I assume. If you could find a three button box, you could do that. No relay required for the FX loop as it is just a switch that pulls in the relays for that circuit.

 

[tbonesullivan]

I sort of wish that Mesa had planned for mode switching with their amps in general. Even with the more modern midi control, no way to change modes on the channel except for the toggle switch. I can see the problem with that, more I/O required, more relays and other stuff to take up board real estate. I could only imagine how many buttons on the footswitch if they did that.

To quote the hunt for Red October "Sure you could, but why would you want to?". I can only think of amps like the Electra Dyne and Royal atlantic, which were specifically designed to "work" well switching modes, and even with that they have some type of compensation.

Without any ability to store and recall settings for the different modes, being able to switch the modes on the fly would be of highly questionable usefulness, unless they were designed to have volume parity when the modes were switched, which I can say on a Mark V they are most certainly NOT, especially on the higher gain channels. I really feel like people don't understand the concept of how the amplifiers were designed when they want to switch back and forth between modes. The settings I use on the different modes on my Mark V are vastly different, even on the same channel. Being able to switch the mode from a footswitch would result in sub-optimal tone for whatever mode you switch to.

Why was the JP-2C made with TWO graphic EQS? Because the graphic EQ in many ways is vital in dialing in a high gain sound, and with two high gain channels, you need two graphic EQs, and honestly I find the ability to footswitch the EQ to also be of somewhat limited use. The settings I use on a channel with the EQ and without are totally different, even on my trusty DC-5. The same is true with the mode switches.

As a more extreme example, think of a Mesa Tremoverb, with Clean and Vintage High Gain on one channel, and Blues and Modern High Gain on the other. I can't think of many situations where the settings I use for one of those modes would work great for the other.

 

[bandit2013]

Agreed. Just a thought on the subject.

 

[rarebitusa]

being able to switch the modes on the fly would be of highly questionable usefulness, unless they were designed to have volume parity when the modes were switched,

Yea this is essentially true, indeed more often then not one would have settings tailored for the voicing, for sure the V falls into that bin. For example Edge vs Crunch, way different settings.

However FWIW in the case of the Stiletto I actually have a good compromise setting that works live between Tite Clean and Crunch, volume is compensated within patch settings that are switched along with the voicing. With Chan 2 there is less of a settings compromise between Tite Gain and Fluid Drive which is used mostly for single note work anyway.

However with the Badlander a compromise setting between Clean and Crunch is proving elusive.

 

[tbonesullivan]

Yea this is essentially true, indeed more often then not one would have settings tailored for the voicing, for sure the V falls into that bin. For example Edge vs Crunch, way different settings.

However FWIW in the case of the Stiletto I actually have a good compromise setting that works live between Tite Clean and Crunch, volume is compensated within patch settings that are switched along with the voicing. With Chan 2 there is less of a settings compromise between Tite Gain and Fluid Drive which is used mostly for single note work anyway.

However with the Badlander a compromise setting between Clean and Crunch is proving elusive.

Yeah, and especially if the gain control scales different between modes, it'll continue to be. It would need to be redesigned somehow, maybe by having a relay to control the electronics around the master for that channel. But that opens up a whole new can of worms.