Saturday 6 April 2013

Smallsound/Bigsound Sparkle Motion

A request. Info from the manufacturer (one of the good guys who you should support if you have a chance):

the sparkle motion is our take on an iconic treble boost – the rangemaster.
the added controls and circuit modifications keep the original tones of the rangemaster and expand on them. transforming the sparkle motion from a basic treble booster to a mid range boost, dark bass boost, gritty mis-biased overdrive and more! the FIRST (probably) rangemaster-alike that is bass-friendly… wow!

this is NOT an “authentic” rangemaster clone; in fact, it is an ANTI-treble boost. it does not include any secret mojo or anything like that, save for the NPN germanium transistor (which means you can use this RM clone with your standard negative tip power supply).

controls include:
input attenuation, EQ, bias, volume
treble/bass toggle switch, bypass footswitch
note: the “original” bias point of around 7-7.2V has been changed to around 6.5V, because it sounds better there (at least to our ears).





9 comments:

  1. cool. i'll just have to build this one. i'd love to see & build their team awesome fuzz machine too, but haven't been ale to locate a schematic for it.

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  2. You can find one here:

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NeDMb3tj-cU/TdaUcD3T9MI/AAAAAAAAAoo/hPZ41XtbJMk/s1600/sparklemotion.png

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  3. I already saw that one. I was referring to the schemo for the TAFM.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. I just built and tested it. it works exactly like the videos on youtube so you can VERIFY IT. IMO, it's a nice sounding pedal, especially considering how simple it is.

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  6. I have a PNP rangemaster transistor I'd like to use in this project. Does anybody know what changes would have to be made to the above layout to make it work?

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    1. You'll need to reverse the electrolytics and feed it with -9V instead of +9V.
      +m

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  7. It sounds great, thank you. I used a GT404B and these mods (33k to 22k and 25k pot)to achieve the bias voltage easier:

    http://smallsoundbigsound.blogspot.com/2011/05/sparkle-motion-schematic-and-updates.html

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