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It's A Mystery: Bad Compander?

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  • It's A Mystery: Bad Compander?

    Another installment from my "not-yet-hopeless" pile of broken effects:

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    UNIT: DOD 670 Flanger Pedal (circa 1980)
    UNIT TOPOLOGY: Uses SAD512 for delay generation, NE571 for compander, LM354 for quad op-amp, JRC4558 for signal/mixing, CD4001 for clock buffer. 4 knobs: speed/depth/manual/regeneration. +15v/0v powered. Indicator flashes to speed of flange. Big orange box.
    PROBLEM: In effect mode, flange works, but volume is increased GREATLY, to the point of signal breakup.
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    I bought this off Ebay with the old "only dry signal in effect mode". I thought it had an SAD1024 in it, so i thought, sweet i can fix that. But it had an SAD512. SHIT! Anyway, after probing, i saw no clock signal to the SAD512. Turns out the CD4001 was bad and the SAD512 was good. Hoo-rah!! So i had really sweet flanging, much akin to a Ross Flanger. But, when engaged, the volume increase was so much greater than the bypassed signal. And if i played hard, the signal began to distort.

    I've read all i can about flangers, and it seems to me that there is something screwy with the expander stage. Does anyone have any insight to this? I plan on making an order to small bear and i plan on including a new NE571 with that order. But could i be off track?

  • #2
    It's likely that something is screwy, and it's a reasonable guess that it's part of the compander.

    I would first replace all of the electrolytic caps. See my polemic on resuscitating old effects at GEO (http://www.geofex.com) in the guitar effects debugging page.
    Amazing!! Who would ever have guessed that someone who villified the evil rich people would begin happily accepting their millions in speaking fees!

    Oh, wait! That sounds familiar, somehow.

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