Emerald Ring fail

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,

just built Emerald Ring and bench tested it with jacks directly wired, but all it produces is a horrible noise with a lot of hum

Ive resoldered all joints and checked all components, I also ran a big Muff before it and can sort of hear the octave thingy working but ugly!, can these units operate on there own?

Thanks in advance

Stu

[Barry]

I would re-flow this joint first.

 

If you are satisfied that your build has then got 100% good solder joints a battery test would be a great way to rule out many potential issues such as this handy tool below since a battery will not produce any noise of its own:

 

 

Finally this will work on its own however it is meant to be used with some kind of Fuzz or Distortion which will help bring out the Hendrix style octaves which are more prominent using the neck pickup around the 5th to 12th fret. My demo shows the kind of Octave tones you should expect from this circuit. Also perfectly matched capacitors are very important as well.

If all of the that fails then tell us what transistors you are using and give us voltages on the 3 transistors.

[Billy]

Barry beat me to it

Anyway

All components look to be the correct value and orientation

The only other thing I’d mention as a quick check is make sure you have the 3906 PNP transistor in Q2

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys

Yes Billy 2N3906 in Q2

Q1 2N5088 E=2.4V B=2.9V C=7.1V

Q2 2N3906 E=7.8 B=7.1V C=6.3V

Q3 2N5088 E=6.1V B=6.8V C=<span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>14.1V</span> What the????? So is this oscillating?

I did what you said Barry and connected a battery instead of and old wall wart I was using and the voltage came down to 9.5 v same as battery!!!

I haven’t tested it yet with guitar but do you think dirty power supply voltage?

You guys rock!

Regards

Stu

 

[Cybercow]

IMO, a ring modulator is one of the nastiest sounding effects there is. By itself, it sounds, to my ears, horrible and completely musically unsatisfying. But that is what they do. Barry points out how best to use one.

This YouTube link describes and demonstrates a most fundamental explanation of what Ring Modulation is. And while the demo uses only a single sine wave (as input) to demonstrate ‘ring modulation’, it conveys the basic principle of ring modulation.

In this YouTube link, Barry demonstrates the Emerald Ring and a Sriracha Fuzz. And as you can hear, together with most any good fuzz circuit, the Emerald Ring can enhance the sonic ‘flavor’ & ‘texture’ of a fuzz pedal.

[Author]

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