[sdiy] non-gain distortions

[mike ruberto]

I remember doing some experiments when I was younger. I was taking
apart old transistor stereos and running signals into the different
circuit boards while varying the supply voltage to them. I remember
getting some interesting results.

I had this old rhythm box which had a torn speaker. Made great
distorted bass noises.

The reactor idea sound kinda neat. That might be a fun little project...

Mike

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Mike <profpep at hotmail.com> wrote:
> From: "mike ruberto"
>
>
>  > besides the usual ring/amplitude modulation, bit reduction and
>  > waveshaping circuits, what are some other neat tricks for creating
>  > distortion that don't involve high gain?
>  >
>  Non - linear circuits in general like:
>  diode shapers/function generators - think lateral, her are some wierd and
>  wonderful diodes out here. I once got a good result with an old automotive
>  copper-oxide or selenium rectifier
>  deliberately mis-biased transistors/FET's
>  op amps with non linear feedback.
>
>  You can do some neat tricks with a poor mans take on a saturable reactor -
>  putting the signal through one winding of an audio transformer, and putting
>  a variable DC bias through the other.
>
>  A bulb 'baretter' analogue - like a small power amp feeding the signal
>  trough a 'loaded' small low current filament lamp. Pick the signal up across
>  the load, or use a small stranformer as the load and get jthe signal from
>  the secondary.
>
>  Signal through a not very linear optocoupler.
>
>  Digital dstort, using and A->D feeding the address lines of a RAM or ROM,
>  output data feeding a D->A, The RAM/ROM content determine the output, if
>  address contains it's own value, output is linear, if you divide the data
>  into bands, some variants are called Bitcrushing.
>
>  Hope this helps, for a start - do you want exotic, or cheap and simple?
>
>  Mike
>
>
>
>