The Honey Bee Challenge

[Donner]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1112

here you go if you want to see how one goes ......

[briggs]

ahh, I see. Seems fun.

Just finished up this Hummingbird De'Luxe 10 minutes ago. Sorry for the awful pictures, that's a Sony Ericsson 810i for ya!

And this is a Hummingbird I finished a few weeks ago. It's had a few tweaks and now it's gone to it's new owner

Anyhow - I must say thank you to Bjorn for this one. The help and ideas he gave me really inspired me to create something a little different to the standard options out there. As you can see from the guts we have a discrete slew rate limited op amp (2 FETs & 1 Ge Tranny make up the opamp) running into another discrete stage, all with assorted feedback loops to control various gains and overtones. The odd looking capacitors are all Russian ex-military stock.

The overdrive that it produces is very interesting, low to medium gain, it has a very soft top end and a raunchy (I like that word!) mid section, when you really strum hard you can feel the top end fade out and then slide back into the mix as the note sustains and decays. With the feedback loops producing an enhanced roll off effect when you dig in the sustain seems to go on and on, I love the way this thing slips into endless feedback with a Les Paul. The "Nectar" knob controls bass response, going from typical Tube Screamer roll off to a great rumble - the bass control is actually inspired by PaulC's Timmy. I certainly wouldn't term it a transparent overdrive, but that was certainly not what I was aiming for at all!

[Donner]

Cool Briggs ! IS the Hummingbird a Honey Bee homage or inspired by sort of thing ??

[soulsonic]

I think it's inspired mostly by the "concept" and from conversations he's had with Björn.

I love the fancy components, I've been collecting fun parts like that too.

[briggs]

It is inspired by the Honeybee, with a few of my own twists and turns in there too. I've placed a lot of ideas presented to me by Bjorn into the circuit (If you're reading this Bjorn - I need to email you back, just got overloaded with work at the moment!). Things such as using feedback loops to control the gains of certain frequencies thus producing certain overtones and harmonics. Basically the circuit is a discrete op amp comprised of 2 FETs and a Ge transistor, this is configured to limit the slew rate (Softens treble response) using a couple of different techniques. This stage then runs directly into a low gain mosfet stage for a little of that smooooooth distortion they produce. Overall the tone it produces can only be classed as a low/medium overdrive (The feedback loops lower gain considerably), with humbuckers it'll produce a fair level of drive, single coils produce less drive as expected. It's all lovely, soft and smooth. By using the compression knob on the Hummingbird De'Luxe you can dial in various levels of dynamic response. I'm stacking it now with a Timmy circuit and a LGW in front of it, got a wide range of possibilities going on.

The three knobs on the smaller Hummingbird are Drive, Nectar, Level and the five knobs on the Hummingbird De'Luxe are Drive, Nectar, Compression, Shimmer, Level. The strange caps in there are a mix of paper in oil and silvered mica, all Russian ex-military stuff - pure mojo! I want to collect some more but they aren't to easy to get hold of over here in blighty

[Donner]

I love the name and its an 'HB' lettered one as well...
is the shimmer control treble or harmonics maybe ?
Yes Bjorn is wonderful at giving useful clues without making it too easy and thereby leading you to something of your own

[briggs]

The name is David Attenborough (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough) inspired. There's a series on TV over hear at the moment called "Yellowstone", great documentary about the park and it had a section about Hummingbirds, I love the little creatures! And, as you say, it has HB in there too as a wink back.

As it is set up at the moment it is a treble control and it is controlling harmonics all in one. It is pretty interactive with compression and drive (The more shimmer is turned down the less effect compression has, if drive is low both compression and shimmer have a smaller effect). It's wired to control one of the feedback loops directly so it has an effect on slew rate too. Nice control that changes all sorts of factors within the circuit. It allows you to go from dark and rumbling to bright and errrr "shimmery"?

As with many of the controls I end up placing on my pedals the effect can be pretty subtle. I like this as it is often the slightest of changes that get me THE tone I'm looking for.

[Donner]

Hmmm that sounds like something I would really dig !! Definitly Tourbox worthy if you are so inclined,,, I would probably get one if our making a few for sale....

[briggs]

I've not really thought about building some up to sell. I have got an impending summer of 4 months with no work lined up as of yet (and with things as they are the chance of getting work is looking slim! Unless I go back to pulling pints, and I promised myself I wouldn't!) so I could probably fit quite a few builds in if a few guys wanted them (handwiring these things point to point takes longer than I care to think!). I dunno maybe a small run. Not sure how I'd sell 'em, never really done it before apart from the old ebay stuff. Anyhow, I'm building at least one up to send to Bjorn as a cheers for all the help he's offered, so at least he will have one

Well, first things first though, if no one likes the pedals it would be pointless anyway! Tourbox sounds fun & interesting, if people are up for it I have 3 designs I would like to place "in the hat" - The Hummingbird De'Luxe, The Hummingbird Standard and the Silver Orchid (Another overdrive/booster - see the Fred Briggs Overdrive on my blog for a basic overview, this one has more gain and more oooomph, greater headroom too and is even more dynamic, I enjoy it as much as the Hummingird circuit yet it produces a much different tone, much more raw rock 'n roll ) I've never really got too much feedback on my circuits from guitarists outside of my groupies here, and most of them aren't tone junkies, they just like it loud, so their input is limited to say the least!

[Donner]

yeah we could do a Tourbox for you both for exposure and feedback, and you can sell them out of the Buy/Sell section if you like (its not just for BJF stuff)