Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Would there be any interest someone with better knowledge of the schematics to do a run through of the chorus (or other bbd effect) and explaining what happens to the signal as it passes through, what all the different caps and resistors do etc, to help out us paint by numbers people.

Thanks,
Ben

Here's a real short and simple explanation -

The signal enters through an input buffer where it is split into a straight through, or dry path, and a delayed, or wet path.

The dry path passes straight across to an output mixer, while the delayed path passes through a BBD that introduces the actual delay by sampling the signal and stepping each sample through a series of capacitors, like buckets of water being moved along a line of people. Changing the rate the charge is exchanged between the capacitors changes the delay time.

When the delayed 'wet' signal is mixed back with the dry signal, because the positive and negative peaks of the two versions are offset by the delay they either add together or subtract. The effect of this is like passing the signal through a large number of harmonically related notch filters. If the delay time were fixed this would not be that noticeable but the delay is varied by a low frequency oscillator gradually changing the stepping frequency of the delay, producing the characteristic movement of these effects.

Feeding back some of the delayed signal into the input of the delay increases the complexity and resonance of the sound.

With very short delays you get flanging and as the delay gets longer you get chorus.

Phasing is a slightly different effect where the wet signal is not a time delayed version of the original but a phase shifted version.