Conference napalm::commusic_v1

387.0. "Scope This Out - Phaser on Tuner Scope" by CANYON::MOELLER (I auto plan better) Thu Jun 12 1986 12:18

    Last night I unpacked my new, used Marantz tuner. I recently dumped
    an integrated tuner/amp in favor of a modular setup. (There's that
    word again.) 
    
    The tuner has a 1 1/2" scope which is meant primarily to determine
    station signal strength and stereo separation. While reading thru
    the instructions, I noticed a pair of 'scope ext' line inputs on
    the back. 'Gee!' I said. Did I mention that I'm from the Midwest?
    
    Weell, I quickly hooked up my increedibly obsolete Crumar Orchestrator
    to my mixer, then plugged the mixer outputs into 'scope ext'. I
    chose a nice brass patch, and put a weight on one note.
    It looked like this:
    
                 |  /           And I thought, oh, yeah, MONO!
                 | /            .. not much happening in Tucson
                 |/             on Wednesday night. My fevered
          -------+------        eyes lit upon my incredibly
                /|              obsolete Boss Stereo Chorus.
               / |              Faster than you can say 'saguaro'
              /  |              I had it hooked up, the two outputs
                                panned hard left and right.

    Well. A brave new world. For the first time I actually saw what
    a stereo phaser does to a signal. It literally turns it inside
    out in 3 dimensions. Now the Boss Chorus only has a speed control. 
    My eyes lit on another piece of incredibly obsolete equipment, an 
    Ibanez Multieffects unit. Which (u guessed it) contains another stereo
    phaser. I unplugged the Boss and hooked up the Ibanez. This one
    has a speed and depth control. this one's phase had a complete 
    different format, plus I could start with little or no phase and
    then bring in the effect, and see exactly what it was doing with
    the waveform.
    
    Having worn that out, my eyes lit again on the Boss Chorus. Faster
    than you can say 'burrito' I had dragged out a mic-level 'Y cord'
    ... oh, by the way, did I ever tell you all the GREAT stuff you
    can do with a Y cord? and split the signal into the two stereo
    choruses, outputs into the mixer. Now I could see how each chorus'
    individual phasebend influenced the other. I also experimented with
    two notes on the synth, fifths/thirds/minor 6ths. 
    
    GREAT FUN ! Thanks for your kind attention.
    
    dontwo
    

    Yeah, I used to this on my old Heathkit 5" scope.  Always wanted
    to do it on a really big tube, in color (e.g., averaged amplitude
    of x and y signals controls hue, x frequency controls saturation,
    y frequency controls brightness, or some such arrangement...)
    Sold the Heathkit, don't know enough about TVs to rebuild one this
    way, the Amiga's not fast enough to draw audio waveforms in realtime,
    oh well...
    
    Old/obsolete technology?  Boss Chorus?  Ibanez Multieffects?  These
    were state of the art two years ago!  Arghhhh...
    
    len.
    

    Isn't everyone who's anyone from the Midwest?  ;-}
    
    A Lima (Ohio) being (lima-bean for you illiterates) ...

8^)

All of this reminds me of an experiment I tried back around 1970.  I took
a speaker and covered the cone with metalized mylar.  I then connected the
speaker to my amp's output and bounced a LASER beam off of the mylar.  The
modulated beam was then reflected off a small, oscillating mirror. The result? 
A wall-to-wall oscilloscope!  It was most spectacular, although the waveforms 
were not always in sync.

Oh yes.  The small mirror was made to oscillate by attaching it to an electric
toothbrush motor. 
    
P.S.  I am not from the Midwest.
    
John M.        

John M. 

    Good grief, a '60s flashback.  When I was an undergraduate light
    shows were all the rage and folks would do all those sorts of things,
    usually in a room "illuminated" by UV lamps, and accompanied by
    the ingestion of various substances.
    
    I'm not from the Midwest either.
    
    len.
    

    I was born in Chicago, grew up in Detroit, and visited Ft. Kearney,
    Nb. once. I usually sign my name once, but I'll try anything to
    get a hottub gratis.
    
    karl m.
    
    karl m.

    I tried to make my own Leslie once.  I mounted a 3" speaker in a
    peice of wood.  Over it I mounted a coffee can which had holes cut
    in the sides of it.  I rotated the coffee can with a variable speed
    motor from an electric train.  I put a microphone in front of the
    can as I played music through the speaker.  The can rotating made
    such a sqeaking and vibrating noise that you couldn't even hear
    the music.  So I scratched the speaker and put a light in back
    shining through the can as it rotated.  The result.....a strobe
    light in any color you wanted.
    
    I was born in New Jersey (not the midwestern part) but I am from
    Maine.
    
    Mike