Lovetone Meatball (Sabrotone)

[velouriafx]

Good afternoon. Has anyone built the Meatball in the Sabrotone version? I built two boards, but both have the same problem. The filter works, but the envelope does not. I used the Nocenteli scheme of the keys connection by connecting the common Bandwith pole on line C1.
If I make a jumper between terminal 1 of IC2 and 3, the envelope begins to appear, but does not work like the original.

[Travis]

Are you using LM1458? The circuit is picky about that

[SpaceCommandant]

Same thing happened to me. I read up on it on one of the forums and solved it by swapping one of the ICs. It’s been a while, can’t recall which at the moment.

[velouriafx]

I used several dual op amp, but not the 1458 because I had none. Is that the problem? I bought some 1458 now and will test to see if it makes any difference.

[Travis]

Yeah assuming it’s wired correctly it will probably fire right up once you put the LM1458 in

That’s a lot of wiring to do twice though! Bummer. This is one of my favorite pedals though, definitely make sure you include the FX loop that is the most important part. Most of the knobs are redundant but the FX loop really opens up new possibilities

[velouriafx]

I changed the IC to 1458 and still the envelope does not work. The bandwidth switch does not respond. I used a DPDT as in the Nocentelli diagram. I'm assuming Envelope input is terminal 2 of 1458, right? Maybe there is some error in the send / return links, but they seem pretty obvious to me.

[SpaceCommandant]

I think I had to use a 5532 to make it come to life.

[velouriafx]

After 4 days of debug, it was a bad blend pot.

[Travis]

Damn how annoying and it’s the most useless pot of all of them haha

Glad you got it working though, I’d love to hear what you think of your build when you get a little time to play with it

[velouriafx]

So, I really like the Doppelganger. I was expecting a little more from the Meatball. I really liked it as a filter, but not as envelope. The controls have a very small range. I like pedals with various knobs, as long as these knobs bring many options. At Meatball, I've basically been able to find a couple of sweet spots and that's it. What I found cool was to use fuzz in send / return and use it as a filter. But I'm not a big fan of envelopes or Wah, so I'm a little suspect to talk. By size, I prefer the Mutron myself.

[Travis]

Yes the knobs are mostly redundant on the Meatball and it would actually be much easier to use if it was just closer to the original Mutron

The pedal is from that little era where more knobs has to be more betterer

Personally I have found a lot of uses for this pedal and really enjoy it, though I totally agree that a streamlined version more like the Mutron just with the effects loop added would be preferable.

Gotta try the Doppleganger myself