You're right about the Big Muff influence, but it doesn't sound like one at all. It's total insanity. But on the bright side, it does seem to take to different mods, so you might come up with something very cool.
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Animato MADE FOR BASS!
- Thread starter TritonSeibert
- Start date
Crowella
Commercial User
Going to grab the popcorn out for this, will be nice to watch 
Here were a few notes I took about the whole thing while I had it on the breadboard and through some prototype builds. Fun little circuit to build on so I might leave my notes on it all, because seeing what people can do with this is really cool.
- To keep the animato an animato rather than just another BMP clone, it needs that first stage. I accidentally discovered that the AC filter cap is the best way to introduce more lows. It acts as a high pass filter and while it is the main characteristic of the pedal, it really is its biggest downfall as far as low end. HOWEVER, increasing the size of that cap drastically loses that distinctive tone (remember, a lot of people were fooled into thinking it was a ProCo RAT clone). I think the tilt mod or some other form of post-eq may be the best way to bring back some low end IMO. Best results on guitar was with a 10uF cap I believe and we were astonished at how it made it nice on guitar. As in, usable on guitar* for a change and had this oddly *clean* big muff sound.
- I tried a Baxandall for the tone stack. Worked a treat but too much volume drop to be usable. I actually think the BMP tone stack works in its favour for introducing that mid scoop but there is a huge lot that can be done there to help it. Those that remember the bitmap prototype video may have heard how nice it was.
- It's a bit of a shame that the distortion control takes a fair while to kick in control wise. If it weren't for my minimal nature with things I would have made it so you couldn't mute the pedal by turning the distortion knob all the way off as in, the range could be better.
- Redundant power filter caps are present in the original, where you have 2 x 100u + 2 x 100n caps from power to ground. My guess is that because the pedal has two boards, I would imagine they are used multiple times in different builds (modular builds get the thumbs up from me). You only need one of each.
- I found clean blends don't really need that low pass filter but it is by no means a bad thing to throw in and can make it sound a touch tighter. The high end boost is astonishing and usually over powers it. That said, either method works very well. I'd say if you go a clean boost, experiment with the low pass filter and find a decent frequency. Get LTSpice if you haven't got it already and sim the circuit to find key filter/crossover points.
- Best results are with the twin pair of germanium transistors and @johnk_10 can vouch for that. Even I can admit that, but at the cost they go for here, plus shipping, plus reliability, it eats away at the wallet fast. A silicon/germ pair works really nicely though so just be wary if you choose to go with that.
- The 2SC2240's with the Russian BMP schematic. Amazing. Actually amazing and is the best BMP I have used and that seems to have been seconded by every single person that has used it. Paired with the animato/animated, I am in heaven as far as tone goes. That's what I use for the Voskhod (my take on the BMP clone). I never had a chance to pair it with the front end but if I get a moment to whack the first stage on a breadboard, I might try the front end of the animato with the BMP on the end... however, first note about the high pass filter still applies and also the 2SC2240's aren't *that* high of a gain, which makes it really odd but helps to bring a tiny bit of low end in. Then again, that first stage more than compensates.
- That recovery/buffer stage still baffles me. Again, I never tried making it the standard end of the BMP nor did I use that buffer in a BMP clone.
- I tried different diode configurations. Eh... I can't understand why people like that mod done to their BMP's. The stock diodes worked best IMO.
That's a huge lot of notes that I can think of at this moment.
* I have never liked the animato/animated on guitar. As soon as you switch it off, you realise what frequencies were being missed out on. Not even my overly hot Emex Londaxe with hot Bareknuckle Cobra's can recover what's lost.
Here were a few notes I took about the whole thing while I had it on the breadboard and through some prototype builds. Fun little circuit to build on so I might leave my notes on it all, because seeing what people can do with this is really cool.
- To keep the animato an animato rather than just another BMP clone, it needs that first stage. I accidentally discovered that the AC filter cap is the best way to introduce more lows. It acts as a high pass filter and while it is the main characteristic of the pedal, it really is its biggest downfall as far as low end. HOWEVER, increasing the size of that cap drastically loses that distinctive tone (remember, a lot of people were fooled into thinking it was a ProCo RAT clone). I think the tilt mod or some other form of post-eq may be the best way to bring back some low end IMO. Best results on guitar was with a 10uF cap I believe and we were astonished at how it made it nice on guitar. As in, usable on guitar* for a change and had this oddly *clean* big muff sound.
- I tried a Baxandall for the tone stack. Worked a treat but too much volume drop to be usable. I actually think the BMP tone stack works in its favour for introducing that mid scoop but there is a huge lot that can be done there to help it. Those that remember the bitmap prototype video may have heard how nice it was.
- It's a bit of a shame that the distortion control takes a fair while to kick in control wise. If it weren't for my minimal nature with things I would have made it so you couldn't mute the pedal by turning the distortion knob all the way off as in, the range could be better.
- Redundant power filter caps are present in the original, where you have 2 x 100u + 2 x 100n caps from power to ground. My guess is that because the pedal has two boards, I would imagine they are used multiple times in different builds (modular builds get the thumbs up from me). You only need one of each.
- I found clean blends don't really need that low pass filter but it is by no means a bad thing to throw in and can make it sound a touch tighter. The high end boost is astonishing and usually over powers it. That said, either method works very well.
I'd say if you go a clean boost, experiment with the low pass filter and find a decent frequency. Get LTSpice if you haven't got it already and sim the circuit to find key filter/crossover points.- Best results are with the twin pair of germanium transistors and @johnk_10 can vouch for that. Even I can admit that, but at the cost they go for here, plus shipping, plus reliability, it eats away at the wallet fast. A silicon/germ pair works really nicely though so just be wary if you choose to go with that.
- The 2SC2240's with the Russian BMP schematic. Amazing. Actually amazing and is the best BMP I have used and that seems to have been seconded by every single person that has used it. Paired with the animato/animated, I am in heaven as far as tone goes. That's what I use for the Voskhod (my take on the BMP clone). I never had a chance to pair it with the front end but if I get a moment to whack the first stage on a breadboard, I might try the front end of the animato with the BMP on the end... however, first note about the high pass filter still applies and also the 2SC2240's aren't *that* high of a gain, which makes it really odd but helps to bring a tiny bit of low end in. Then again, that first stage more than compensates.
- That recovery/buffer stage still baffles me. Again, I never tried making it the standard end of the BMP nor did I use that buffer in a BMP clone.
- I tried different diode configurations. Eh... I can't understand why people like that mod done to their BMP's. The stock diodes worked best IMO.
That's a huge lot of notes that I can think of at this moment.
* I have never liked the animato/animated on guitar. As soon as you switch it off, you realise what frequencies were being missed out on. Not even my overly hot Emex Londaxe with hot Bareknuckle Cobra's can recover what's lost.
Crowella
Commercial User
I also posted this in the other thread... You can actually boost a fair bit of bass post effect. Hopefully this video demonstrates the downfalls and gives you an idea of what can be done to help it on bass.
And schematic of the bass booster.
And schematic of the bass booster.
