The Sushi Box FX Secret Society

[rickdog]

I was already planning an FX loop, that came up when we had discussed an IR loader. I suppose it would make sense for the EQ as well.

FX loop would be awesome on the larger form-factor pedals. Especially if there's room for an FX In/Out footswitch.

I think about rackmount any time something looks like it's going to get bigger than my current largest enclosure (Dreamcatcher/Detective),

Then I'm not letting go of my dream about a small tube power amp with dummy load - sort of a Sushi take on the SWR Interstellar Overdrive, but pick your preferred Sushi Box preamp to put in front of it. Put that in a rack with a nice class D power amp....

 

[lomo]

Rackmount bass gear is akin to vinyl records......it has a passionate but very small market. I (and sooooo many others) used a rack "back in the day", but am never ever going back there. The pedal world, in contrast, has exploded.

 

[Tassieviking]

I use a simple 10 ohm resistor in my small 1 watt amp to replace the speaker load for when no speaker is installed like when I am just using the headphone out.
I think I could use the headphone out as a line out if I wanted to but to get a better tone I might have to better simulate a speaker load by adding at least one inductor in there and maybe a capacitor as well.
It looks small when I put it in front of my 410 speaker.

 

[bassbrad]

An alternative for rack mounting would be to offer a version with side panel controls that could be mounted on a rack tray. I was once a partner on a failed attempt at a rack mounted bass preamp and this was an option consi

Rackmount bass gear is akin to vinyl records......it has a passionate but very small market. I (and sooooo many others) used a rack "back in the day", but am never ever going back there. The pedal world, in contrast, has exploded.

When they were popular, late 70's thru 90's it was before powerful and feature packed bass amps were available. I built a bunch for touring bassists when I was at SHOWCO and Lightning and used several versions myself for tours. With more and more stages going ampless has been a boon IMHO and there are so many respectable pedal preamp & amp offerings in all size, function and price factors.

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Well I'm super excited about Sushi work tonight.

I'm immensely proud of the fact that I don't know everything, because I have a lot of opportunities to learn more. One of my favorite things about my day job is that I work with some of the most intelligent people I've ever met, and everything I design at work gets reviewed at each stage by multiple experts in their respective fields to make sure the design is solid before moving on to the next step.

I'm trying to implement this more in Sushi Box work; when I have a design that's new or different or just more complex than usual, I've been reaching out to people smarter than me (there are lots out there) for external review. This afternoon I got feedback from a reviewer on a design that I've been playing with for a while and have been itching to play with more. I just received prototype hardware that I can modify based on their comments and hopefully have something neat to play with for a bit, that I can then tie into a full Sushi Box production prototype for evaluation as a releasable product.

 

[bassbrad]

An alternative for rack mounting would be to offer a version with side panel controls that could be mounted on a rack tray. I was once a partner on a failed attempt at a rack mounted bass preamp and this was an option considered.

 

[LSM07]

If you do rackmount, would you consider doing multiple channels/inputs? (I guess I could do the same thing by buying 2 pedals and just wiring up the inputs and knobs to the front of a rackmount enclosure....)

 

[Sushi Box FX]

If you do rackmount, would you consider doing multiple channels/inputs? (I guess I could do the same thing by buying 2 pedals and just wiring up the inputs and knobs to the front of a rackmount enclosure....)

That's a pretty substantial "if", but I think it's safe to say that if I were to go to something that large, I would be pretty likely to throw a lot of features in that wouldn't normally be in a pedal. If I design a pedal that feels like it has too much empty or unused space, I usually try to find a feature to fill the space, so I would expect to do the same on a rackmount unit.

 

[LSM07]

That's a pretty substantial "if", but I think it's safe to say that if I were to go to something that large, I would be pretty likely to throw a lot of features in that wouldn't normally be in a pedal. If I design a pedal that feels like it has too much empty or unused space, I usually try to find a feature to fill the space, so I would expect to do the same on a rackmount unit.

Well, funny enough, considering that I know what I'm looking for, I guess it wouldn't be too insane to throw it together myself - I would just need the 2 preamps, and enclosure, and the appropriate connectors. But at that rate, it's like why not throw in an ICE Power amp module, fx send/return, and other quality of life stuff while i'm at it (mute switch, etc)

 

[thebobcooper]

I’ve not seen it asked here before. Do any of the Sushi preamps flip the phase of the input signal?

not sure if it should be called a preamp or boost or whatever, but More does.
took me a bit of time to get why sometimes it killed my sound, sometimes it made it killer, and sometimes the effect was subtle

 

[Sushi Box FX]

not sure if it should be called a preamp or boost or whatever, but More does.
took me a bit of time to get why sometimes it killed my sound, sometimes it made it killer, and sometimes the effect was subtle

Yup More is definitely one of the ones I know offhand that inverts the output. JC Emerald, Dreamcatcher red channel and Detective red channel are also ones I know offhand that invert the output. Underground Accelerator, Elementary, Black Eye II, Dreamcatcher blue channel and Detective blue channel I know offhand do not invert the output.

Basically it all comes down to gain stages. With op-amps you have the option of configuring any stage as inverting or non-inverting, but unfortunately tubes do not have this luxury. A gain stage will invert the signal, a cathode follower buffer stage will not invert the output. So if the circuit has an odd number of gain stages it will invert the output, if it has an even number of gain stages it will not invert the output.

 

[meisi]

Yup More is definitely one of the ones I know offhand that inverts the output. JC Emerald, Dreamcatcher red channel and Detective red channel are also ones I know offhand that invert the output. Underground Accelerator, Elementary, Black Eye II, Dreamcatcher blue channel and Detective blue channel I know offhand do not invert the output.

Basically it all comes down to gain stages. With op-amps you have the option of configuring any stage as inverting or non-inverting, but unfortunately tubes do not have this luxury. A gain stage will invert the signal, a cathode follower buffer stage will not invert the output. So if the circuit has an odd number of gain stages it will invert the output, if it has an even number of gain stages it will not invert the output.

Is the typical solution to this to just throw an inverting op amp with unity gain on the output?

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Is the typical solution to this to just throw an inverting op amp with unity gain on the output?

Depends on what you're trying to do. If you're not doing anything with parallel signal paths, you probably won't even notice if you have an inverted signal.

When I was adding the parallel clean blend to Single Slice I ran into phase issues, so I had to add an extra inverting stage to the compressed path to put it back in phase with the clean path. Typically I'll use high-voltage FETs instead of opamps though, I've found that they play with tubes better since I can still run them at 350V, whereas most op-amps top out around 30V.

 

[CH Design]

Yup More is definitely one of the ones I know offhand that inverts the output. JC Emerald, Dreamcatcher red channel and Detective red channel are also ones I know offhand that invert the output. Underground Accelerator, Elementary, Black Eye II, Dreamcatcher blue channel and Detective blue channel I know offhand do not invert the output.

Basically it all comes down to gain stages. With op-amps you have the option of configuring any stage as inverting or non-inverting, but unfortunately tubes do not have this luxury. A gain stage will invert the signal, a cathode follower buffer stage will not invert the output. So if the circuit has an odd number of gain stages it will invert the output, if it has an even number of gain stages it will not invert the output.

Have you had a chance to determine which camp Venus Z falls into?

 

[darev]

Is the typical solution to this to just throw an inverting op amp with unity gain on the output?

<Checking pockets>

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Have you had a chance to determine which camp Venus Z falls into?

I just pulled it up to have a look, and it looks like Venus Z does invert the output. It has two tube gain stages, but it has three inverting stages in the active EQ for a total of 5 inverting stages, which means output is out of phase with input.

 

[CH Design]

I just pulled it up to have a look, and it looks like Venus Z does invert the output. It has two tube gain stages, but it has three inverting stages in the active EQ for a total of 5 inverting stages, which means output is out of phase with input.

Thanks Nathan.

 

[Tassieviking]

Is the typical solution to this to just throw an inverting op amp with unity gain on the output?

Just use 2 Sushi pedals that invert the signal and the second pedal brings the signal back in phase, more Sushi always makes things better.

 

[LSM07]

A More before a Venus Z probably sounds incredible.

But on that note, because the Grand Slampegg uses a parallel gain stage, that means it's inverting as well as it also has one of those high voltage FETs after the tube gain stage?

 

[Sushi Box FX]

But on that note, because the Grand Slampegg uses a parallel gain stage, that means it's inverting as well as it also has one of those high voltage FETs after the tube gain stage?

Actually because the tonestack dropped the output level of Grand Slampegg so much I added a high-voltage FET stage to the end for recovery gain, so Grand Slampegg is non-inverting.