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I'm looking for a bell circuit with a particular sound

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Gerald Sachs

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I 'm working on building a circuit board that will produce a bell sound like that in the link I'm listing below. I need it to be battery operated from 3 to 6 volts DC. All inputs will be greatlyappreciated.

**broken link removed**
 
Instead of that puny little bell, I tried posting Big Ben and the Westminister Chimes but this site wouldn't let me. :lol:
 
The link works fine for me.

I'll try to attach big Ben.

Mike.

Edit - wav files aren't allowed. But A Link should work.
 
Hi Gerald,
Sorry, I couldn't post the chimes so I deleted them. Hey, they must be somewhere in my recycle bin!

I found lots of them in the first 4 pages of a search for Big Ben at www.google.com . Keep your volume turned down, the Big Ben is powerful and nearly blew my dog and me out of my chair! :lol:

While there, read about the history of Big Ben. It is huge and heavy. The 1st one cracked during testing before it was installed. The 2nd was made by a different foundry and also cracked soon after installation. After a law suit, its crack was filled but it lost its tune.

I also found a circuit to play the Westminister Chimes in my search for Big Ben on Google. It is fairly simple (using a microcontroller) and does much more than your application. :lol: :lol:
 
Search for one that isn't so noisy and distorted! The others have a longer recording too.
 
Radio Shack sells a simple sound recording chip. You could record dirrectly from your computer audio out.
 
audioguru said:
While there, read about the history of Big Ben. It is huge and heavy. The 1st one cracked during testing before it was installed. The 2nd was made by a different foundry and also cracked soon after installation. After a law suit, its crack was filled but it lost its tune.

I watched a program about it the other day! - the second bell was cast in London (at the Whitechapel Bell Works) using the melted down metal from the first bell (the first bell was cast in Newcastle).

As you say, the second bell started to crack after a few months use and was repaired and turned round - they also reduced the weight of the hammer to the 3 cwt specified by the designer of the bell, instead of the 13 cwt they originally fitted.

Why on earth would you use a hammer four times larger than that specified by the designer?.
 
Nigel Goodwin said:
Why on earth would you use a hammer four times larger than that specified by the designer?.
Maybe so it could be heard as far away as in Newcastle. :lol:
 
I'd suggest that the low recording quality of one of those cheap ic's would sound very poor with a sound like that because all of the high frequencies will be decimated, and it'll sound really messed up :lol:

You can generate very good bell sounds using either ring modulation or frequency modulation techniques. Search around for four quadrant multiplier schematics (was that right?). These circuits will probably be quite advanced though, as you'll need 2 oscillators, at least one of which is a sine wave, and the modulator. You might try this ring mod, but you'll need good quality transformers.
 

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Hi Dr. EM,
I made some voice scramblers using an MC1496 balanced modulator IC:
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/05/AN531-DPDF.pdf .
The scramblers were made for wireless teleconferencing equipment and used the Single-Sideband Supressed-Carrier method that worked very well. It made low voice frequencies high, and high voice frequencies low, completely unintelligible. Sing or strum though one of these fairly simple circuits and you'll have a cool. weird sound.

The de-scrambler was simply another identical circuit.

The first one worked very well by itself. So I made another for a wireless 2-microphone system. When someone spoke into either mic, all was well. But if someone was between both mics, their voice level faded then increased over and over from the de-scrambler. Duh, their master oscillators weren't in sync so it sounded like a slowly turning Leslie speaker! :lol: Perfect tremolo.
I didn't try it because I used crystal oscillators, but you could probably make a perfect audio frequency changer (to shift all audio frequencies up or down a certain amount) by changing the scambler's oscillator frequency.

So I changed the modulator circuit a little and made the AM (with carrier) Single-sideband method. The scambled output sounded like before, with low frequencies high and vice-versa but with the carrier whistling loudly.
De-scambling was with an AM detector. :lol:
 
That sounds like one wacky project! :lol: You don't have any audio demos do you? From what you said, I reckon it would make a great frequency shifter. Does it sound really digital, like, erm, a digital shifter, or does it sound much more natural like an analogue one?
 
Hi Dr. EM,
My balanced modulator circuits are analog so don't sound like "digital", I guess. Wait a minute, CD's are digital and sound great. What's the difference between properly designed analog and digital?

Thinking about it, its harmonics might not be musical anymore when it shifts all frequencies by the same amount. A frequency shifter must shift all frequencies by a set ratio, not simply a set amount. :lol:
 
audioguru said:
Hi Dr. EM,
My balanced modulator circuits are analog so don't sound like "digital", I guess. Wait a minute, CD's are digital and sound great. What's the difference between properly designed analog and digital?

Thinking about it, its harmonics might not be musical anymore when it shifts all frequencies by the same amount. A frequency shifter must shift all frequencies by a set ratio, not simply a set amount. :lol:

Anti-feedback processors work in a similar way, by shifting everything a very small amount, this prevent feedback building up, as the output is slightly different to the input.

So presumably it wont upset the music?.
 
The 2rd harmonic of 1kHz is exactly 2kHz and is very musical without beats or modulation. If a frequency shifter sums 200Hz then 1kHz becomes 1200Hz and the 2rd harmonic becomes 2200Hz. They are now very unmusical and will beat with and modulate each other.

A frequency shifter must multiply frequencies to be musical.
It is ironic that the "multiplier" IC works with sum and difference frequencies and multiplies only levels.

Since I haven't tried it, I could be wrong. A "multiplier" IC might actually multiply the frequencies when it is modulating them into sum and difference frequencies. It makes my brain hurt thinking about it anymore! :shock:

I still have my prototype circuits that work. They use a colour TV crystal and a counter chain. I could make my brain hurt a little more and calculate what different crystal frequency I would need to make a frequency shifter. :lol:
 
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