How Does The Minibar Work?
The Minibar was a wild thing to work on! I remember the first time saying “...and that’s what red wine sounds like…!!!” It was truly amazing!
I thought ‘now THIS is interesting!!’
Luckily plenty of other people do too, but there’s a lot of speculation about how it works.
So here’s the low-down; it’s to do with three things…
Electrical resistance of the liquid
Opacity of the liquid (how much light shines through)
Mojo
The electrical resistance of the liquid decides the amount of overdrive (large electrical resistance = high gain), largely to do with how many spare ions the chemical molecule has; water has some, and so it has low electrical resistance and conducts well (you remember, no hair dryers to be used in the bath?!), and so with the Minibar this creates low gain. Salty liquids - or liquids with salt dissolved in them - have an increased number of free ions on the molecule, so conduct better - and so in this instance give lower gain.
The opacity side of it governs the tone of the pedal, moving the bandpass filter up or down the frequency spectrum. Water is transparent, and so gives a trebly tone with not much low end.
While you have some water in the liquid container it’s interesting to do a little experiment; play a long note and move your thumb in and out of the water, alternately blocking and unblocking the light and you’ll hear a kind of harmonic tremolo effect (kind of) - demonstrating this aspect.
There is a definite mojo effect to do with the kind of liquids you use! When I have Jack Daniels whiskey in the container my playing has a chunky possibly bluesy feel to the high-gain, high-mid sound. Vodka produces some searing lead from me, with a ragged toppy edge. Change it to Coca Cola and my playing gets kind of low and swampy, with a dark crunch to the sound. Washing up liquid results in clinical, dry (clean??) riffs, not very inspired.
However despite the science-lite electro-chemical discussions, there’s some other parameter being adjusted here. For example, vodka’s loose, high-intensity drive is different to isopropyl alcohol’s tight high-gain. Both are all treble, not much bass, but varying in some other mysterious way…
Like we say in the blurb, it’s an experiment that we’re all invited to take part in!
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