Portia Street Stomp PSS
MSRP
$XXXX
The PSS will be discontinued.
User's Manual
The Portia Street Stomp is a swiss army knife for tone shaping born out of a late night session with Dylan Ely, owner of the Portia Street Studio in Los Angeles. Dylan does a lot of work at home and at other studios and wanted a portable solution to give some weight to a signal. The Stomp was our solution.
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Distortion in transformers can produce complex, rich tones and is a product of the inductance of the transformer and the source impedance presented transformer. Larger source impedance or lower inductance windings produce more distortion at a given signal level. The load on the transformer also contributes to the response of the iron. Changing the load impedance also has an effect on the driving amplifier.
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The Portia Street Stomp uses a wonderfully low inductance steel core transformer with quadrifilar windings (four identical windings). This allows for a variety of configurations to get a wide range of tones out of the both the transformer itself and the driving circuit.
primary
secondary
The Portia Street Stomp allows you to vary the tone in three ways:
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The transformer “Ratio” switch selects between four configurations. Two configurations are effectively 1:1 but use 1 or 2 windings to increase or decrease the total inductance (which will enhance the behavior of the “Primary” knob). In 1:2 and 2:1 mode there will be a 6 dB step up or step down respectively, and the load being presented to the source amplifier will also change.
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The “Primary” knob allows the source impedance presented to the transformer to be changed continuously, which increases the harmonic distortion of the passive circuit and slightly changes the frequency response.
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The “Secondary” pot allows the load across the transformer secondary to be varied. This will change the current drive of the source amplifier. A higher load will increase the current demand at a given signal level, which will cause more distortion from the source amplifier. The load pot will also interact with the transformer windings to change the overall tone.
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Each channel also has a true bypass in/out switch and a ground lift circuit between the input and output.
Through the IAA Custom Shop, we also offer a variety of transformers and other features to give you the sound you want. Reach out to us to whiteboard your idea!