I am the person that designed the Mauldulator. My original interest in this circuit was exactly for 75M AM where I also operate. I do not operate on "the bowl", but I like tinkering around with MMM on projects like this.You will eventually be hearing this "gadget" on 75M AM, if only from my station. It is incompatible with my Johnson Valiant because of the voltages involved. It is incompatible with my Icom 706 which uses a balanced modulator stage to produce AM.
My long term goal is to use a Software Defined Radio board to put out about a 1 watt signal. I will then feed a home brew amplifier that can be "mauldulated". That amplifier will have an output of about 10-15 watts which will then drive another amplifier.
I will never run 200% modulation on this thing, although it can certainly do that. I may probably use up to 130%. It is true that most CB receivers can have unexpected results if the positive percentage is too high, and if the bandwidth is not paid attention to. MMM uses two receivers when customizing his audio going into this thing. He uses a stock Cobra 148 or Cobra 29 as well as a receiver with a wider pass band. He then adjusts it for the sound that is pleasing to him on both.
I use rack mounted equipment right now for my 75M AM stuff. I had that stuff going before I even knew about all this fancy software stuff. When I designed this thing I had no intention of using the computer because I did not even know about those audio processing programs. I admit that I like the idea of audio profiles that can be saved and loaded at will. I will probably not mess with the computer stuff until the latency is reduced. I like monitoring my AM signal in real time and the delay is too disorienting for me.
That being said, there are several stations that run computers in a high power environment. What do you think a Flex Radio is? MMM uses a pretty big box routinely and uses the computer just fine.
I think that a point is being lost in all of this discussion that I would like to emphasize. It is true that 200% positive modulation can be created, and that "high fidelity" can be achieved. The point I would like to make is that the Mauldulator presents you with a blank palette. What you put in is what comes out. Your audio is not reshaped by intentional limits of the radio or the undesired limitations of a modulation transformer. This functionality is important to some people, and not to others. If it is not important to you, then you don't need to buy it.
It also needs to be pointed out that broadcast AM stations are allowed to run 125% peaks, and they do so routinely. Furthermore, asymmetrical modulation is nothing new on the ham bands. During the peak of AM operation in the 50s and 60s on the ham bands, some hams played with so called "ultra modulation" and "negative cycle loading". Both of these implementations were basically the forerunners of today's negative peak clipping modifications on CB. While this will indeed result in signals with over 100% positive peaks, the cost is clipping of the negative side which causes distortion. Check out some of the ham references to this at The AM Press/Exchange Issue #65
Of course asymmetry is distorted by definition, but in the Mauldulator, the positive side of the audio is merely a larger version of the negative side. It is not clipped. I guess you could call this "less distorted distortion".
There have been critics insisting that you can duplicate the fidelity of the mauldulator on a simple radio using a proper microphone, or feeding a ham radio at the back in the auxiliary inputs. I would really like to see this.
Tink
