555 Timer : Frequency Investigation, Increasing Rate for Higher Frequency

555 Timer Kit – In Our Store

A customer recently contacted us about wanting to make an active ring mod using our passive ring mod and 555 timer kits. He was wanting to know how he could get the 555 to go into higher frequencies.

It turns out that we had a passive ring mod + 555 timer combo laying around the shop and decided to test it out and see if we could get the 555 to go up higher in frequency. Here’s what I found out:

To increase the rate of the 555, put in a lower rated resistor in R2 on the 555 PCB. For example, instead of using a 1K in R2, use a 560ohm (which I found I liked the best, personal taste). Essentially you can put anything from a 1ohm resistor up to a 1K.

To decrease the rate of the 555, put in a larger rated resistor in R2. For example, using a 1Mohm I got some nice slower clock speeds.

If you’re handy with soldering, you could solder in 2 long resistor legs into R2 and hold up different values to the legs and see what works best for you. That’s what we did for our testing.

So basically we found that a lower amount of resistance = higher clock and a higher amount of resistance = slower clock for R2.

Now that you know how to alter the frequency range, experiment with different values to see what works best for your 555 timer kit