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The Effect Builders Club!

#121
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these look really cool, particularly if you use a 3-colour LED underneath them. I can imagine some Tenori-Om-style synth pedal using something like this....!

these also look ultra-cool:
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change the colour and the graphic displayed on the button!

none of this is going to make it *sound* any better but I'm all for pedals that look as weird and cool as possible...
 
#125
I have my new blend pedal design up and running on a breadboard, but I'm trying to think of something interesting to do with it. My old one had a two footswitches, one to turn on/off the dirty signal and the other to turn on/off the clean signal. As well as three knobs: clean volume, dirty volume, output volume. then there was a switch to go into feedback mode.

I decided my volume scheme had too much control, and I never changed the settings, I just left everything full-on. I used the output knob to turn the volume down when I used the feedback loop though, so that was useful. so I think I will just keep the output knob. I haven't decided if I want to be able to turn the clean signal off again like I used to have it. It was good for muting.

I think I will put the feedback loop in again.

I was reading something here on TB where they had a low cut option on the effect loop, and I thought about trying to add that in, but thats one idea.

Can anyone think of anything else that could be useful? How about just the knobs and switches available?
 
#126
Sir Edward V said:
I have my new blend pedal design up and running on a breadboard, but I'm trying to think of something interesting to do with it. My old one had a two footswitches, one to turn on/off the dirty signal and the other to turn on/off the clean signal. As well as three knobs: clean volume, dirty volume, output volume. then there was a switch to go into feedback mode.

I decided my volume scheme had too much control, and I never changed the settings, I just left everything full-on. I used the output knob to turn the volume down when I used the feedback loop though, so that was useful. so I think I will just keep the output knob. I haven't decided if I want to be able to turn the clean signal off again like I used to have it. It was good for muting.

I think I will put the feedback loop in again.

I was reading something here on TB where they had a low cut option on the effect loop, and I thought about trying to add that in, but thats one idea.

Can anyone think of anything else that could be useful? How about just the knobs and switches available?
Click to expand...

Hm, sounds pretty good as is, but let me ask this. Are you looking for something a little "out there"?
 
#128
The thread Toasted posted about the transformer based impedance lowerer, got me thinking about how you could do exactly that with opamps and resistors. I think I am on to something so far, and I have a design that I am about to test out, but first of all, I don't even know what level of impedance would be considered 'low' or what the output impedance of our basses are. I tried measuring with my multimeter. Voltage was easy enough but I couldn't get a reading for the current. maybe it is so low that it doesn't even register? maybe I will try measuring with a guitar... well I think once I figure out my goal impedance, I might be able to do this...

If anyone thinks this are unpossible (heh), then let me know, or if anyone knows of someone who has done just this, also let me know. off to the pref. board!

edit: no luck with the whole measure the impedance thing, maybe I'll look it up online. Maybe I'll also test my design on P-Spice since I can't do it myself :hmm:
 
#129
Sir Edward V said:
The thread Toasted posted about the transformer based impedance lowerer, got me thinking about how you could do exactly that with opamps and resistors. I think I am on to something so far, and I have a design that I am about to test out, but first of all, I don't even know what level of impedance would be considered 'low' or what the output impedance of our basses are. I tried measuring with my multimeter. Voltage was easy enough but I couldn't get a reading for the current. maybe it is so low that it doesn't even register? maybe I will try measuring with a guitar... well I think once I figure out my goal impedance, I might be able to do this...

If anyone thinks this are unpossible (heh), then let me know, or if anyone knows of someone who has done just this, also let me know. off to the pref. board!

edit: no luck with the whole measure the impedance thing, maybe I'll look it up online. Maybe I'll also test my design on P-Spice since I can't do it myself :hmm:
Click to expand...

First, how are you measuring your current? You measure Voltage in parallel and current in series.

As for Impedance, a typical OP Amp has a theoretical infinite resistance(between 1M Ohm and 1T Ohm resistance typically) and your guitar signal has a "small impedance."

Hope this helps.:)

Edit: Wanted to ask, what kind of Spice are you using?
 
#130
Sir Edward V said:
Yes Sir!

or at least something interesting to keep me occupied.
Click to expand...

Hm, well I have plenty of out there ideas. Something that would be interesting is to add a 6 position switch(or something of that sort) to a bunch of low, high, and band pass filters. That would provide some interesting sounds for the drive. Also, a foot controllable mute switch for trem. style effects. Just a few weird ones:eyebrow::)
 
#131
B.C. said:
First, how are you measuring your current? You measure Voltage in parallel and current in series.

As for Impedance, a typical OP Amp has a theoretical infinite resistance(between 1M Ohm and 1T Ohm resistance typically) and your guitar signal has a "small impedance."

Hope this helps.:)
Click to expand...

My setup right now includes a perfboard with some input jacks shoved directly in there (no wires) then I am connecting things from there, what I did was connect the grounds, and connect nothing but one of my multimeter leads to each of the tips from the input and output. I believe this is the correct way to do it, though I have never tried measuring current before.

so 1Mohm would be too high? noted.

side note: my Pspice program sucks balls, anyone know of a good easy to use free version of PSpice??

B.C. said:
Hm, well I have plenty of out there ideas. Something that would be interesting is to add a 6 position switch(or something of that sort) to a bunch of low, high, and band pass filters. That would provide some interesting sounds for the drive. Also, a foot controllable mute switch for trem. style effects. Just a few weird ones:eyebrow::)
Click to expand...

I like the 6pos switch idea, reminds me of those birdsong dealys. This wouldn't be too hard, I could make simple filters out of resistor and capacitor networks... idk though, it might end up using too much space, and I intend on keeping things small so it will all fit inside of my enclosure...

the mute switch would be easy enough though... perhaps... I DO already have a tremolo though, and I never use it, making me think I wouldn't use this
 
#132
Code: 
                              |\|
                             -|-\
                              |  >-----------.
                          ----|+/            |
                          |   |/|    _       |
                          |         / \      |
                          '--------(_/_)------
                                    \_/
(created by AACircuit v1.28.6 beta 04/19/05 www.tech-chat.de)

Is this what you mean, with that switch looking thing being the meter?
 
#133
B.C. said:
Code: 
                              |\|
                             -|-\
                              |  >-----------.
                          ----|+/            |
                          |   |/|    _       |
                          |         / \      |
                          '--------(_/_)------
                                    \_/
(created by AACircuit v1.28.6 beta 04/19/05 www.tech-chat.de)

Is this what you mean, with that switch looking thing being the meter?
Click to expand...

No op-amp. No electrical components at all. Input = signal from bass, output = signal going to amp. Their grounds are connected and the route from input to output is solely the multimeter.
 
#134
Gotcha. So you are starting with a lead at the input and the other at the output? You are on the right track but currents are different in each node. So if you wanted to measure the current through a resistor, you would have to connect the multimeter leads after the component. :)
 
#135
B.C. said:
Gotcha. So you are starting with a lead at the input and the other at the output? You are on the right track but currents are different in each node. So if you wanted to measure the current through a resistor, you would have to connect the multimeter leads after the component. :)
Click to expand...

ohhhhhhhh

dammit! lol

I figured there would be current anyways... oh well. i will be back!
 
#137
Sir Edward V said:
I don't even know what level of impedance would be considered 'low' or what the output impedance of our basses are. I tried measuring with my multimeter. Voltage was easy enough but I couldn't get a reading for the current. maybe it is so low that it doesn't even register?
Click to expand...
Impedance can't be measured directly. To determine an output impedance you first measure the circuit during normal operation. You then monitor the output voltage while adding resistance in parallel with the load resistance. Eventually the output will drop to half of the normal state, at which point you can say that the additional resistance equals the output impedance.

But, impedance also varies with frequency, so the proper way is to do this at many frequencies and plot the results on a graph.

Output current of a bass pickup will be utterly tiny and is most likely out of the range of your multimeter. It is also very difficult to get consistent results when your signal source (the strings) are so variable.
 
#140
Im going out on a limb here, but if I were to post a high res picture of the insides of my Steve Vai Bad Horsie 2 wah, would any of you effects building/modifying gurus be able to instruct me to where the exact capacitor(s) to swap are? Of course this will be in order to add more bass response.
 

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