What does everyone think to my preamp design?

[A. D. Fairhurst]

Came up with the idea in the shower, drew a first draft in form, just before class began, and now drew this. What does everyone think?

It's the same dimensions as a BOSS stompbox or pedal of that size.

 

[hondo4life]

Tube in a pedal? Crazy. Do it.

 

[Callused Finger]

I'm going for the less is more with more approach.. or something like that.
and if you can't get it to shut off you just stomp the tubes out.

 

[FuzzFacetious]

Level slider would be too easy to knock with the foot, wouldn't it? maybe make that a knob further up, or a vertical slider down the side, rather than horizontal across?

Other than that, looks cool, what would that retail at?

 

[tubedude]

It's not so much a preamp design (circuit schematic), as a front panel design with a feature wishlist. . That's a lot of circuitry to cram in a little box. A good power supply for the tubes takes up some room. Tubes operate better with real voltage on them, 100 volts.or more. Starved tubes don't sound that good. This might require a seperate power supply to keep the pedal in a tiny box. I'd recommend using rotary pots instead of sliders in a stomp box. They get broken and dirty easily. Good luck, hope to see the results, share your progress.

 

[lz4005]

It's not so much a preamp design (circuit schematic), as a front panel design with a feature wishlist. . That's a lot of circuitry to cram in a little box. A good power supply for the tubes takes up some room. Tubes operate better with real voltage on them, 100 volts.or more. Starved tubes don't sound that good. This might require a seperate power supply to keep the pedal in a tiny box. I'd recommend using rotary pots instead of sliders in a stomp box. They get broken and dirty easily. Good luck, hope to see the results, share your progress.

All of that. Yes. But particularly the slider part.

Also, OP's design isn't a parametric EQ without a bandwidth control. It's only semi-parametric.

 

[P-oddz]

Agreed with tubedude. Methinks that's a lot of guts to fit into such a small enclosure.

 

[Rumbles]

I'll have six please...

 

[RoadRanger]

hate sliders - hate "semi" PEQ's - overdriven tube pre's sound no better than SS alternatives.
Needs a HFP - and LPF in the DI.

 

[tubedude]

If you want good overdrive, use a small signal pentode instead of a 12ax7. The 5879 sounds good. I've used it in several amps and I'll never design another overdrive stage with 12ax7's.

 

[monsterthompson]

Reminds me of
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I'd say, that's a big list of pedal inclusions. Also, the compression and overdrive additions would make it highly personalized. It'd be hard to make a commercial product that contains multiple effects and satisfy the wants of the public. Some may like the overdrive, but not the compression, or vice versa. Not a reason to not do the project if you are just looking for a project and a personal build.

Try to avoid building . . .

 

[monsterthompson]

not sure how expensive and available these tubes are, nor what it is like to work with them, but you could reduce the size of the enclosure using the ones Zvex uses in the Nano-Tube head.

 

[Silent Fly]

It looks a little bit optimistic

Slider posts are tricky to assemble and unless one needs a visual comparison between the setting of different sliders, there isn't too much point in using them. They are also easy to move by mistake and they are not as robust the rotary ones.

You may want to re-draw the interface using a 1:1 scale.

 

[Leiria]

Since everyone hates sliders why not have the EQ in stack knobs?

 

[monsterthompson]

Since everyone hates sliders why not have the EQ in stack knobs?

I'd thought about suggesting that too

 

[J Posega]

Feature dense, not designed with real world specs in mind (you'd never fit all that in a 125B enclosure), sliders like that would be very difficult to fit into an enclosure and tend to get broken off or clogged with crap off your shoe, many people do not want their comp, OD, and EQ in the same place in their signal chain, and there's not an easy way to engage/ disengage any give part of your 'design'.

That said, there's a few dudes on TB that could build you something that would actually have the same functions as this, but it's never be as small as you're imagining.

 

[Fuzzbass]

The OP said "authentic tube overdrive". For me, that's an all-tube amp run at the point where the POWER TUBES are clipping. I love preamp tubes for "harmonic sparkle" (or whatever you want to call it) and perhaps gentle overdrive, but for anything less subtle than that, I prefer solid state tube emulators.


In a perfect world I would prefer an all-tube amp that delivers my desired level of power tube overdrive at any volume -- and weighs less than 20 pounds -- but given that it doesn't exist (to my knowledge), I prefer solid state.


To the OP: in short, I like the general idea of your EQ/compressor/overdrive, I just don't think you need a real tube in there.

 

[A. D. Fairhurst]

Thanks everyone. I'll set to redesigning it.

 

[ole Jason]

Build a working schematic/layout first and then start worrying about the enclosure size and interface IMO.

 

[ChubbyJerk]

Build a working schematic/layout first and then start worrying about the enclosure size and interface IMO.

Yeah, this is the most important thing. What you have here isn't a pedal design, it's a wish list.

This reminds me of Devi Ever's Console project. The concept was awesome. The controls looked good. The design looked great. It turns out all that is worthless unless you have a working circuit underneath it all.

You know what you want the pedal to do. Don't bother "redesigning" this. That would be beyond pointless. Build the circuit, then come back and plan out how to lay out the controls on top of that.