/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>756948
1. The black wire from the pot should be connected to the same place as the green wire.
2. The right-most resistor should connect to one row higher (row H).

>>756948
1. J1 and J2 each have a second pin that must be connected with a wire to ground (row H).
2. The black wire from the pot should be connected to the same place as the green wire.
3. The right-most resistor should connect to one row higher (row H).

>>756948
You need the ground of this board to connect to the ground of the circuits on input and output. Connect the second pin on the TRS connectors to battery negative terminal.

>>756962
Thanks for the input, most of these were just things I overlooked (like forgetting to add the ground wires from the jacks). The black pot wire was something I wasn't sure about, I had done a bit of googling to see how pots were being connected but everything I saw kinda glossed over it.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to actually make it (I'm up at school without my soldering iron or anything), but I'd imagine the labs here have some kind of scheduling system. I'm gonna have to order the veroboard and get some of my parts off the perfboard.

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.

http://www.jiggawoo.eclipse.co.uk/guitarhq/Circuitsnippets/snippets.html

That's where I got the circuit from, if you're at all interested. Once I get this working, I'd like to try and make the Lofomofo, since I should just need to pick up that diode and a 500k log pot

Aw hell yeah guitar effects thread.

How would I go about making something to do this?

http://youtu.be/PsI2I5UIZ8k

I would probably make an OPA-based pedal because of their performance.
Transistors can cut low frequencies and are a bit sluggish.
They also introduce a short delay.

>>756948
Here's a website where that boost came from, if anyone is wondering: http://www.jiggawoo.eclipse.co.uk/guitarhq/Circuitsnippets/snippets.html
There's some pretty weird stuff on there.

>>756948
/gepbg/? Sign me up!

I've got tons of links to share for all of the curious builders out there! While I'm at it, I'll bump the thread with my latest build, a design of mine I dubbed: "The Fuzzy Caterpillar."

First step: design and etch your own boards.

>LINKS:
>http://www.muzique.com/lab/main.htm
Muzique is run by the genius of guitar pedal designers named Jack Orman, this page has a bunch of helpful tutorials on how to construct different elements of guitar effect pedals, like tone control, diode clipping, etc...

>http://home-wrecker.com/articles.html
>http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/schematics.html
>http://www.runoffgroove.com/articles.html
These are schematic vaults, many and some unknown authors contributed to the creation of these websites, some circuits come with explanations and helpful tips for construction.

>http://www.mif.pg.gda.pl/homepages/tom/schematics.htm
This is a gigantic schematics vaults, circuits/diagrams may not be in english or have explanations for their construction, however you will find a plethora of designs here, enough to keep you building for years to come.
If you need help understanding a circuit that comes from here, post it here, I, or perhaps another poster may be able to help you decipher what is happening on the schematic in question.

>http://www.geofex.com/
Geofex is a website run by another guitar pedal building master, named R.G. Keen, he will cover nearly all aspects of pedal construction on his website, from designing, to painting.

>>757098
I did some sniffing around, and from what I can gather, it's an expression pedal (think wah) with more than one axis of movement.

http://www.rig-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=92215

It's being talked about there. Personally I'm sort of confused, especially since I cant find a picture of it. Cool machine. I would guess it's some combination of tone control like a wah, a delay, and a phaser with an LFO that can be sped/slowed by manipulating the footpad.

Kudos to you for being adventurous, but you may need to read into the characteristics of an LFO before you try to build one, here are some links that I hope will help:
>http://www.play-hookey.com/oscillators/
>http://electro-music.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Schematics.Schematics

Good luck!

Part 2: Prepare the box.

>>758829
Part 3: Populate the board.

>>758829
Thanks man, I'm an EE student right now so I have access to a pcb engraver. Thanks for the help and the reading materials

>>758830
Part 5: Put the board in the box, mount everything and stick knobs on it. (I skipped taking pictures of Part 4: offboard wiring because I had a brain fart and forgot.)

>>758833
I'm an EE student too, it's a hell of a cool field, I really wish I had access to a PCB engraver, but I cant afford it on my budget, so I just use PCB etchant and blank boards for everything.

One day...

Either way, I really dig your ambitious spirit, nothing great would be accomplished if everyone was too deterred by hardship, so rock on, good luck, and if you need a hand, /gebpg/ is here!

>>758834
Part 6: Pray that everything works and you don't need to debug it! So far so good, this pedal will be going for sale after I polish it off and whatnot.

If anyone needs a hand or a tutorial, post away! I'll be popping in the thread daily to post my latest builds so it doesn't 404!

>>758834
Nice pedal you made there.

And yea, I'm sure I will have tons of more questions. I reckon a good start would be to tear apart a few of my old pedals to see how they actually work.

What year are you?

>>758837
Thank you very much, Schematic is free to use if anyone is curious.

To be honest, I'm still finishing my AA, I used to be a psych major when I first entered college in '10, but a lot of partying and failed classes later, I reconsidered that learning a practical skill would be wiser.

I started working at Radioshack, and reading books in my time off, eventually I began making my own circuits, and somehow I ran into the joy of making wacky noises with guitars.

I read a bunch of really helpful books, like The Engineers' Handbook, and Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims, and a eventually started poking through "The Art of Electronics".

In short, I'm self taught, I have been working this hobby and learning new things all of the time for the past 2 1/2 years now.


But to get back to what you said: I would strongly suggest opening up your old pedals.

A good pedal that a lot of people play with on their first run is the Boss DS-1. You can usually find them at pawn shops used for about $20, or buy them online for maybe more/less.

If you have one, you're in luck, I've messed around with them before, and noted up a schematic I dug up one day.

>>758839
Ah iktf, m8. I'm a junior in hours, but a sophomore in the EE program. I am just now starting to teach myself electronics. I thought EE program would do that but it seems it focuses more on how and why it all works instead of learning how to build circuits lol

As for pedals, I don't have that pedal but I have a Boss digital delay and a Bad Monkey Tube Overdrive pedal.

I also have one of the do-it-all pedals by.... boss maybe? It is a small like $90 version lol

>>758845
Ah, so it's true? A larger emphasis on Kirchoff's laws and Coulombs electrical fields instead of circuit design and application? Shame, oh well, you'll have to learn somehow!

Well digital delays are interesting, but the real guts and meat of them exist in the BBD (Bucket Brigade Device)
>http://www.electrosmash.com/mn3007-bucket-brigade-devices
BBDs are pretty cool things, basically gigantic chains of capacitors, the longer the chain, the longer delay.
Definitely potential to mod that thing for some kicks, though I wouldn't know much about how, I've never touched my digital delay pedal.

The Tube Overdrive however might be a good place to start. That's going to have an interesting clipping / distortion system to create it's effect, so you might learn a thing or two playing around with that.
Looks like someone else out there has taken a knack to modding them, they complain about it being largely surface mount (which bothers me too, hard to play with SMDs) but you might figure out a thing or two if you give it a look-see!
>http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1034068&highlight=bad+monkey+mods

I would be wary of the do-it-all pedals, that one might be a big SMDfest, but the only way to find out would be to crack it open!

I think the professor in The Magic School bus had something to say about taking chances, so uh, get messy! But try not to burn yourself with a soldering iron, it's not pretty.

Here are a few LFO designs too, just as a FYI!

>>758848
>>758845
Here's the bad monkey schematic too, btw.

>>758848
Yea my university has 2 circuit theory courses, followed by an EM course then you get into robotics, controls, power, etc.

We also have digital circuit classes of course.

On circuit design: my university has 4 design courses, you take one each year.

Design 1 - you build a line following bug robot using an arduino and pir sensor

Design 2 - you design a digital clock and build it using multisim and pcb software then you actually build a populate it and of course debug. You also learn matlab

Design 3 - taking this one next semester, not sure what it is. From what I have heard it consists of a few different on going projects and the instructor assigns you a project based on interests. You then continue the project picking up from previous classes' work/ research. For example there is a remote control ATV project and a electromagnetic field project. At the end of the semester you report your progress to companies/ stakeholders in the project

Design 4 - you have 2 options: research under an instructor or a standard design class. No idea what either entail.


Supposedly my university is the only one that does these classes. At least the instructors claim that all the time.

--

Now you've got me excited to tear apart these pedals lol.

I'm not entirely sure what to do when I pull them apart though. Like, how do I figure out what each part does?

>>758858
That sounds like a pretty wicked course system, I admire their enthusiasm, especially allowing you to be responsible for your own "company".

I live in Florida, and the university I'm headed towards is supposedly going to cram me into large lecture halls and boring laboratories, but I'll be making the most of it. I wish you the best of luck with your education.
--

When you do open them up, you'll want to organize systems and patterns, basically, as I noted that boss DS-1 schem. At first it will seem like these things were thrown together arbitrarily, but I promise, there's a purpose to every part. A guitar pedal is comprised of several sections:
First should be an input, with a large-ohmage resistor that connects to ground following it, that matches the impedance of the incoming signal.
That's usually followed by a capacitor and maybe a transistor with some resistors tied to it to form a rudimentary "preamp" to boost the signal to processing level for the rest of the circuit.
After that there should be the heart of the circuit, it could be an IC, with a tone-filtering capacitor and resistor in series, a few high-pass/low-pass filters, a BBD, or any number of things that will process the signal raised (and DC-blocked, by an electrolytic capacitor, probably) in the previous segment.

After that, you'll see a few potentiometers, maybe one for tone control, and another for volume, or gain.

And lastly, another resistor to ground followed by a capacitor for the output stage, where the impedance is again matched and DC-blocked.

These are just trends I see in a lot of pedals, not the word of some deity, but you'll likely see similar patterns as you explore more pedals.

How you find out what these things do? Well, swap them for different components or create short-circuit jumpers with alligator clip-wires.
Hooking up the signal out to an oscilloscope can do wonders as well.

>>758824
goddamn that's some terrible drilling.

If you set your PCB editor to put drill centres on the copper layer, it makes it much easier.

>>758858
OP here, I'm a second year EE major as well, at OSU

So far I've only finished one ECE class (Electrical and Computer Engineering are combined in terms of class names), which mainly focused on digital circuits on the gate level and ended with some digital signal processing.

I'm taking 3 ECE classes this semester, though. One is a continuation of the class from last semester, starting with DSP and getting into analog circuits. Another class is basically about how transistors work, and the other is an intro to microcontrollers (which should be easy, I have a fair amount of experience with Arduino).

I'm joining the Electronics Club this year, hopefully they have a PCB engraver or else I'll probably just stick with veroboards until I finally decide to take the plunge and etch my own boards.

>>758868
Thanks for all the resources man, nobody really seemed all that into it on /mu/ and the guitar pedal forum I looked at seemed pretty dead.

I'll try to give some updates on that Boost-O-Rama I'm making, the Electronics Club at my school has open lab hours tomorrow so I might stop at RadioShack and see if they have veroboard or anything similar, then get the parts off my old board and work on the new one

For your enclosures and knobs and everything, where do you shop?

>>759799
Yea we had digital circuits our first semester as well.

I wish we had electronics our 2nd semester like that but we have to take cicuit analysis 2 before we take electronics. Kinda sucks

Bump, hoping to get started on mine this week, but I don't have the veroboard just yet

>>759791
I drilled it by hand, no clamps, just freehanding on the press. It was a really rough job, but it works! I'll give that a shot though, if EAGLE supports that.