Archive for February, 2007
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Foxx Tone Machine
This classic fuzz reappeared in the form of a Danelectro pedal, the French Toast. Here’s some shameless name dropping: Mark Hammer let me actually play through one he had built. And I loved it. 😀 I took the schematic from GeneralGuitarGadgets.com.
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Breadboard
Breadboards are an inexpensive way to check out a pedal circuit. And if you decide to try your own tweaks or designs, a breadboard is the only way to go. … more …
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Capacitors 5: High Pass Filters
High Pass Filter
If the capacitor and resistor in the low pass filter change places, then the circuit becomes a high pass filter. Indeed the output of this high pass filter is just the output of the low pass filter subtracted from the input. So the frequencies that were attenuated most by one filter are the frequencies attenuated least by the other filter. You could use this LTSpice setup to check this: … more …
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Capacitors 4: Low Pass Filters
Resisting Voltage Change
Capacitors are often said “to oppose voltage change.” When the current is finite, the change in the voltage across the plates of a capacitor generally lags behind the change in the voltage of the source. Also, the shape of voltage changes affects how the capacitor charges, the resulting shape of voltage across the plates of the capacitor, and the pattern of the current through the capacitor. … more …
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Capacitors 3: In Series and Parallel
The Capacitor “Law”
As described previously, capacitors are fundamentally different from resistors. They do not conduct DC current, but capacitors do transmit AC current because they can repeatedly accumulate and release a voltage potential like a rechargeable battery. … more …
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Capacitors 2: DC and AC
Preliminaries
First, let’s summarize some basic electronic simplifications: electrons carry a negative charge and, therefore, repel each other. Because they can move freely within a wire, electrons will distribute themselves uniformly throughout the wire so that there is no discernible polarity along the wire. On the other hand, … more …
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Capacitors 1: Description
Appearance
There are many kinds of capacitors and several popular ones are pictured here. Generally, capacitors have two leads. Some are axial leaded, like resistors, and others are radial leaded, with both leads at one end. Stompbox layouts … more …
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
Ubescreamer
Here is the classic ts808 (above), rendered in a new and fresh way with a CD4049 by the great folks at runoffgroove.com. See the discussion on diystompboxes.com. The link to the original schematic is here: runoffgroove.com.
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
Visual Analyzer Oscilloscope
Visual Analyzer is a free software oscilloscope made by Sillanum Software. They describe it as “A complete professional real time software that transforms your PC into a complete set of instruments. No new hardware is necessary (you can use the Sound Card of your PC).”
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
DIY Layout Creator
The DIY Layout Creator is free software for laying out circuits was written with feedback from a huge crowd on Aron’s diystompboxes.com forum. One of the coolest things to happen there. And the software is superb, which explains why it is probably the most popular way to create layouts for the forum. Visit Bancika at DIY Fever.
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
T.M.K.
T.M.K. stands for “too many knobs.” 😀 Designed by Tim Escobedo, this circuit can produce a wide range of fuzzy sounds. There is a good sound clip on his site. Here’s Tim’s list of what the pots do (following the numbering on my version of the schematic):
- pot 1: feedback
pot 2: input impedance
pot 3: gain/color
pot 4: crossover distortion
pot 5: octave/fundamental blend
pot 6: volume
At the time, I was trying out some features in this layout suggested by Chris Gregory, Mark Hammer, and Jim Rayden: ground fill, wider traces, and identifying text. And Chris Gregory <stobiepole@gmail.com> kindly wrote to say that he has verified this layout. His build is shown above.
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
Crank
This is an interesting booster designed by Mark Hammer (http://hammer.ampage.org) with a double-ganged gain pot that also controls tone. See Mark’s description on his site.