Pedals (was: Re: [geeks] OpAmps)

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 12:59:28AM +0000, Kris Kirby wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Peter L. Wargo wrote:
> > Ya know, I was wondering if there is a good place to look for
> > schematics/plans to build various types of pedals and cool guitar effects.
> > I would love to play around with that...
> 
> I haven't looked. Back in The Day, my father built quite a few pedals and
> fixed many more, There are a half-a-million ways to skin some of those
> cats.

The MXR Distortion+ (and related) and Ibanez Tube Screamer (TS808,
TS9, TS10, maybe others) are all pretty simple.  There is infinate
variability for how you arrange the resisters. The TS10 has an extra
resistor, other wise the design for all three listed TS pedels is the
same, just some with higher or lower resisters, and different, but
compatible, opamp. Or what opamp you use (and this is just with
limiting ourselves to opamp based distortion pedels), what caps and
transistors are used, etc.

Part of the difficulty is the best stuff tends to be the stuff that
is now outdated, and was always highly variable. For instance,
germanium transistors.  This was why it was best to get first pick of
new shipments of pedels like the original Fuzz Face (the Hendrix favorite).

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd