Making effects pedels

[Hotrock]

Just a quick question...

... While I'm looking at making an amp and effects pedels I've had an idea. Instead of a load of effects pedels what I'd like to do is make one big effects box to stick on top of my amp. This box will have all the electrics and knobs to fiddle with for (lets say) 5 effects. From this box will come a long wire attached to another box (which will be on the floor) that will contain the switches for stamping on.

Can anyone see a problem with this, interferance etc?

[KeithHowell]

Interference is always a problem if you don't screen and earth things properly. Have a look at Geofex for all things guitar effects based.

R.G. really knows what he is talking about. He is probably the most knowledgable reference on guitar orientated electronics.

Keith

[JohnnyG]

this is actually exactlly what ive been thinking of doing for a while now

ive been planning on making the ultimate lead guitar FX rack unit. plan was to have sustain, delay, reverb (done by a proper slinky reverb tank) a treble boost and a 7 band EQ

origional idea was also to have a seperate floor unit with foot switches on it to turn everything on tho Keith has brought up the good point of interference which i hadnt thought of before lol

one thing you will have to bear in mind is that if you have a large circuit with say 5 different effects then you are going to need to power it and batteries just wont cut it (unless you dont mind changing them every week lol)

you could just put a 9v adapter socket in the back and power it with a mains adaptor tho they have a tendancy to not be particularlly clean supplies (voltage spikes, not dead on 9v etc etc) and some FX dont like that, depends on what you have

my idea was to actually have a transformer inside it and have a voltage regulation circuit inside it which isnt actually too hard to do (General Guitar Gadgets has a few schematics that show you pretty much everything you need) only tricky thing with that is playing around with mains voltage into the transformer which i find a little scary lol

hope that helps you out

[Hotrock]

I think we're on the same wavelength here. Guitar Gadgets has a schemetic of how to split mains power into 4 DC supplies which is what I'm intending to do. Albeit slightly fiddled with for 5 DC supplies.

My design came around so that I can fiddle without bending down to the effects pedels (I only play sitting down anyway, I'm just incredably lazy) Also thought about combining it with the amp, but I'm begining to think that may be a little complicated for little old me.

Good luck with the design dude, keep me informed. Oh and it was me that bought up the interferance

[syxxstring]

If you build the box sheilded it shouldnt be a problem. Your switches and such shouldnt be carrying any signal. IMHO You could greatly reduce noise by eliminating external cables etc...

[KeithHowell]

The best way to control this sort of thing is digitally. ie stick all your effects in a properly shielded, earthed and powered box and then run a digital communications link from your foot pedal to your box of tricks. This will cut out hum pickup, a big fat cable, lots of switches etc.

You would have to do a full on design and have to write some software as well to make it work properly.

This is bordering on what I do for a living. (Factory plant control software) so I don't think I would like to get involved in this, I build guitars to give myself a break from that sort of thing. (I might have to start charging professional fees to motivate myself. HaHa)

But seriously, if I've learned one thing in engineering it is: KEEP IT SIMPLE also known as the KISS principle. Get a few simple effects working first before trying a bigbang type project.

Keith

[JohnnyG]

Have a look at the schematic for the ultra clean power supply, you can add as many 9 volt sockets as you want to that (pretty much) just by having them in paralell. its not a particularlly hard circuit to make either (tho you will need to find a transformer from somewhere)

electronics is really my main subject lol so stuff like this is what i mainlly design. im not gonna be building this for a while since most of my cash is going to be going towards my first project (which is going to be loaded with a fair bit of electronic wizardrry lol

[JohnnyG]

Keith seeing as you might be able to asnwer this ill ask you. is it posable to get electronically operated switches?? i realise solenoids are sort of like this but they're big and expensive. i was wondering if it was just posable to get say a small SPDT switch which could be operated by applying a voltage to a pin or summat

cheers

[Hotrock]

Could we not have the switches link optically?

Keith - I understand the keep it simple process, but I'm a mechanical engineer so (and I can't remeber who said it) "If it ain't broke, it ain't got enough features"

[Saber]

is it posable to get electronically operated switches?? i realise solenoids are sort of like this but they're big and expensive. i was wondering if it was just posable to get say a small SPDT switch which could be operated by applying a voltage to a pin or summat

You could use the 4016 or 4066 from the CMOS family. They are inexpensive 14-pin chips that each contain four SPST analog switches which you can wire as two SPDT switches with the addition of simple circuitry. This brings back memories to when I used to play with this stuff.

[Saber]

There's also the 4051, 4052 and 4053. These are all analog multiplexer/demultiplexer CMOS chips that could be used for analog switching. You would have to look up the specs of each and decide what meets your application/needs.

[Reaper]

Mesa also used an opto-isolator-based switching matrix in the dual rectos, if I recall correctly. Perhaps those would help you out?

[JohnnyG]

aaahhh, cheers very much for that saber, i was wondering if it may be a dil chip or sumat

thanks very much

im gonna look up the schematics for it (using the hand catalogue i have on my computer.......yes i reallyam THAT sad ) and if people want then i can chuck some info up here. i can already see this being useful for digitally switching stuff

infact itd work for that wireless FX pedal someone was mentioning......

*Goes and gets lost in the wonderful fount of elecronics knowledgethat is the internet*

[Saber]

im gonna look up the schematics for it (using the hand catalogue i have on my computer.......yes i reallyam THAT sad )

There's nothing sad about that (I hope). I dug out my CMOS data book to get the chip numbers. Sometimes it's a lot quicker than waiting for a pdf file to load... especially on dial-up.

[ansil]

Just a quick question...

... While I'm looking at making an amp and effects pedels I've had an idea. Instead of a load of effects pedels what I'd like to do is make one big effects box to stick on top of my amp. This box will have all the electrics and knobs to fiddle with for (lets say) 5 effects. From this box will come a long wire attached to another box (which will be on the floor) that will contain the switches for stamping on.

Can anyone see a problem with this, interferance etc?

cd4016 i belive is the chip that craiganderton used in his 1970's book to do this.. by the way if you havent' done so go here and look around

www.diystompboxes.com

you will not be sorry, geofex and generalguitargadgets are all linked too from here.