ansil

Alright guys.

I'm just doing a bit more research on amp building. I've looked at the past thread (on page 5 of the electronics section). Just wondering if anyone else has had any look and could tell me where to buy stuff from. I've got a few links if anyone is interested.

I preferably would like to build a valve amp thats not too powerfull (I'm really not good enough for other people to hear), think about 5 watts should be fine. Everything I find is very very expensive.

Anyone got any ideas?

how much voltage do you need i have high voltage caps and 1/2 watt resistors in nearly every value. i also have a slavaged output transformer from an antique radio that was tube, and it had a 7 watt fender style tube in it.

also have some input transformers. i have a 1:1 input transformer that you can step up the voltage too. or you can use two ratshack 120:12.6v transformers take the secondary filiment voltage off of the first transformer and wire in a reverse transformer to the first one.. ie (instead fo the 120:12.6 it would be 12.6:120v side.) and soem 1n4007 diodes. high voltage powersupply caps..???

most of the stuff i have is salvaged so i am cheap.

you can actually make yoru won piezo pickup otu of a radioshack buzzer its the rather large one that is 3.99 it has a flat piezo in it a littel bigger than a half a dollar . you can gut this down into a suitable little piezo electric pickup to install under the bridge.. (sings chili peppers song.. la la la la) but you would still need a little preamplification to get the job done in style.. but you can do so with a single FET preamp. and a resistor and cap or two. basically the whole deal including the buzzer itself will cost you around 9.99USD

He was decapitated by the rotors, wasnt he?

Yes, the wording was horrible, might as well edit it now

I phoned about an MXR + yesterday and they are 127 dollars, and they will only give me about 50 to 75 bucks for my Boss Heavy Metal HM 2, i dunno about that, i just had it repaired too! kinda a kick in the you know what

Curtis

i have a mxr distortion clone that i would consider trading.. but you do know that randy rhoads only used the distortion plus as a booster for his marshal for solos and such.. and he really didnt' use the gain too much at all it was mostly using the volumes outptu to add an extra hot signal to the amps input..

personall i make my own cables and if anyone wants some wire in the us i am giving away 25 feet of 18 gauge two conductor shielded wire with drain for the price of postage.. 5 bucks.

pots also change the impedance load of a guitar which is why they sound different with different values a 1M pot will have a cleaner purer sound to it.. as far as teh bleed off goes.. personally iuse 1M lin in everything

I was looking for one before Christmas but couldn't find one for less tha ~$190. I did a search yesterday and found them for $149 at musicians-friend - VS-1

There are also a couple of them on Ebay but for $149, that's close enough for me. Think the Ebay items are going close to that so why not get a new one?

It's a lot of money for a tuner but it really drives me nuts when a guitar is not intonated correctly. I don't have perfect pitch (thank god) hearing but I can tell when something is out of tune relative to another note. I'm hoping this will help.

Dave

hey there buddy, its a wodnerfull strobe tuner but one thing you may want to chekc into is the alternate to the buzz feiten tunign system it takes yoru standard scale and makes it more friendly to the intonation..

Steve Vai once said he wanted a box that had all his fx in it on top of his amp and he could change the sounds by thinking. i designed and prototyped a midi device that worked in conjunction with a wireless transmitter and a few other nifty little things that could fit in a beltpack next to your wireless guitar transmitter to control it with body movement.

well anyway he turned me down, so i sold it for a couple of hundred bucks to a guy in atlanta. who still uses it to this day.

Zakk Wylde is nothin compared to Randy Rhoads

Still good find

Curtis

amen thank you fellow believer

Hello!

Are these pickups good?

what is your definition of good, do you want to soudn like steve vai.. then i have a cheaper solution for you.

1 get an ibanez guitar.

2. either a tonezone from dimarzio. or a carvin m22 pickup with a 120pf cap piggy backed with a 100 ohm resistor on the pickups ground wire then attach this to the ground of the guitar.

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.

i took out the pickup selector in my yngwie copy and replaced it with a 100k slide pot. to balance the outer pickups. and use push pull pots on the three controls to do things like select phase, booster, and middle pickup

ps if you wish to put a switch in there fro a freq roll off and you need a specific freq.. like for instance you want to make a mid notch... heres a great rc filter calculator..

for all the math wizards the actual fromula is as follows

F = 1/(2PiRC)

http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm

using some 1.5 ince black subdued wood screws are great for this as they will go straigt into the wood and make the holes bigger for the wood mounting of pickups. also my personal taste is to use compressed foam under the pickups like most of the makers who use wood mounted pickups and if you aren't going to be adjusting the heights of the pickups try wood shims.. osage orange is excellent.. also makes a nice plug for the redrilling of the tremelo studs. increases sustain but whoops i have gone too far

how much wattage do you need do you need somethign that you can here over the drummer but still do in a evening. try doug hammonds firefly it is basically a stripped down plexi... i have built three or four of these easy. i did my first one in a single evening.

http://home.cfl.rr.com/dbhammond/ff.htm

http://home.cfl.rr.com/dbhammond/FFAmp_sm.mp3

- Hello I´m new in this forum, I write from Spain and I hope that we can to help me, (Sorry I don´t write English very well); Anybody could help me to find the BOSS TR-2 schematic?. Thank you very much, bye.

i will look for you and see if i can find it. if you just want to build a tremelo check this out.

http://www.geocities.com/austenfantanio//mytrem.htm

this is mine and it works wonderful

Thanks guys! Im hoping to keep it as simple as possible, but I guess the "1 knob and 1 capacitor" sort of thing I envisioned is not possible. The sound im going for is John Frisciante's twang. He usually plays with an Ibanez Wh-10 wah depressed, which gives a sort of punchy jangle (i.e. "If You Have to Ask" , or any song for that matter off Blood Sugar Sex Magik). Is this a parametric EQ sort of sound?

I would have no problem with assembling a complicated project, but my goal is simplicity. Please let me know what you make of this!

(Im aiming for less than $20, since its my first official guitar and it's basically just a pretty experiment)

Hey MikeB, my email is moojiefulagin@yahoo.com - I would love a copy of your design if it's in newbie-friendly format!

well you can do it with just a few parts and keep it passive.. basically you can make a low cut filter.. and set the value to accent the mids and the highs.. do you like the sound of the lead channel on the 1987 marshall plexi..

if so then i can draw you something. you can email me or if brian wants i will make it a tutorial..

austenfantanio@yahoo.com

essentially it is taking a 500k-1M pot and using the first lug as the input..(ie the wire going to the jack.) and tie the middle and last lugs together. and strap a 2200pf cap across the outside lugs.

---------||----------

* *

---*{this is the pot} *------

1 2 3

in-- -tied------------out

see if that helps you. if it doesn't the try a .001 for more highs. or a .004uf for more low mid and bass.

Silicon diodes will conduct at about 0.7Volt and Germanium at about 0.3 volt so your pickup needs to give more than this output if you want distortion. Physics is against you if your output is less than 0.3v, I don't know of any semiconducter that has a lower forward voltage bias, you will have to add an op-amp to boost the signal then allow the diodes to clip. You might as well then build a Blues-Breaker distortion unit which uses diodes and op-amps in a similar fashion but with a lot more control of gain etc.

The problem is that the clipping turns on hard as soon as you exceed the voltage threshhold as stated above and off as soon as you go below it. Fiddling around with op-amps you can have the onset of the distortion happen much softer. (Vacuum tubes tend to do this when overdriven hence their "nicer" sound)

Have a look at General Guitar Gadgets for the Blues Breaker schematic.

Keith

one word schotky

ok two words schotky diodes

those are really good. i didnt actually realise that that was all a black ice distortion chip was lol.

btw im not too sure how the sustainer thing works. is the little piezo speaker attatched to the back of one of the pickups or is it on a seperate pickup??

the black ice isn't a chip by theway it is just encapsulated in a black probally resin material with some lamp black thrown in. similar in looks to the emg pickups.

by the way if you like emg spc controls.. this will blow your mind its based off of craigandertons easy tonecontrols.. and essentially it can be modded to be a mxr distortion pedal. too funy.

sorry folks i didnt' know that this forum was here,, hmm guess i should pay more attention. as far as the sustainor goes yes it is best to put the piezo as close as possible to the pickup.. now if you have the room you can use a small speaker instead of the piezo. i chose piezo for space. not nescecarily for effeciency.

basically it works like this.. all pickups have some sort of degree of being microphonic. it just depends on how hard you hit them with signal, and what freq range that signal is.. sometimes this has only worked on single coils. other times it has worked on every pickup.. i have done this mod around 13 times or better. personally i use a 100uf cap or better, basically you trade off bass for batterie life.

you need to have some bass in there to move the speaker. but not too much cause it will eat your batterie. you could probally get by with a 1uf cap. you can also use the stock tone control pot, and just put a 1k resistor across the outer lugs to convert it to a 1k pot.

now to answer your questions ..

soapbarstrat Posted on Jan 30 2004, 12:46 AM

I hope some of you that build the sustainer will say how well it works.

Can a sustainer like this be used with the amp at low volume, and little or no distortion being used ?

Hope it can work on a neck position single coil. >>>> yes ti works great on singles

MikeB Posted on Jan 29 2004, 04:52 PM

hi all, i saw the sustainer link there, and am interested in making one, but wanted to know which pickup to mount the piezo sounder on, and if it mattered. Would CA or epoxy be best for mounting? have you tried this circuit? would this work on my active pickups?

thanks for your time!

Mike >>>>>

depends on the actives.. i had to use a small speaker instead fo the piezo for my emgs when i first did this. but it seemed to work great on them was a little noisier than passive pickups but i think that is partially because i didnt' adjust the gain either. i left it wide open. epoxy is fine.

otgordin Posted on Jan 29 2004, 03:22 PM

I think i figured this out. I don't know if my revelation is gonna be news to anyone but i figured i'd post it just in case people like me were wondering what this circuit does. Pretty much it takes the signal from your pickups, amplifies it, and then sends it to a piezo element glued to the underside of the bridge pickup. Does anyone have any idea how well this will work? Cause I have no idea without trying it.

>>>>> it works great as a diy alternative to an actual sustainor. i dont' claim that this will revolutionize the world,, just gives an alternatvie to forking out a couple hundred dollars or however much they cost. good on ya for figureing it out.

-Vadim

JohnnyG Posted on Jan 29 2004, 02:18 PM

RS would almost certainlly have the chip. its a standard chip made my a lot of companies much like the bog standard 741 op-amp. you may also want to look at the LM380 as well, its basically the same as the 386 except that its a bit more powerful (386 is 0.3 watt amp and the 380 is 1 watt)

the lm380 is actually a 2.5 watt chip depending on what voltage you put it at. also you really wouldnt' want to use this one without a preamp before it as it has an internal gain of 34 which really doesn't do much in a circuit like this. you could use a feedback loop resistor but it really is kind of like putting a luggage rack on a volkswagen you can do it but comeon.. lol.

the lm386n-3 is a 660mw amplifier when the gain is at 200 which would be a perfect bridge between pins 1 and eight.

1. What is the rating of the cap?>>>> cap is anywhere really from a 1uf to 330uf

2. Does the Op-Amp need -9V to come to one of the pins? lm386 single supply mini poweramp

3. How, where and to what is the piezo connected?>>>>>it is connected to the back of the pickup you desire to put it on.

4. What model of small RS piezo buzzer is it...>>> that i dont' remember sorry but you can use a little speaker if you have the room.

5. What kind of switch is this and how is it wired?>>> the switch on the top right??? if so it is your standard pickup selector it doesnt effect the sustainor unit at all, i have shown this unit to be on all the time. but you can add whichever switch you desire to do to make it come in and out. i would use a push pull dpdt pot personally.

JohnnyG >>>back of the pickup. you wish it to work on.