[759] AMZ Power Supplies

Date: August 22nd, 2010 | Comments : none | Categories: DIY.

AMZ Pedal Power

I built a couple of power supplies with the AMZ power pcb; one for a friend and the other for my own use. Those boxes are 125B size diecast aluminum, and painted with white spray paint. The one in the front (mine) has an overcoat of a strange clear color-changing paint that is difficult to photograph, and I did not care much for the finished look. The other was painted white then overcoated with a transparent Duplicolor yellow that gave a nice aged look. The effect is so good that I plan on using it on my next pedal build.
Power

 

[750] Sanyo Pedal Juice

Date: August 17th, 2010 | Comments : none | Categories: DIY.

Sanyo Pedal Juice

This is the Sanyo Pedal Juice, which is a rechargeable battery pack intended for guitar effects and music related hardware. The basic idea is to provide a clean stable power source for your pedalboard without having to worry about dead batteries or cumbersome power supplies.

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[739] Superhot Mosfet Boost

Date: August 7th, 2010 | Comments : none | Categories: DIY.

Mosfet Mini-Booster

This is a copy of a page from the Analog Music Projects Newsletter, that I first published over 9 years ago, which shows a high gain mosfet mini-booster type circuit. I saw something similar at DIYstompboxes and thought I would point this out to the purchasers of the newsletter to review if they are interested in the subject and would like to see more info.

The AMP1 newsletter also describes how to make bipolar silicon and germanium versions, as well as more than a dozen variations of srpp or mu amplifiers. Check it out!

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[726] Boss DD-20 Gigadelay Power Problems

Date: July 19th, 2010 | Comments : none | Categories: DIY.

AMZ power supply

The Roland Boss DD20 Gigadelay causes power problems for a lot of people on many different voltage adapters. It is most happy on its own power supply but with a few circuit changes, the AMZ power supply can provide the needed voltage to the pedal.

Since we don’t know what is inside the DD-20 on the power supply input, we can only guess about the design and what is causing the problems. It seems the pedal is creating instability with the regulators, likely by setting up a high frequency oscillation that causes overheating and eventual shutdown.

A few modifications can adapt the power supply to work with the Boss pedal and a complete description of the mods is included with the technical material supplied with the power supply pcb purchase.

The mod has been tested and verified to work with the Boss pedal.

AMZ Power Supply

 

[720] Cleanest Boost Pedal

Date: July 6th, 2010 | Comments : [1] | Categories: DIY.

I often see this question on pedal forums: What is the cleanest and most transparent boost pedal?

One limitation of stompboxes is the 9v power supply. It sets a limit on the voltage swing that can be easily exceeded by a modest amount of gain (boost). The result will be distortion. There is an article in the Lab Notebook which goes into more detail about this.

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[685] True Bypass with Relay

Date: June 29th, 2010 | Comments : [7] | Categories: DIY.

True bypass with relay

This is a project that I developed about 2 years ago for a rack amp system I was working on that has been put aside for now, so I decided to adapt the circuit for pedal use since the programming for the micro had already been done.

This is a 1″ x 1″ pc board which holds an AVR microprocessor that is controlling a latching DPDT relay. The LED indicator on the pedal is also driven by the micro. The soft-touch momentary switches that are shown several posts below were bought for this project.

You can use the pcb to build a new pedal, or retrofit it into a Boss or Ibanez box to give them true bypass.

More info is available here.

 

[709] AMZ Un-Buffer

Date: June 29th, 2010 | Comments : none | Categories: DIY.

Pickup simulator

Back in 2002, I published an article about pickup simulators in the Lab Notebook. The simple circuit can be built in a small metal box with in and out jacks and used as an “unbuffer”…
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[694] AMZ Power Supply Project

Date: June 2nd, 2010 | Comments : none | Categories: DIY.

AMZ power supply

First pictures have been submitted of a completed power supply using the AMZ pcb. Thanks to Gordy for permission to post his pix. Nice job!

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[680] AMZ Tweed Stack PCB

Date: June 1st, 2010 | Comments : [3] | Categories: DIY.

Tweed Stack pcb

First look at the new AMZ Tweed Stack pcb. This project is an update of the classic Booster 2.5 combined with some of the features of the Mini-Tubes Preamp from the AMZ-CD. Several boutique builders offer commercial boxes that are based on this classic project, and this pcb will have plenty of mods to apply to the circuit.

Make a high gain stack-in-a-box or a smoother less distorted analog amp sim. Coming soon!

 

[677] Multi-Fuzz Update

Date: June 1st, 2010 | Comments : [2] | Categories: DIY.

Multi-Fuzz prototype

Here’s a sneak peak at the first project based on the Multi-Fuzz pcb. Some basic testing has been done and now it’s ready to mount in an enclosure.