Fuzzbox, Distortion, Phaser, Chorus, Echo and other Guitar Effects Info

Make Magazine Issue 15 features DIY music projects and circuit mod information. There’s plenty of interesting info in this issue, including an article about stompboxes. They even mention me by name a couple of times

This is not about pedals but it is DiY, and I thought many of you would enjoy it. The book is from the year 1938 and is a collection of 700 projects and ideas for boys (and their parents) to build or use. I hope you enjoy it!

The Boy Mechanic (18.2mb)

The Coyote-1 Open Stomp pedal has arrived! The picture above is my actual unit. I’ll have more to report once I run it through some tests.

The documentation included on the CD that comes with the pedal is quite thorough and also includes a full schematic with datasheets for the major components. A quick look at the schematic reveals it to be a solid design.

Coyote-1 Open Stomp

Okay, it is a low tech solution but you get a lot of bang for the bucks! My breadboard power supply is a 9v rechargeable battery connected to a snap that has alligator clips on the ends. I recharge it with a small solar panel.

Check out my previous post on solar power.

Here is an easy mod for switching diode clippers.

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It is a well known fact that light can have an impact on the conduction of some types of diodes. LEDs have been used as photodiodes in certain circuits.

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Cuil (pronounced “cool”) wants to be the next Google. The new search engine, founded by former Google engineers, uses a different method to rank pages, which gives results that can be radically different from a Google search.

Try it out:   Click here to search Cuil for guitar effects pedals.

If you have a bicolor LED that has 3 pins, the cathodes of the two LEDs are connected together internally and available as a common connection (middle pin). The other two legs of the LED are the anodes of the internal diodes.

The 3PDT footswitch is wired so that power is alternately applied to one of the anodes to light up the respective LED. A single current limiting resistor is used to set brightness and is shown as 10k ohms. Reduce the value to 4.7k or even 2.2k to make the indicator LEDs brighter.

Here is a way to use a 2-pin bicolor LED in a guitar stompbox. The 3PDT footswitch will pull one end of the LED alternately high or low and cause it to change color.

When the switch is connected to the top poles, the current flows from the 9v of the switch through the upper LED (green) and through the lower 10k resistor to ground. When the switch is toggled so that the center lug is connected to ground, the current flows from the upper 10k resistor through the bottom LED (red) to the switch and ground. Stomping the switch will alternate the LED between red and green.

If you want the red and green to change which switch position activates them, just rotate the LED 180° in the circuit putting the flat side to the right.

O’Reilly’s Maker Media team (the folks behind MAKE Magazine) is going to publish The Best of Instructables Volume I this fall and over 100 Instructables will be in it.

My instructable on metal box finishing has been entered in the voting by the editors. Please go to the page of my instructable and vote for it… just click on the vote button next to the Book Contest banner below the orange bar.

Vote here: AMZ Metal Box Finishing Instructable

Thanks in advance! -Jack