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

This is the Anderton Wah/Antiwah that I have modified to work from a single 9v battery. The original project required two batteries to power it. Other components have been added to bring the design up to a modern standard. Click the above schematic for a full size drawing.

If you build this version, and use an external power jack, I would suggest that you power it with 12v or even 18v to get some extra headroom.

Craig Anderton published a design many years ago for a frequency booster project that was based on a circuit that first appeared in Electronotes, as I recall. It’s a nice little EQ boost but it is not formatted properly for guitar pedal use. It is powered by two 9v batteries and needs some minor redesign to allow use with a single 9v or standard power supply.

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A fuzz circuit from the mid-1960s using 4 germanium transistors. (more…)

This is a fuzz schematic from an electronics magazine of the mid-1960s. No power is needed for the Ge transistor. I don’t recommend that you build this circuit and have posted it just as a curiosity.

I use lots of 3PDT switches in stompboxes, and I find them to be excellent with a very low failure rate. The 3PDT makes a very solid mechanical thunk as it toggles, and some people claim that it is microphonic and causes noise. I have never found the footswitch to be microphonic, but it is a known fact that some high gain effects pedals are! Check out Bill Rupperts’ Effectology tutorial where he is using a Big Muff pedal as a drum (starts around 1:10).

It’s not the switch that’s popping… it’s your high gain pedal.

One alternative to lessen switch noise with microphonic pedals is to use a relay bypass with a soft momentary switch.

I have 5 pieces of the Fat Gnat pcb that have been on a shelf in my lab for several years and I need to sell them to make room for new projects. The Fat Gnat was featured in the Oct 2000 issue of RECORDING magazine as “The Great American Fuzz Box”.

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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.

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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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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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