Circuitbenders Forum

Circuitbenders Forum => Circuitbending discussion => Effects Units => Topic started by: parricide on June 09, 2011, 10:58:30 PM

Title: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: parricide on June 09, 2011, 10:58:30 PM

after finishing my first guitar pedal my hunger for more is increasing!

my schematic doesnt include a tone control and i was wondering how i could go about putting a tone control into it.

any links, ideas or anything would be great


thanks

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: Circuitbenders on June 10, 2011, 12:24:02 AM

something like the big muff tone control is pretty easy

(http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/richardo/distortion/bigmuff.gif)

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: parricide on June 10, 2011, 11:19:39 AM

thanks CB

thats exactly the kind of thing i was looking for

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: Matt the Modulator on June 10, 2011, 02:35:26 PM

here are a couple of pages on the big muff tone control with some good layouts and mods to the circuits
http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/BigMuffToneControl/ (http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/BigMuffToneControl/)
http://www.muzique.com/lab/tone3.htm (http://www.muzique.com/lab/tone3.htm)

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: parricide on June 12, 2011, 02:14:28 AM

thanks matt. these pages look great. i will go and look deeper in a sec.

ive got another question.
somebody in another forum said something about buffering the circuit if im going to add it to my already made distortion circuit.
what exactly is buffering and how would i do it? also how necessary is it?

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: Gordonjcp on June 14, 2011, 07:25:35 AM

The tone control circuit above works by varying the resistanc between the lowpass and highpass filter end.  Imagine the knob is set about half-way, so that the signals are evenly mixed.  If you put a 1k resistor across the output you'd reduce the effective value of the upper half of R3 and R2, making the tone brighter.  So, the load on the circuit will affect how it sounds.

A buffer is an amplifier with no gain.  "What the hell's the point of that?" you ask, annoyed that I'd bring up something so seemingly pointless.  Aha - think about it.  Ever driven a car with power steering?  Ever driven one *without* power steering?  The power steering unit doesn't make the steering wheel steer any faster, it just increases the force that you can apply.  So, fingertip pressure on the steering wheel can exert half a tonne of force at the road wheel.  A buffer amplifier does the same thing - a tiny current can drive a much heavier load, without the circuit generating it being adversely affected by the load.

It also acts as a kind of "one-way valve" that lets a signal pass from input to output but not the other way, so they're used in mixers to prevent the inputs interacting in weird ways.

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: parricide on June 14, 2011, 09:25:00 PM

thanks.
i was planning on wiring the tone control as if it is another pedal plugged into the output jack of the distortion pedal (assuming it would work this way, which it appears to) would i still need to buffer it?

Title: Re: adding tone control to a distortion pedal
Post by: Matt the Modulator on June 14, 2011, 10:22:01 PM

that totally depends on the pedal i think most boss pedals have some sort of buffered output ! i might be confused