48 Circuits or Less

[Last Updated: January 31, 2024] Today, we’re peeling back the curtain on Passive RC Filters! With just one resistor and one capacitor you can easily build a basic passive filter. This circuit proves useful in designing certain aspects of guitar effects pedals and helps you figure out how to modifying existing ones. Introducing: Passive RC […]

[Last Updated: January 20, 2024] Welcome back to another exciting installment of our blog series on guitar effects pedal circuit design! Today, we’re diving into a crucial yet often underestimated aspect of building guitar pedals – the power supply. Imagine the power supply as the heartbeat of your pedal, providing the lifeblood for each note

What is a Charge Pump? A charge pump is an integrated circuit (IC) that is used to convert from one voltage to another. As an example, let’s say you want to build a circuit that runs on +18Vdc, but you want to power it using a +9Vdc adapter. You can use a charge pump IC

What is a Charge Pump Inverter? A charge pump is an integrated circuit (IC) that is used to convert from one voltage to another. As an example, let’s say you want to build a circuit that runs on +18Vdc, but you want to power it using a +9Vdc adapter. You can use a charge pump

Most modern guitar pedals have one thing in common: an indicator LED. This LED allows you to know whether the effect is engaged or bypassed. In this article, we go over everything you need to know about the indicator LED circuit for guitar effects pedals. The Diode: A Review LED stands for Light Emitting Diode.

Switches: the most engaging electromechanical component! Available in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and configurations – switches give us the ability to interact with the electronic world. In this post, we’ll be covering a very particular type of switch technology that will help us design expression pedal controls and enable battery power switch-over. Introducing: the

Guitar pedal power supply circuits come with all sorts of concerns, including: We saw how to deal with reverse polarity in Circuit 5: The Diode Protectors. The other two concerns involve common sources of noise in guitar effects design, and they can be addressed with a proper power supply filter. [Last Updated: January 7, 2024]

Have you ever plugged in the wrong polarity power supply? If the circuit was never designed with that in mind, you probably weren’t too happy with the outcome! Chips can get fried, capacitors can blow up, and magic smoke may appear from strange places. Mitigate the damage done to your precious guitar effect designs by

[Last Updated: January 6, 2024] The Attenuator When you use a volume control knob on your guitar effect pedal you are most likely using a circuit called an attenuator. An attenuator is a circuit that decreases the amplitude of a signal. Attenuators are usually built with components called potentiometers. The Potentiometer A potentiometer (or pot,

[Last Updated: January 6, 2024] Intro to The Voltage Divider The voltage divider is one of the most common circuits you will run into when designing guitar effects. You may hear terms like: All these terms more or less point to the same thing: the generation of a constant voltage. The voltage divider allows you