Guitar Pedal Electronics

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

[Last Updated: January 4, 2023] Reviewing the True Bypass Circuit We introduced the True Bypass wiring scheme in Figure 1.1, shown again for your reference. When engaged, the input signal travels into the left side of the FX CIRCUIT block through switch SW1a. The output signal travels out of the right side of the circuit,

[Last Updated: January 3, 2024] What is True Bypass? The idea behind True Bypass wiring is simple: when bypassing a guitar pedal the signal should be routed directly from the input jack to the output jack with minimal interference. Nothing should get in the way of the guitar signal when the pedal is true-bypassed. The