What Are Decoupling Capacitors?
October 2, 2024While not as prominent in guitar pedals as coupling capacitors, decoupling capacitors are used in electronics and guitar pedals to help direct currents as needed. This is usually to smooth out DC electrical signals or prevent noise from AC signals. This may seem very similar to coupling capacitors, but there is a big difference. Coupling […]
A Brief History Of Fuzz Pedals
September 24, 2024I love fuzz pedals. I love making fuzz pedals and I love playing guitar through fuzz pedals. Although different overdrives or distortions won’t sound the same, I find the variance in sound between these types of dirty pedal is much smaller than the variance in sound you get from different fuzzes. One fuzz circuit will […]
The Difference Between NPN And PNP Transistors
September 20, 2024Transistors come in a lot of different types, but in this article, I’m only going to be talking about bipolar junction transistors (BJTs). Specifically, I’m going to be talking about NPN transistors and how they’re different from PNP transistors. A transistor is a component that’s very commonly used in guitar pedals and other electronics. If […]
How Does A Drive, Gain, Or Distortion Knob Work?
September 17, 2024I’ve touched on this subject a lot, but I want to approach it differently now. Namely, from the perspective of the potentiometer that is controlling the gain in an overdrive, distortion, or fuzz pedal. When talking about this before, I’ve mostly gone through how clipping diodes work in guitar pedals and how they cause clipping […]
What Are Coupling Capacitors?
September 13, 2024In guitar pedals and electronics in general, coupling capacitors are important to keep different parts of a circuit separate and to prevent DC power and other noise from moving from one sub-circuit to another. All in all, it’s quite simple, and that’s really the explanation… but if you want to know more, read on for […]
The Difference Between Silicon And Germanium Transistors
September 11, 2024In the world of guitar pedals (and electronics in general), transistors are made from one of two materials: silicon and germanium. There’s a difference between these two materials and how they affect what a guitar pedal does, and it’s important to use the right kind of transistor in guitar pedal builds if you want to […]
What Do Guitar Pedals Do?
September 10, 2024It didn’t occur to me to write this article, but I noticed that people were coming to this site asking “what do guitar pedals do” and ending up on my how do guitar pedals work article, which doesn’t really answer the question. So I decided to answer the question in order to help! All of […]
What Is Gain (And How It’s Different From Volume)
September 5, 2024This is going to be a fun article to write (not really), because the concept of gain is actually kind of elusive to define if you’re trying to be general. I’ve always understood the concept of gain as it pertains to guitar pedals (and general guitar oriented analogue electronics). However, as I did some research […]
Greer Amps Green Giant On Stripboard
August 28, 2024https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-muKTaGdx9E Here’s a kind of weird guitar pedal, but a fun build nonetheless and also a pretty simple guitar pedal build too. I had never heard of the Green Giant by Greer Amps before and I kind of just stumbled upon the layout on Tagboard Effects and thought it sounded interesting. Other than what’s on […]
Transistor Saturation, Active, And Cutoff Region
August 23, 2024It’s time to get a little more in depth on transistors. If you haven’t read it yet, check out my guide to transistors for some background on how transistors work in guitar pedals and in general. This article builds on the general guide to explain saturations, active, and cutoff region in transistors. The basics of […]
