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 […]
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 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 […]
How Do Guitar Pedal (And Guitar) Volume Knobs Work?
August 21, 2024Hopefully this article is going to be short and sweet, as the concept of volume knobs in guitar pedals (and guitars for that matter) is quite simple. This explanation should hold for volume control on analogue devices, however, I’m not sure if it holds for digital volume control; it probably does in a general sense, […]
How Do Guitar Pedals Work?
August 6, 2024If you’re a guitarist, you’ve probably used (or at least come across) a number of pedals. But effects pedals aren’t just used for guitars. They’re often used with other instruments. Guitar pedals are often built to work well with guitars, but they can be used with other instruments. Other more general effects pedals may be useful […]
Is It Expensive To Make Your Own Guitar Pedals?
July 25, 2024If you’re looking to get into making DIY guitar pedals, you’re probably wondering if it’s an expensive hobby. After all, guitar pedals made by major manufacturers can be 100’s of dollars, with pedals made by boutique builders can be even more… The short answer is no, making your own guitar pedals isn’t that expensive, especially when […]
What’s The Difference Between Symmetrical And Asymmetrical Clipping?
July 17, 2024When it comes to clipping sound signals, typically in guitar pedals, you’ll often hear about symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping. Although clipping guitar signals (and any audio signal for that matter) can be done through a variety of ways, when talking about symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping, people are specifically talking about clipping diodes in guitar pedals. […]
How To Use A Distortion Or Overdrive Pedal
July 12, 2024If you want to add a little more oomph to your sound, it’s common to use an overdrive or distortion pedal. The two affects have similarities, but there is a difference between overdrive and distortion. Overdrive and distortion are kind of the core guitar effects; if you ask what are guitar pedal does, OD and […]
What Is True Bypass In Guitar Pedals?
July 11, 2024Whether you’re looking to learn how to build guitar pedals or just into guitar pedals in general, you’ve probably heard the term “true bypass.” While it’s somewhat obvious what the term true bypass implies, personally, I was 100% certain what it was and wanted to better understand what it is. Also, if there’s a true […]
