Switching solution

[tranceracer]

Hey DocHeavy,
Thanks for your input and sharing, your analysis is right on the money.  I've realized that if multiple switches are pressed, multiple effects banks will be initialized. 

You are correct, if the "guitar virtuoso" wants one effect bank active they will have to turn off all the other banks.  Just to keep things simple on this potentially complex board I didn't draw in deactivation logic for the other switches.  I think the guitarist using a board such as this will be able to figure out that they will have the deactivate the unused effect bank and activate another.

This is actually a "feature" an example, one bank can be for a single distortion and another bank for only a phaser effect.  The "artist" can punch the distortion for the intro and later press the the phaser bank and have a distortion with a phase shifter sound.

Other suggestions or recommendations are welcome!

-tR

[widdly]

You could replace the ten foot-switches with a CMOS counter and use two foot-switches for up/down. 

If you wanted to get fancy, you could feed the counter output to a CMOS 7-segment led driver and have a display for the currently selected preset number.  Or you could just use ten separate LEDs.

You could use the CMOS switches instead of the relays for a cheaper solution too (described in a geofex article and on tonegod).

[Alien8]

  Awesome thread.

I know about this little unit, and the associated floor controller that will accomplish your wishes, however it is pricy ($1200 for "brain" and floor board):

http://voodoolab.com/gcx.htm
http://voodoolab.com/gcontrolpro.htm



I have an associated problem that I can't figure out for the life of me  :  A pedal / switch to route a pedal from in front of the amp to fx loop on the fly.  Basically I want to be able to hit the switch when I kick in my Qtron+ to route distortion through the fx loop in the Qtron+.  I would also build one for my digital delay for pre / post amp delays as well.  Any ideas   I tried to modify my home made t-b dual looper pedal to do this, however I couldn't seem to get it to work...

There is a pedal on this site to do it:  www.looper.com with a switch, but I have no schematics to get me there. 

[tranceracer]

Alien8,
Your switching solution is relatively straight forward...  It's actually a little simpler than my "dancing queen" pedal.
In order to switch between an inline EFX and the amp's fx loop you'll need two DPDT switchs or 4PDT relay.  You'll need to run the amp's effects loop in and out jacks to the box.

In one position your signal will be routed from your guitar>EFX>amp in. (amp fx loop is tru bypassed)
the other position the signal will route from your guitar>amp in.  (the switches swing the EFX to the amp fx loop)

Here's a quick diagram of what the switch routing may look like:


...of course add bells and whistles to taste.

Hope this give you some ideas!

-tR

[Alien8]

Thanks for the reply tranceracer! 

Here's a picture of what I tried, you'll note that I left the ground routing out, since I think I crossed grounds... I'm guessing that I would need a 4P/DT switch to keep the grounds switched as well?


By alien8 at 2007-11-14

Thanks for any input!!

[tranceracer]

Good job! you've reduced the dual DPDT switch array to a single 3PDT!  Looks like it'll be pretty easy to wire up!

-tR

[Alien8]

I guess what I need to know is what do I do with the grounds?  Do I isolate the grounds in the FX loop from the grounds in the guitar line?  Or do I just hook them all up together?  I'm slightly fearful of finding out the hard way that I did it wrong by blowing something up...

Then if I do need to isolate the grounds do they need to be switched as well?  Ie switch the guitar ground from the EFX chain directly to the output when the EFX chain is in the FX loop - which would also mean that the grounds of the FX loop send need to be switched to the EFX chain, and back to the FX rtn when not active?   

"Know what I'm sayin' Vern?"  (quote Ernest) 

[R.G.]

I've built a few of essentially this setup for friends. The collection of advice is accurate.

You have to isolate the dip selectors with some kind of "OR" gate to keep them from interacting. It's simplest if you use "Mickey Mouse Logic" built from diodes but real CMOS logic gates work too. I find it simpler to put one relay driver per relay, and drive that from a logic signal. The ground on the logic/switching does not have to be connected to audio ground, and may be better isolated from it, either absolutely or by a resistor to keep switching transients out of the audio ground. It goes without saying that the power supply to the switching logic needs isolation from the audio path too.

There ...may be... a commercial product doing what the gig rig does and more, at a more reasonable price coming onto the market. Don't mortgage your house or dedicate your life to building your own yet... 8-)

[StickMan]

Two compressors?