Hi
I'm wayne, first time fx builder, but i have over 10 tube amp builds under my belt. Anyway I want to build a few fx i wanted to build and was wondering if it would be possible to fit them in one enclosure? Assumeing you used true bypass on all 3 circuits you could just simply feed the signal into the next circuit correct?
Also, any ideas on a power supply? couldnt you just daisey the juice off a single 9v power source assumeing there was enuff current?
And, what is the typical m/f size of the 9v connectors, i can only seem to find diameter sizes for jacks and plugs.
Anyway, if these Q's are in the faq sorry, i didnt see them. Stoked to get into these projects.
wayne
The DC jacks are 2.1 mm. That's the pin diameter but the guys at the elctronics shop'll know what you're after. I think it's fine to put multiple FX in one box. Shouldn't be a problem. :?
Hi,
your idea is not new, but good !
look at www.foxroxelectronics.com they made it in the Captain Coconut.
bye
Oliver
Outside diameter for the plug is 5.5mm I think. That works on BOSS and others, and I use the complementary jacks. Daisy-chaining power lines is fine (as long as they all are negative ground, OR all are posistive ground - if you want to mix, check out the +9V to -9V circuit at GEO)
Your only concern with putting 3 effects in one box is interference: have an analog delay next to a high gain distortion in the same box and you might just end up with a heck of a lot of clock-squeal. Mostly it's not a problem though.
avoid groundloops, and star-ground the different circuits from the input jack.
Good luck!
Whenever you have multiple effects in one box, it can be helpful to have some means of altering their order, though of course that depends on the particular effects involved. In some cases, the nature of the effect is such that you'd never likely want to alter the order, whereas in other cases the effects cry out for being able to do the equivalent of patching them together differently.
During the golden era of 4/5-in-one analog effects rackmount units (MXR Omni, Ibanez UE-300, etc.), it was common to have a means for "station-switching". One way to do this was to have each bypass switch be essentially an uncommitted switch, although wired up in a fixed order. Another rotary switch would then "direct" the input and output of the specific effect circuit to bypass switch A, B, C, etc. To some extent, it is incumbent on the user to make sure that the effects are set in a plausible order and you don't have a situation like 3 effects assigned to the same station and nothing assigned to the station immediately preceding.
On a multi-FX rack unit I built for myself almost 20 years ago, I included a patch panel on the back, using small RCA plugs/jacks. These have no particular advantage other than price and size. At the time, I found a deal on some short prefabricated RCA-to-RCA patch cords, and the panel-mount RCA jacks were dead easy to install. My own effects ordering was done via the patch panel. It was certainly very flexible, but I suspect setup time would have been drastically reduced by use of the rotary switches described above.
Just about any commercial wallwart will provide more than enough juice for 3 typical effects. The only exceptions would be 3 heavy-current-consumption delay-based effects running off something like a 50ma supply, though such configurations are comparatively rare.
As much as purists don't like to use solid-state switching, there is something to be said for the flexibility if provides in multi-effect contexts. I'm fond of the old 4016-based CMOS switch that Anderton has in EPFM, largely because it lends itself nicely to use of both momentary OR latching switches. You can parallel one of each and have the effect kick in as long as you hold the momentary switch down (and cut out/bypass the moment you lift your foot; great for "punch-in" single riff effects), OR hit the latched switch and have it stay on until you dictate otherwise.