After many years of tweaking and building what are your inherent truths?

[Bill Mountain]

I always want to get really fancy with my builds and I look for all sorts of unique ways to clip or EQ a signal but I'm always brought back to reality when I plug in a simple pedal and it sounds great.

So my inherent truth is simple.  A high pass filter before clipping and a functional EQ post clipping will almost always produce a decent sounding pedal.  The clipping element almost doesn't matter if the EQ is powerful enough.

Example:  I built a super crazy fuzz with Ge diodes, CMOS inverters, and vintage opamps which has a ton of low end created by putting the diodes in a low pass circuit which only clipped the highs.  I put in months of thought into the circuit and tweaked it endlessly to get where it is and I still have a bunch of tweaks to try.  I tried to make the design simple and elegant.  I approached it from an artistic standpoint more than a functional one.  I thought I was onto something (I still do) and I was comparing it to a simple LM386 overdrive pedal at practice the other day.  The 386 overdrive had an extreme high pass on the front (around 700Hz) and I just bumped up the bass on the amp (played clean) and it was amazing and it didn't require months of R&D.  I'll just build one of the many 386 based overdrives with a HPF on the front and an EQ on the back.  Instead of building based on unique ideas I should really be concentrating on using basic circuits to accomplish needed tasks.

What about you.  When you venture down the rabbit hole what are you always reminded of after the fact?

[Mark Hammer]

1) No pedal stands alone.  They are always in between a guitar and something else.  Which means that the pedal should anticipate the guitar and the something else, and not attempt to do everything on its own, which leads us to...

2) More controls - whether knobs or switches - can be fun, but they can often be redundant with what comes before and after the pedal, and simply complicate repliocating preferred sounds, and clutter up the control-face.  Provide those controls that add clear value, and omit the ones that are simply nice-to-haves.

3) If it's a one-off, or the "first" of anything, you're gonna f*** it up some how, some way, so accept it and be ready.  Could be wires you cut too short, could be something shorting out against something else, could be a teeny tiny solder bridge, or whatever.  But something is going to present an obstacle and delay between "There, it's done and boxed up!" and "Yowza, that sounds amazing!".  If you've made it for the 4th or 5th time, those obstacles shouldn't be there, but first times are fraught with bugs.  Treat trouble-shooting tips and trouble-shooting as being as fundamental to building as using locking washers on jacks.

4) Keep notes.  I don't, and I deeply regret it.

5) When it comes to distortion, you usually need less of it than you think you do.

6) When it comes to distortion, after the first 50 they pretty much all sound the same.

[Bill Mountain]

1) No pedal stands alone.  They are always in between a guitar and something else.  Which means that the pedal should anticipate the guitar and the something else, and not attempt to do everything on its own, which leads us to...

2) More controls - whether knobs or switches - can be fun, but they can often be redundant with what comes before and after the pedal, and simply complicate repliocating preferred sounds, and clutter up the control-face.  Provide those controls that add clear value, and omit the ones that are simply nice-to-haves.

3) If it's a one-off, or the "first" of anything, you're gonna f*** it up some how, some way, so accept it and be ready.  Could be wires you cut too short, could be something shorting out against something else, could be a teeny tiny solder bridge, or whatever.  But something is going to present an obstacle and delay between "There, it's done and boxed up!" and "Yowza, that sounds amazing!".  If you've made it for the 4th or 5th time, those obstacles shouldn't be there, but first times are fraught with bugs.  Treat trouble-shooting tips and trouble-shooting as being as fundamental to building as using locking washers on jacks.

4) Keep notes.  I don't, and I deeply regret it.

5) When it comes to distortion, you usually need less of it than you think you do.

6) When it comes to distortion, after the first 50 they pretty much all sound the same.

#1 and #4 are spot on.  I always forget that my amp has EQ.  I never forget about my bass though.  That thing is super hot and it's one of the reasons I started building because no pedal I bought could handle it.  Most pedals I build can't handle it either and any pedal that works well with my bass is probably useless for other basses.  I should really juts get a new bass...

About #4.  I keep everything.  EVERYTHING!!! But I don't leave myself notes.  I draw something on a napkin and stick it in a pile.  When I come to it again I have no idea what I was going to use it for.  My wife hates it but I have schematics in almost every room of the house.  I need to purge and then maybe put an encyclopedia together for myself.

Solid list Mark.  Thank you!!!

[R.G.]

You have most of the inherent truths - EQ before and after clipping to taste.

Then there's Ohm's Law.

[Bill Mountain]

You have most of the inherent truths - EQ before and after clipping to taste.

Then there's Ohm's Law.

Good point.  Even though I forget it constantly all things can be explained/designed/tweaked by using Ohm's Law.  Fight it all you want but you can't win.

[R.G.]

Mother Nature whispered loudly in Georg Ohm's ear, OK.   

[Mark Hammer]

I always forget that my amp has EQ.

That works both ways.  If you like a bright clean sound, set the amp to produce it, and then you throw something onto that fire that will significantly increase the harmonic content, you've got a problem.  And the solution to that problem involves anticipating the way you like to set your amp for unaffected sounds, and building in the sort of control to the pedal that gets you the desired change between amp-only and pedal-into-amp.  That needn't involve more controls.  It could simply mean adjusting rolloffs appropriately.

I'll expand point /1 and merely say that it is always useful to think in terms of systems and whole signal paths.

As for bits of paper, I suspect our respective spouses would find something eerily familiar about each others' homes. 

[PBE6]

+1 Mark, my experience thus far is all pointing in that direction.

[digi2t]

Understanding and patient partner, to help you get through those late night builds, or endless hours of mind-numbing reading / tracing / sketching / troubleshooting, etc.

My ex never understood my hobby, and to some small degree, probably contributed to our split.

My present partner may not really comprehend the technical aspects, but understands (and whole heartedly supports) the fact that I need this to keep my brain running. Just one of the many reasons why I'm goin' to marry that girl.  

That's my truth. The rest is just gravy.

[Bill Mountain]

Should we also discuss the ghost in the machine?  Or does she only haunt me?

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Inherent truth:

No matter how good a pedal SOUNDS..... if it doesn't LOOK good, 99.99% of the time people will not consider it.

[tca]

Do the math, do the sim, breadboard it, built it, and repeat!

[Mark Hammer]

Inherent truth:

No matter how good a pedal SOUNDS..... if it doesn't LOOK good, 99.99% of the time people will not consider it.

Of course the reverse is not necessarily true.  People may not give something snazzy-looking more than a moment's consideration.  But you're correct that bright shiny objects have always, and will always, grab our attention.

We're such a silly little species.

[GGBB]

The likelihood that your new idea has already been done by someone else is inversely proportional to the number of circuits you've built, and yet always exceedingly high.

[GibsonGM]

The likelihood that your new idea has already been done by someone else is inversely proportional to the number of circuits you've built, and yet always exceedingly high.

My inherent truth:

I can spend hour upon hour "inventing" a way to do something, from first principles. I will review the math, the theory, go on goose-chases to recall how to calculate this and that...and voila!!  I find a different way to clip, or to make an octave, etc, all on my own!

Then I'll look at some fairly common circuits, and if I clean up what I've 'created', I find that I'm doing exactly the same thing...but THEIR stuff is neater, has all the right tweaks to account for various impedances and losses here and there - the deep stuff that finishes a design off.

There's a saying in biology, "Darwin already thought of that".  I'd like one for this hobby, "Ohm already thought of that", he he!!  Or maybe MXR...

But - the chase is so enlightening and educational (ack, dirty word!), it's worth every minute.  One day, each of us will design some part of a cold fusion reactor, and change the world, after all!   

[Beo]

6) When it comes to distortion, after the first 50 they pretty much all sound the same.

Ok, so it's not just me! 

[akc1973]

Distortion pedals are fun to build but once you've built a BazzFuss and Omega, you don't need many others!

[alanp]

Every first version of a layout has a screwup.

You can only hope that the screwup is something minor, like a missing connection that you can solder bridge, and not something major, like a Vref that you've linked to ground.

[Blitz Krieg]

crackle is okay

[JustinFun]

My inherent truth

You (I) can spend a surprising amount of time debugging before realising that you haven't put the ICs in their sockets yet.