[DOUBT]Voltage drop in a diode bridge.

[QSQCaito]

Wel.. while thinking about stompboxes I realized some pedals have different polarity than others, or maybe some transformers do. So I had the idea(unless some one got it before) of putting a diode bridge so you could use any polarity.. but my concern is: how much will the voltage drop after the diode bridge if we "rectify" a 9v source.


Thanks a lot!

bye bye

DAC

[Sir H C]

Depends some on current draw of the pedal but either ~.7 volts per diode for silicon or .3-.4 for schottkey diodes.

[R.G.]

SHC's answer is correct - two diode drops (there are always two diodes conducting in a bridge) times whatever the diode drop is. With silicon you lose 1 - 1.4V. With Schottky, 0.6-1V.

With a synchronously driven bridge made out of MOSFETs, you lose about 25-50mV per MOSFET at effects current levels. So you could do this with four MOSFETs and four resistors for only 0.1V lost.

... which  may not be good enough. If other effects are attached to the same power source, one of the leads gets to be groundish, and whatever is groundish on one effect is pulled groundish on another, and any ground difference is injected as noise. Which is why I didn't take this any further.

Good thinking!