This article is a follow-up to my 2015 post about the distorted pitch shift you get when applying modulation to a BBD clock. In fact, it’s more a replacement than a follow-up! Since I wrote the original article, many people have written to me with thoughts and comments, and their ideas combined with the fact […]
I’ve often seen it said online that the LM13700 is just two CA3080’s in one package. Even by one of the co-designers! While it’s almost true, it’s not exactly right, and the little differences are sometimes important, so I thought we could take a look at what the differences are. Luckily we have schematic diagrams for […]
We’ve recently started stocking Alfa’s clone of the famous old Roland IR3109 filter chip. This is the chip that was inside a ton of Roland synths, including the SH-101, Jupiter 6 and Jupiter 8, Juno 6/60 and even the Juno 106, although in that case it was hidden in a potted module! I thought it’d […]
I recently saw an advert for the new EHX Slapback Echo reissue pedal and thought it was a cool little thing and would make a nice project. The original pedal came out in 1978 and was about as simple as it could get. There was one “Blend” knob to mix the straight and delayed signal, and […]
First, a quick history of overdrive pedals. Boss got the ball rolling in 1977 with the OD-1, one of the first pedals in their now-famous “compact” series, and the first proper “overdrive” pedal – before that, they were all called “Fuzz” or “Distortion”. This pedal was part of the three releases that started the series, […]
I’d like to share a couple of things I’ve had kicking around on my desk for a long while. The first one was a simple optical tremolo, and for this second StompLFO project, we’re going to use the StompLFO to apply modulation to a PT2399 delay. This is actually very simple to do! PTWobble, StompLFO […]
I’d like to share a couple of things I’ve had kicking around on my desk for a long while. They also show a couple of ways to use vactrols. One is a simple optical tremolo, presented below, and the other is a modulated delay effect. StompLFO Optical Tremolo One very simple way to produce a […]
This page collects together just the information you need if you’re intending to build one of the Electric Druid effects pedal/stompbox projects. For each pedal, you only really need the construction guide, which includes the full bill of materials (BOM) and a wiring diagram for the PCB in the enclosure. We also provide a […]
The FilterFX project uses the Druid STOMPLFO to control a 12dB/oct state variable filter. A state variable filter (SVF) is chosen because this filter design offers highpass, bandpass, and lowpass outputs which gives us the greatest range of different effects. The LFO offers eight waveforms, including two random waveforms (one does those crazy sample-and-hold effects […]
For this post, I’d like to take you through the process of designing a pedal, from initial idea to completed PCB and pedal. Everyone has their own way of doing this, so I thought it might be interesting for people to see the way that I work on something like this. Pedal (or Synth) design […]
