Noob question: Battery- = Gnd?

[ballooneater]

Sorry for this noobish question, but I just have to make sure.

The (-) side of the battery is the same as ground, correct? 

[R.G.]

No. At least not in general. It just seems that way because for many if not most circuits, battery (-) is connected to ground.

If you are new to this, there is a very important distinction here.

1. "Ground" used to be defined as a metal rod driven into the dirt to make contact with the planet itself. That's where the use of the term "ground" and "earth" comes from for a reference point. Since the planet is everywhere you want to do electronics (except for in-space electronics) it was convenient to define the planet itself has having a voltage of zero volts.
2. As it's used today, "ground" means "the point of reference against which all other voltages are measured from."  This is how you can have a ground in a battery powered phone. It's a place where you say ground is, and by convention, that's where you clip your reference probe to measure all the other voltages.
3. You can pick any circuit node as ground, as long as it does not have to interconnect with other equipment using a different definition of ground.
4. The design of the equipment and its connections usually determine the best place to call "ground". In most guitar pedals, the battery (-) is connected to ground. However in some pedals, the (+) terminal of the battery is considered ground. There are some ugly ramiifcations to this, not the least of which is that a positive-ground pedal and a negative-ground pedal may not share both a common power supply and a common ground; if you try this, there is a dead short across the power supply, by definition.

Sorry if I'm giving you too much information. But ground and battery (-) are not the same. They are just often connected together.

As you may suspect by now, you've hit one of those questions that seems like it should be easy, but isn't.

[ballooneater]

Thank you for you ever-helpful reply, R.G.

Just to make sure I understand:
I can connect all the schematic marks "GND" with the (-) terminal of the battery for the majority of pedals; notable exceptions being those that specifically mention grounding to earth (I think the Badstone does) and those that use (+) ground/(-) voltage.

[R.G.]

Just to make sure I understand:
I can connect all the schematic marks "GND" with the (-) terminal of the battery for the majority of pedals; notable exceptions being those that specifically mention grounding to earth (I think the Badstone does) and those that use (+) ground/(-) voltage.

You're really close.
1. On ALL pedals, all the parts marked as ground are connected together with wires.
2. Each pedal schematic will show either the + or - side of the battery connects to one of these symbols if it is a single-power-supply pedal; some pedals use two power supplies, one + with respect to ground and one -. This is a bipolar power supply, and is rare; an example is the Mutron III/Neutron filter.
3. There are no pedals which require actual connection to "earth", a wire into the ground. When electronics schematics say "earth", it means that the person who wrote it learned their electronics in a British school. "Earth" is used identically with "ground" in the UK and places taught by people from the UK.
4. Exceptions are almost always full of PNP transistors, and usually germanium transistors. There are exceptions.

1 and 2 are true always.