What's a good effects book?

[jmusser]

I've heard Mark and some others talk about different books that they get a lot of good information out of. I'm looking for a book that gives you effects circuitry in easy to understand language. I used to know electronics fairly well back years ago, as it applied to radio and television, but we never did get into anything like effects building. I know a few fragments of things, but I'd like to be able to get the big picture, on how the individual sections of a circuit work.

[davebungo]

RA Penfold/Craig Anderton...

[Mark Hammer]

Yep.  Those guys are still the kings.  One of the nice things about the Anderton books is that they address mods and what you can get done by changing individual component values.  I learned a lot from that.  If you hop over to your library and look through back issues (pre-1992 is usually good) of Radio Electronics, Popular Electronics, Electronics Today, Elektor, Practical Electronics, and Wireless World, they often have construction articles that step through the circuit sections and explain what things do.  The language is not always simple, but often enough to keep doofuses like me well-informed.

Finally, kill two birds with one stone and order a stompbox kit from PAiA, like the Rocktave.  Their instruction manuals are topnotch and a great way to learn.

[jmusser]

Mark, I believe you reviewed a newer book on here sometime late last year. Would that one be too advanced?

[Mark Hammer]

That would be the recent Dave Hunter book.  It's not really a how-does-it-work-electronically book, but is really more of a things-to-drool-over book.  Indeed, a great deal of the actual technical information that Hunter provides (outside of the extremely good design device provided by the various folks interviewed for the book), is simply inaccurate or insufficient, including the "schematics" provided to illustrate categories of effects  A nice read but not recommended if you want to know how to make stuff.  Not at all in the same league as Penfold and Anderton.

Another place to look is Rod Elliot's ESP (Elliot Sound Products) website.  He has a ton of interesting audio projects there, both musician and listener-oriented, and he spends a great deal of space time explaining their functioning.

[jmusser]

Thanks Mark. I mostly want to get a basic knowledge of what the components and sections of a circuit are doing. The stuff that yourself and R.G. (among others) have explained, have been worth a lot. R,G.s explaination of the Super Fuzz, would be in the direction I'm talking about. I want to get a grasp on how one component (or group), effects the next phase of the circuit. Right now, I have several pieces of the puzzle, but I don't have very many of them fit together yet. R.G says something like "this wad of componets is for this". Really, that's about all I want to know, because obviously the math has already been done to set the values that we're looking at if it's vintage circuit. The other part that's nice, is to see the wave forms like Plate to Plate shows for what is going on to create an up octave. "It goes through this section, and looks like so, because this particular thing happened to it". That's very helpful.

[jsleep]

Jeff,

I love effects (obviously) and effects books.  The "Guitar Effects Pedals" (Dave Hunter) Book is good and has a lot of good information.  The "Effects Explained" section of that book could be somewhat useful for a beginner DIYer.   "Analog Man's Guide To Vintage Effects" (Tom Hughes) is the best book about commercial effects book I've seen, excellent stuff, pretty much put's Thomson's popular Stompbox book to shame ;-)

As for DIY effects, I think Craig Anderton's the Electronic Projects For Musicians is still the best.  Starts at an easy to understand level, but there's enough in there to keep anyone happy for a long time.  The way he presents the Envelope Follower project in a way that control many of the other projects is an effect builder/experimenter's dream come true.  Somewhere on the internet, there are updated PCB masks to replace the hard to find dual opamp he uses with today's pinout standards, so the book is still a good resource.  Rumor has it these will soon be converted to PDF for easier access.

Don't forget to download the Device pdf's from Mark's site if you're into "alternative" effects sounds :-) (thanks for posting those Mark!)  

Although it's not about effects, I love the "Vintage Synthesizers" (Mark Vail) book.

JD

[Mark Hammer]

I want to get a grasp on how one component (or group), effects the next phase of the circuit. Right now, I have several pieces of the puzzle, but I don't have very many of them fit together yet. R.G says something like "this wad of componets is for this". Really, that's about all I want to know, because obviously the math has already been done to set the values that we're looking at if it's vintage circuit. The other part that's nice, is to see the wave forms like Plate to Plate shows for what is going on to create an up octave. "It goes through this section, and looks like so, because this particular thing happened to it". That's very helpful.

Here's an idea for everyone and for Aron/Peter, then.  Every now and then someone does a "walk-through" of a given circuit.  I know I've done it for stuff like the MXR BlueBox and a few others, and others have done it for other pedals.  They seem to help so many folks, so it would be nice to have an archive of those particular postings.  Certainly some of the more detailed documents that RG and Jack, among others,  have posted are wonderful but as j notes, sometimes simply saying something on the order of "these buncha parts do this" - effectively drawing an imaginary dotted line around a group of components and functionally labelling that cluster - can give folks a leg up.

[jmusser]

That would be great. Of course, I still have some work to do to understand all of the various sections of the circuit too. That's where the reading will come in. When I was in electronics back in the mid 70s (last two years of high school), we went through some really heavy theory, and of course most of it was discrete components. We did a lot of tube theory (amplification), and how it would eventually relate to transistorized circuitry. The only time you saw a chip, was in an 8 track tape deck, so I kind of missed out on that portion with chips. The other thing was, we tracked wave forms throughout a TV or Radio circuit and all that, but we never tried to deliberately wreck a signal like is done in stomp boxes. It still surprises me to this day, that no one ever brought a fuzz to school. Until about 5 years ago, I honest to God, didn't know there was such a thing. I always thought it was just the amp or guitar that made the different sounds that they got, because I had never been around people playing rock music. I had sure listened to a lot of it, but never had a seen a stompbox. I had never heard of an audio signal being rectified, only AC out of the wall, as it applied to power supplies. Then, you sure didn't want to have a wave form out of it! You wanted the wave form to be filtered as close to straight line as you could get, because ripple is a no no in power supplies. So, I missed the boat on that part of my electronics education.

[inverseroom]

What about the Stompbox Cookbook?  It seems to be out of print, but is there some private source for it, e.g., the author?  I checked on eBay and ABE books and Powell's without any luck.

[GhengisJung]

Don't forget to download the Device pdf's from Mark's site if you're into "alternative" effects sounds :-) (thanks for posting those Mark!)

Are you referring to the many excellent documents at ampage (http://hammer.ampage.org) or are there more nuggets of wisdom out there that I'm missing?

[Caferacernoc]

Not a book, but the AMZ CD will keep you busy for a while.
Highly recommended.

[John Lyons]

The AMZ CD and site as well as GEOFX website technology of sections, How to cook your own distortion and a few other things in the wiki go a long way to "understanding" pedal circuits. Lots of good stuff in the wiki if you dig around.
Craig Anderton's books are great as well.

A walk through of the Univox Super Fuzz would be great if anyone wants to do it. Mark, I know this one is special to you..hint hint...
I think this is a fun way to share info. There are a lot of different snippets here and there but a walk through of a a specific unit from begining to end I think would help folks"get it". Me included.

Jeff. I got a lot out of your posts,reviews and layout diagrams a while back when I was getting into all this. Just wanted to say thanks...!

John

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

The AMZ CD and site as well as GEOFX website technology of sections, How to cook your own distortion and a few other things in the wiki go a long way to "understanding" pedal circuits.

+1 on that.
Really, a bit of time spent on the net, will find material much more useful than any book. I know, because I have the books
Seriously, the best way to learn, is to start building (from GGG boards, or tested stripboard or perf layouts) and chase stuff up via searching on the net or on this board.
When you find anything particularly interesting, print it out (which I prefer) or save on disc. You will soon have the best 'book' there is!

[John Lyons]

+1 on your +1 
Every time I read something good in a post here I either write it down in a notebook if it's simple, or copy it into a notepad file on the computer or print it out on paper to reference later. I've got 3 ring binders of schematics, tweaks, how to articles and technical discussions that I can refer to. 
There are many many books worth of info either in the threads here or in the links to websites above. Wiki/search the threads for specific builds etc etc.

John

[StephenGiles]

Being totally disorganised, I can rarely lay my hands quickly on any given piece of paper acquired or printed out over the last 30 years or more, but bearing in mind Marks idea, now might be a good time to sort this stuff out once and for all. I do remember tearing out a number of articles from Practical Electronics and ETI which did, as Mark said, have good explanatory texts - my Auto Wah article in Hobby Electronics is not bad, even after the pea brained editor changed it! I only got £60 out of the promised £100 for that.

Also some manufacturers include detailed circuit descriptions in their service manuals, and I do have a few of those, which although are not specifically guitar effects, would contain useful circuit building blocks - good for passing the time on long haul flights such as 16 hours London to Buenos Aires! These building blocks can be adapted from high headroom dual 15v to 9v single supply, or even 9v dual supply using a bigger container - ooops I musn't even go there!

I will certainly have one of my periodic trawls through my various piles of papers to see what is worth contributing.