Designing New Pedals?

[bifbangpow]

Hey guys. So I've been building pedals for about a year now. I etch my own boards using printed circuit board transfers I find online. I've made a number of vintage clones.  But now I would really like to get into designing my own pedals... meaning pedals that have never existed before.  Or rather, my own fuzz pedal, etc.
Obviously at this point I understand what each component does individually, but I don't quite understand how to design my own circuit based on what kind of sound i want.  Can you recommend some links or books that will help me understand and learn?

[PBE6]

The best way to start is to take a look at what others have done before. I'd suggest reading GeoFEX's articles on the Tubescreamer and the Fuzz Face. Electrosmash also has a number of articles in the same vein. Electricdruid also just finished a very good article on the Boss Metal Zone. The more of these you read, the better idea you'll have about how the circuit blocks work and how they can fit together to achieve the sound you want.

Experiment! And when you run into trouble, let us know. There's more than a few pedal Jedi willing to help out.

[knutolai]

I suggest you get yourself a breadboard if you don't have one already, wire up a fuzz you like and start tinkering with the different component values. Cause and effect. Most fuzzes nowadays are straight clones, modified clones or combined circuits.

As for literature I suggest you check out the articles over at AMZ, GeoFex and ValveWizard.

[garcho]

Obviously at this point I understand what each component does individually,

obviously, that's not true, or you wouldn't be asking this question. 
it's ok not to know, you're in the right place!

there's nothing new under the sun. unless you get yourself some real fancy ADAC DSP coding going on...

what i've found is that the building blocks are all the same, with variation. what you change typically are things like:

stages (how the blocks interact with each other)
switching (click-less bypass, true bypass, signal routing, feature bypass)
filtering (RC networks, tone stacks, active filters)
subtle "flavors", which usually come from improper testing more than actual difference, but hey whatever works (clipping diodes, slew rates)
graphics/workmanship (sounds dumb but there are a bazillion fuzz/distortion/overdrive/dirt circuits in pedals that are exactly the same, it's just how they look and the quality of the craftsmanship that are different)

read up on gain stages and filters, you'll use those blocks more than anything else, regardless of the type of effect you're building

[bifbangpow]

All of these are very helpful. Thanks guys!

[GiovannyS10]

The GEOFex ans AMZ-FX articles can help you so much. Or, by the way, you can make like me, and connect your guitar on your breadboard and try some components and see what they make with the sound. Hahahaha, select the better experiences and use all this, and voi là, you built a pedal. Hahahaha
So, is to too easy, but is this way!
So, try to see the website of the people here too, you will learn a lot.

Buuuuuuut, if you need something more..."technical" and know some engineer subjects, you can look for Aerials theory and Distortion Theory... Will help you if you want to build a dist pedal without wires  But really need a well knowledge of engineering.

Good luck, if you need, i am here.

[Mark Hammer]

If it's a distortion, I am pretty confident there is pretty much nothing left to "design".  Somebody somewhere has already done it.  We/you simply don't know about it yet.

At this point, coming up with new distortions are like saying "I put a layer of cheese under some bread, and then I put another layer of bread under that", and thinking one has come up with a new kind of cheese sandwich.

That's not to say one should be ashamed of coming up with interesting or useful mods (and when it comes to distorting, most new products really are just traditional circuits with interesting mods).  But "design" is a level higher.

The bigger question is whether there are new kinds of effects to design.  Maybe there are and maybe there aren't.  We kinda thought we knew what lay ahead in rock when Springsteen came out with his first few albums, but soon learned that Springsteen ain't Sigur Ros, or Prince.

[mth5044]

Always look at other peoples designs. I read just about every new thread that pops up on here, looking at schematics, reading what the pedal does. The building blocks are almost all there, rearranging into countless iterations. You just need to learn how to use them to form a sentence.

[vigilante397]

At this point, coming up with new distortions are like saying "I put a layer of cheese under some bread, and then I put another layer of bread under that", and thinking one has come up with a new kind of cheese sandwich.

This made me laugh. Sure I have my own "original" distortions, but while I did come up with them from scratch I can still point to a few pedals that are pretty much the same thing (minus filtering, clipping, etc)

The bigger question is whether there are new kinds of effects to design.  Maybe there are and maybe there aren't.

There are definitely some interesting digital things coming out (I recently acquired an EHX B9 organ machine. WOW!), but it definitely seems like the analog world is running out of things to discover. Freppo does some pretty interesting things with CMOS though

[R.G.]

I think I'd put it a different way.

Effects are usually based on some facet of the human ear's abilities to figure out from amplitude and frequency content variations what a sound source is doing. This was critical when the sound source might be a saber toothed tiger. Now it is a means for us to express ourselves musically by directly invoking emotion.

That quote is from the Guitar Effects FAQ at geofex.com, from 1998. It's still true, because the human hearing apparatus hasn't changed much in the last couple of decades. 

Effects "work" because they create a way for a sound to exploit the quirks. No new quirks found to exploit, no new effects; just more ways of pressing the same buttons.

Of course, what you can do with the same old set of buttons is not all that huge a limit. Look at that keyboard you're typing on.      It may have new things that can be said. Just don't expect to come up with something as novel as a chording keyboard. 

[GibsonGM]

At this point, coming up with new distortions are like saying "I put a layer of cheese under some bread, and then I put another layer of bread under that", and thinking one has come up with a new kind of cheese sandwich.

This made me laugh. Sure I have my own "original" distortions, but while I did come up with them from scratch I can still point to a few pedals that are pretty much the same thing (minus filtering, clipping, etc)

The bigger question is whether there are new kinds of effects to design.  Maybe there are and maybe there aren't.

There are definitely some interesting digital things coming out (I recently acquired an EHX B9 organ machine. WOW!), but it definitely seems like the analog world is running out of things to discover. Freppo does some pretty interesting things with CMOS though

Yes, totally!  It's funny...now, at times, we see an "original" design come out...and if you've been around enough, you  might see that someone has independently come up with a Rat, or Dist+!   So it does seem that the desire for certain manipulations of the sound wave lead to certain endings.   

I'm sure there are a few new effects out there, but most really are 'make-overs', or things that add a function to an existing design.

For the OP: finding old issues of "Stompboxology" could be very helpful to you, esp. the article on using envelopes and the like!  This way you could be the one to create a distortion with octave up that only kicks in with a certain attack, or something like that  

[garcho]

the future of guitar pedals definitely lays in ternary quantum computing. or leaky germanium transistors...

check out these sites, dig around for lots of good info:

geofex

AMZ

ampage

stompboxology

all about circuits

MIT

and man many more...

[deadastronaut]

breadboard, breadboard, breadboard.....