BYO Multi-effects (warning over-his-head newbie content)

[Hfeisnteverything]

I have bought a couple of kits from the friendly team at BYOC - but I dont want to build it their way - I want to go MULTI!!

After seeing the Carl Martin Quattro, I figured that packaging effects into a single unit could make a much more useful and gig-friendly system.  After a bit of research I found out that pros in the UK seem to us Pete Cornishs high-end services to do exactly what I was thinking of doing.

Problem is, my lack of an EE degree and general level of newbieness is stopping me.

I CAN:
Make the casing to house the all the circuitry (the current design has four pedals + a tuner), install the pots, switches etc. is a breeze - I have got access to a great wood workshop.  Debugging etc is pretty simple (most of the time!).

I CANT
Work out how to run the power to each of the circuits - using five individual batteries would be ridiculous, and using one battery to power all five would result in a serious lack of amps to each circuit altering the performance.  So I figure I would have to rig a power supply.  Any advice/pointers? 

and I also CANT
work out what to do with all the volume controls.  The current chain is compressor -> germ boost ->  808 -> delay.   I really have no need for 4 volume controls at different stages of the rig.  Mr Cornish mentions that he can build pedal board so the volume is consistent with each effect on or off, and players can just choose to get, for example, the 808 tone, without any increase in volume.  This to me is ideal - if you have a tonal pallet but no volume headaches, you can just use the guitar volume more effectively.  the compressor, 808 and boost naturally have a volume increase though.  At present I am in the process of getting my head around all of this.

So packaging four effects in one box
a) How do we power it
b) How do we simplify the volume control system.

Hope this is clear!  I have been reading the board for a while to get an education, so to speak, and this seems like a nice place.  I want to get this thing licked before Christmas and will be happy to post build pics!

[choklitlove]

welcome.

this may not be what you want to hear, but this is how i would accomplish what you're talking about.
power: i would install 9volt adapter jacks for each circtuit.  i would then invest in the super cheap and awesome 1 spot and 5 pedal daisy chain.  you could leave all of that internal as well if you like.
volume: i would definitely keep a volume or level pot in each effect.  they are too important and need to be adjusted frequently depending on guitar/amp/surroundings/etc.

there is a layout for this, but can't find it...  good luck!

[choklitlove]

oh, yeah, i was just searching, and there's a lot about this that's already been talked about.  there's probably nothing that hasn't already been mentioned about it.  the search function is amazing and easy (top of page).

[Hfeisnteverything]

@choklitlove

I want to hear it all!  Thanks for the daisy chain idea - I do want to keep it all internal - having everything under one roof is the name of the game here.  Do you have link for the daisy chain - am I right in thinking you are referring to an existing product on the market rather than a build?  Both work fine for me!  Please let me know if can recommend a builder or reseller that has this in a small housing, or one one that can easily be removed from its current housing.

As to the volume pedal, I DO understand that they are there for tone, and not just volume, because they interact with whatever is in front of it.  But with this unit on the floor at a gig, I really want to get a unified volume approach in place.  I want to have the 808 tone on, and the 808 tone off, without any volume issues.  I want to get the compressed tone ON, or compressed tone OFF.  I dont want a volume change - i just want to play the song.  This may not be the absolute optimal solution in terms of tone, but its the optimal solution for me in terms of usability.

[slacker]

The easiest way to power this would be to get a decent regulated 9volt power supply, one that can handle at least 400milli amps should do the job. Wire all the battery + and battery - wire together in parallel and connect them all to one DC jack. That way you've got one power supply powering the whole board.
For your volume issue you could use trim pots inside the enclosure instead of external volume pots then you could set each effects volume to what ever level you wanted, but you wouldn't have to worry about them getting moved accidently. This would work if you were only using one effect at a time, but if you start combining them the volume is going to change. The volume will also change a bit depending on where you set the other controls. So unless you're only planning on ever using one setting on each effect this wont work.

Hope this helps and good luck with your build

[R.G.]

Your posts indicate a fair amount of skills that you already have. That's a real step up.

For a multi effects setup, consider something like  "Some thoughts on effects enclosures and rack mounting." at geofex, http://www.geofex.com, 10/01/03.

The light gauge steel "2x8" channel is a great way to package up a number of effects. It's tough!

You can daisy chain the power inside a single multipedal setup OK. choklitlove's suggestion about the Visual Sound 1Spot is a good one. It will put out up to 1.7A of 9V and it's both designed and individually tested at the factory to run a high gain distortion pedal quietly.

The volume issue isn't any different from what you would have with the same pedals in separate boxes. Each pedal needs to be set up to have about the same volume out as it gets in, unless you specifically want it to change output volume. Otherwise, you'll get volume changes as you tap dance on the bypass switches.

There's a lot of material on GEO about effects bypassing, routing, switching and enclosures. Some of it you have to burrow for.

[Hfeisnteverything]

Thanks RG and Slacker,

It must be nice to have a newbie that doesnt have packaging and enclosure issue;) I am actaully going to go with a ply construction just like Mr Cornish, but a different shape.

That for the heads up on the daisy chain manufacturer - I will check them out.

Having a seperate volume on each pedal is truly a headache for people who like to use muliple gain pedals in there chain.  I am really trying hard to think of a creative way to get round this problem in the analogue realm.

How about I dont have a full bypass for the system, but use a very clean pre-amp to increase the initial signal, and then use a trim-pot on each pedal to achieve unitary volume?  This could work, but in some pedals, like the 808 the gain also affects the volume.

[David]

I have to deal with the volume issue too.  What I've done is to set my distortion pedal so it's approximately at unity gain so I just add "crunch" to power chords.  If I need a volume boost, I have a graphic EQ almost at the end of my signal chain that's set flat and for a slight amount of volume boost.  I have to hit two buttons, but that's a small price to pay for controlled volume.

A more unified solution might be to put a limiter at the end of your signal chain.  This way, you clamp your output to a fixed level no matter what your signal chain puts out.  Another more dramatic, but very effective solution would be to create a booster using a GEO Adjusticator teamed with an inverting buffer.  Build this into a wah/volume pedal shell.  This gives you foot control of cut/boost on your output.  You can back it off or goose it as necessary.  If you built this with a 5532 and ran it with a 12-15V power supply, I'll bet it would be an unbelievably clean boost/cut processor.

Uhhh... I was thinking of something like this for myself.     I probably still will.

[Pushtone]

I like to build a little distrobution board for power and ground. It also makes a handy place to put the LED restistors and/or the LEDs.

I used the header pins Small Bear sells to make two rows of connection points. One row for power, the other for ground.

You can even put in some power filtering as in Xavier's 9V Filter taken from Cry Baby Wah.

A distro board will make removing one PCB a lot easier and it forms a start ground since all grounds go the the distro board.

Here is a perf-board version.

[Hfeisnteverything]

@David - Good to know I am not alone.  In fact I hate jigging volumes to get good tone, only to find that the whole shebang goes out the window when I start switching pedals on and off.  Thats what they were designed to do after all, but yet they dont have a warning on the box that says *This pedal will cause ear splitting increases in volume when turned on*.

Using a limiter at the end of the chain would work I guess, if it was very transparent.  I have never used a limiter before except when its used to mean compressor, but that not what you mean I guess.  We wouldnt need to boost the lower part of the signal, just reduce the overall voltage wave in the most linear fashion possible.  As I am still at the design stage, I think I will still explore more options involving modding the individual pedal pcbs or pots.

It seems pedals are designed so that they can be used individually, but not really used effectively in a chain.  Would it be great to have a function that would alter the tone with the volume (be it sustain/gain/OD) etc.   If I think as a guitarist *I want more gain*, why do I have to deal with volume??  I just want to add more gain....I know, I know more volume equals more gain because it will push the pre-amp on my amp.  I just get the feeling that the first twin-channel amps gave everyone a gain/volume control, or volume/master volume system...On an amp this is logical because you want to be able to control how the preamp and power amp interact.  What followed what pedal designers followed continued with gain/volume pedals because that was the mental structure they were used to - just a way of thinking about things.

As a group of people interested in pedals and able to read basic schematics, we all know that the twin controls of an amp have no relationship to pedals though. The volume control just acts as a voltage divider to ground, shedding volts. There is no power amp stage.   No iron or speaker is being pushed.  But yet countless pedals feature gain and volume as if they are naturally meant to be there.  (I know that the impedance after the pedal can be an issue with some designs, but I hope my point is still valid).

I am not sure but it seems like 90% of pedals could be sold with unitary gain, and you would only need the final one to have a good pot at the end to control the final volume.   Not at present, maybe not in my lifetime, but one day we might be able to buy a pedal and say - *This makes me sound like Jimi Hendrix, its a FuzzFace clone* and it would only have ONE knob. At Zero it would let your signal pass (not true by-pass, I know), and 5 your signal would be sounding nice and fuzzy, and at 10 it would be unleashing fuzz to the cosmos and back.  You could turn this one knob and YOUR TONE WOULD CHANGE... 

This thread started off as a casual enquiry (actually I was more worried about the power issues I mentioned in my first post).  I feel a mission coming on though!!

If you got bored reading the rant above, heres the quick version for the attention deficient google generation: Guitars have one volume, TVs have one volume, Pedal boards have, like, 13. WTF???

[Mark Hammer]

One of the things that an all-analog multi-FX floorbox can often permit is creative gig-friendly approaches to switching, especially the placement of switches.  Normally, single circuit pedals constrain us to stick the stompswitch and pots, etc., where they can fit and not where they provide the most usability or convenience.  A large floorbox can often offer a larger palette on which to draw one's ideal system.

When it comes to gig-friendly switching, I'm fond of using nondedicated electronic switches, especially things like Craig Anderton's CMOS switch from his projects book.  One of the neat things about it is that it can be wired up to a latching (when you step on it, things stay on or off) switch OR to a momentary switch so that the switch remains on only as long as you step on it and reverts back the moment you lift your foot.  I made myself a rackmount multi-FX in the late 80's that had two such nondedicated switches which could be cascaded (loop A then loop B), run in parallel, or could be "nested" (loop B selects a subset of everything included in loop A).  The floor unit with my switches had 4 things to step on: Loop A (latched), Loop A (momentary), Lop B (momentary), Loop B (latched).  The two switches from each loop were paralleled and located near each other in a physical arrangement that permitted them to be stepped on simultaneously.  What this physical and electronic arrangement allowed me to do was to "punch-in" with a temporary configuration of multiple FX on a riff-wise basis.  Most of us here are familiar with the ZZ Top song "Cheap Sunglasses" in which a ring modulator effect of some type is used for a single brief riff at the end of each verse.  This sort of switching arrangement I describe permits that sort of thing to be done very easily in a gigging context.  You'd be very pleasantly surprised with how much of a difference it can make in the fluidity of one's playing and concentration to simply lift your foot up to bypass something, as opposed to having to step once for on and again for off.

Although the Anderton circuit accomplishes this electronically, it can also be done mechanically.  Small Bear sells DPDT switches that do not latch and can be used momentarily.  Imagine yourself using one distortion set for mild crunch, then stepping on a momentary to switch over to a different pedal for a little more serious sizzle for a lead, and as soon as you lift your foot it goes automatically back to the other tone.  Now THAT's gig-friendly. 

Note as well that such do-I-want-what-I-have-or-do-I-want-something-else-for-a-bit switching needn't be confined to what is built into your all-in-one unit.  The momentary switchover could also direct your signal to an external loop and rope in something else that is not part of your all-in-one box.  Going back to my old rackmount unit, I had a splitter at the input, and a 2-input mixer on the output.  Off the rackmount unit was one of those old table-top analog delay units typical of that era.  My momentary switch could be configured to temporarily add in delay, or better yet, could be configured to cut input to the delay but maintain the recirculating output as a "clean" feed to my mixer that trailed off as I began new riffs.

Again, the possibilities for one's switching system to permit post-production-like effects on a humble analog pedal-board are vast.  This is not to pooh-pooh all the issues noted already about power distribution and such, but the real strength of such floor systems lies in being able to request and rearrange one's effects in powerful ways simply by planning out the switching and the sorts of capabilities one would like to have.

A commonly appreciated capability is that of being able to re-order the sequence of some effects or e-insert a specific effect into a different spot in an otherwise fixed order.  Here, use of rotary switches as a way of allocating specific pedals to specific "stations" can be very helpful.  On separate stompboxes, it becomes a major undertaking to unplug and replug, and is occasionally impossible if everything is secured to a pedalboard.  On a more generalized floorbox, all ins and outs of individual effects can be directed to routing switches that easily reconnect B ahead of A and moves D to the front of the line with a flick of the wrist.  To the extent that one can build such things easily and cheaply,it also becomes possible to have multiples of many FX with the controls set differently, and use them as analog "presets", selecting between this one and that for song X and Y.  That, in itself, may be the solution to your different-tones-same-volume needs.

Why don't you offer up some wish list switching dreams and we'll see if we can suggest some easy solutions to them.

[Hfeisnteverything]

Mark,

I totally dig what you are saying. The systems you describe sound wonderful, scalable and intelligent.  If I had say four analogue tonal pallets that I needed in total I can see how we could get there via a switching system - possibly without the duplication of effects in some plausible arrangements.  A lot of info to digest....I can totally see how rotary switches, or even stacked rotary switches would also be a great benefit (solving, for example the compressor before OD/after OD) thing....

I will let you know more my wishlist when i have had time to digest what you are saying, and the possibilities it offers.  If dont need to interface with racks etc - although a SEND/RETURN might be nice.  A set and forget single piece gig box is the main issue here.  I dont play in a cover band, so I dont need to cop anyones tone.  I just need to a) simplify my life, pedalboard wise, and b) have fun learning.

[burnt fingers]

I'm not sure I understand the volume control issue.  When you step on an OD or Distortion you then adjust the volume to your liking.  Same with any other pedal with output levels.  The control is there because the level may change depending on the guitar or the amp or the situation. (what sounds like unity gain in your bedroom may get lost in the mix on stage. 

I would suggest leaving the volume controls.  Mr.Cornish has been doing this a long time and does great work but it aint cheap or easy. 
http://www.petecornish.co.uk/pt19.html 

That pic is pete townsends board.  It has all of three  pedals in it.  YIKES.  There's a lot of crap there for three pedals.

I think the power thing has been addressed already.  All four effects wired to a single DC jack being powered by a good power supply.

Good luck
Scott