A few need to knows before designing a guitar effect?

[tss]

hey all (first post)...

recently i starting to get interested in designing guitar effects. i've designed electronic circuits before at work, but mostly digital stuff.
i'm mainly wondering about the voltage levels of common effects. from the schematics i've seen virtually all effects are single supply so a dc offset makes sure the signal ref. is in the middle of the supply voltage? at the output there's usually another cap for ac coupling, so each effect is "responsible" to bring the signal into a working spot it can handle? what about the signal amplitude? what is considered a normal signal amplitude? is it standard? if not, won't it cause many circuits to distort making them useless?

[Joe Hart]

I don't think a signal distorting is useless. I'm rather fond of it.
-Joe Hart

[Mark Hammer]

This scanned issue of DEVICE has a Craig Anderton article on "Design Standards for Effects".  Maybe it will be of some use to you.  http://hammer.ampage.org/files/Device1-9.PDF

[R.G.]

You'll save yourself a lot of time if you'll go read http://www.geofex.com.

[stringsthings]

recently i starting to get interested in designing guitar effects. i've designed electronic circuits before at work, but mostly digital stuff.
....
if not, won't it cause many circuits to distort making them useless?
...

welcome to the forum!  ... as you've probably surmised from previous experience, the design of your average guitar effect is not in the digital domain ... guitar players ( and their girlfriends   ) love lots and lots of fuzzy analog goodness ... and therefore, the sound of a distorted signal is not at all uncommon ... in fact, engineers work very diligently to please the discriminating guitar players with various "flavours" of distortion ...


here's an incredibly brief synopsis:

  in the beginning, their was the tube ... and the tube did glow and distort .. and the guitar players were   ... and then, there was the fuzz box ... and the guitar players and manufacturers were   ... and then, there was the time of digital ... and at first, the guitar players were not   ... but eventually, they learned to love the flexible nature of digital circuitry ... and analog and digital lived happily ever after!  the end.