How To Design An Overdrive Pedal Circuit
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- Опубліковано 15 лип 2024
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For years I’ve had many folks ask me to make dedicated courses on some of these topics that I dive into here on youtube, but have been wanting me to go into way more detail.
I’m proud to announce that we now have two guitar pedal courses available that are deep dive on all of those pedal questions you’ve been wondering, and we are ALSO taking pre-enrollments for a huge “How to design overdrive and distortion pedal circuits” course for beginners and intermediates who are wanting to learn all about the electronics side of guitar pedals.*
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A viewer asked if I would create a video about creating an overdrive circuit part by part, showing the changes as I added each part. It sounded like a very interesting (and fun!!) idea so here we go! Comment below with your thoughts on the tones here, any questions? And, of course, let's hear your suggestions for future video topics!
Links mentioned for the DIY books including the two newest:
modyourownpedal.com/collectio...
VERY NICE BUT SEEING SHOTS OF BREADBORED AS U BUILD WOULD BE EVEN BETTER
why? The schematic tells you everything.
That is what the schematic is for.
@@wampler_pedals maybe for esthetics? ... but seriously seeing only breadboard could be very misleading ...
WHY ARE WE YELLING
Rudely put by fred, but I think seeing the breadboard evolve/build as Brian walks through the stages would be really great to see to help those who don't know how to read a schematic very well. I'm still wrapping my head around schematics and trying to learn electronics, so visual learning is a huge part of my ability to learn something new and hopefully make the leap from "complete noob" to "noob". Seeing the breadboard as it relates to the schematic would be super helpful for my personal learning style, especially with a master builder like Brian walking us through it. Great vid! I hope we see more :)
In a world of self-interest fed by narcissistic social media, here is an expert in his field using the platform to freely share his wisdom and raise us up instead of keep us down.
Gives me some faith we might not be extinct in the next ten years. Thank you, Brian!
Not exaggerating when I say I have been CRAVING content like this lmao, so happy to see such an educated breakdown presented in an easily understood format, but with the added plus of being edited and filmed well.
Well Said
Here's an index to compare sounds in different sections of the video:
0:41 - Input to output
(bypass)
1:02 - Input filter
only
3:00 - OpAmp 1/3 (gain @ 0%)
3:20 - OpAmp 2/3 (gain @ 50%)
3:45 - OpAmp 3/3 (gain @ 100%)
4:18 - Low pass filter capacitor
5:20 - Clipping diodes
7:46 - Tone improvement via bottom capacitor 1/2 (stock, .22uF)
8:00 - Tone improvement via bottom capacitor 2/2 (1uF)
9:15 - Tone control 1/3 (all treble)
9:40 - Tone control 2/3 (all bass)
10:09 - Tone control 3/3 (sweet spot)
11:02 - Tone control bottom capacitor .047uF 1/4 (somewhere in the middle)
11:19 - Tone control bottom capacitor .047uF 2/4 (all bass)
11:32 - Tone control bottom capacitor .047uF 3/4 (all treble)
12:15 - Tone control bottom capacitor .047uF 4/4 (sweet spot)
13:09 - Tone control bottom capacitor 1uF 1/2 (somewhere in the middle)
13:23 - Tone control bottom capacitor 1uF 2/2 (sweet spot)
He didn’t talk much except for useful stuff.
Really helpful thank you!
Yes - thank you very much Luis.
I don’t not appreciate the effort to walk through the creation of a pedal here…but all the talk of ‘scoop’ and ‘clipping’ and ‘meaty’ and ‘tone control’ and ‘usable/friendly’ and ‘fuzzy’ and ‘fizziness’ and ‘presence’ is utter gibberish. Would love it if he did some direct edits where he was playing ‘before and after’ and ‘compare this capacitor with that capacitor’ rather than just describing the sound.
Really working hard to translate that kind of language into actual guitar sounds, but it seems impenetrable sometimes. Thank you for making it easier to match sounds to buzzwords.
Brian, as an aspiring pedal builder, your videos are immensely helpful. May I request that you do this format more in the future with other types of circuits? Also, if you do, would it be possible to show shots of your breadboard as you add components to it? Seeing your component placement would be very helpful for someone like me. Thanks for everything you do, both as a builder and an educator in this community, you're really a titan and I just want to say I'm so glad you continued to make these videos and keep this channel going, I know that there was some uncertainty as to whether you would continue for a while and I know I literally just said it, but I, for one, am extremely happy you made the decision you have.
edit: i ask this with the purpose of hoping to follow along with your videos and build the circuits myself so I can really hear the stuff you're talking about in the room and develop a better understand of breadboard signalflow decisionmaking etc. Thanks!
Let’s see some LFO circuits! Get into trem/vibrato!
jesus just that opamp clipping before the diode sounded absolutely rad
This was EXACTLY the type of content I think a lot of us rookies were looking for. Phenomenal video. Would love to see something like this done for a DIY Delay or Reverb.
I’m an EE and though I know all the details of how to analyze this circuit, I found it super helpful to hear each change. Thank you for the great teaching session.
Being an EE myself I’ve found classical opamp design approaches less than useful, these circuits are basically broken in any other industry, as long as it’s not fatal for a component, just plugging in parts empirically with a goal in mind is the way to go, knowing circuit topology does help some here, calculating poles of the filters not so much... it’s fun for sure, not having to hit a precise goal with ultra low distortion or super low DC offset that’s actually manufacturable, is a nice break...
went to school got my EE, wanted to design these kinds of things. learned more here than in 4 years lol.
not that the degree hasnt paid off... 😀
What are you doing now since you chose ee for a profession but are still interested in Things like These? (and presumably dont build them for a living)
To be fair, you wouldn't be taught things like this video in EE because with amplifier design, distortion is a bug not a feature, and A LOT of consideration is given for how to minimize SNR, not how to adjust SNR to taste lol. The circuit in this video is a basic non-inverted opamp circuit that's probably illustrated near the end of the TL082 datasheet along with the gain equations, plus some diodes in the negative feedback loop, plus some filtering. Plenty of EE courses include filtering and pretty much all electrical applications include filters, and yeah they aren't usually audible but they are usually visible on an oscope or spectrum analyzer.
WHERE ARE THE TABS FOR THIS!!????
Hi Brian. I built one of these overdrives tonight, from the schematic you displayed. I love it - really versatile for such a low parts count. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
is the upside down triangle a symbol for ground?
@@thomasdavis5230 yes
I am working on this overdrive rn but I am stuck on the op amp part what are the additional connections that are not shown on the Schematic?
@@drake.hansen pin 4 to gnd pin 8 to +9v
I became an electrician for many reasons. One of them is this channel. I love guitar and I love how it takes the basics of electricity and can change it into something beautiful. Thanks so much for explaining so much.
Nice one, Brian.
One of the things many people either overlook or don't quite grasp is that the more metal you wiggle over a pickup, the greater the signal produced. So it should not surprise us that wiggling a wound E or A string over a pickup yields a noticeably greater signal than wiggling an unwound B or E. I like to say that most of the guitar signal "lives in the basement", meaning that the lower the note, the hotter (higher amplitude) the signal produced.
Now, *nothing* gets clipped until it approaches what is called the "forward voltage" of the diodes - the signal level where they begin to conduct. We use some amplification of the signal to reach that point. But because it's higher amplitude to begin with, the lower notes on the bass strings don't really require as *much* amplification to reach that point or threshold. The genius of the Tube Screamer is that it used a strategy Brian illustrates here. The 1k/220nf pair (R46/C28) provide a modest (6db/octave) bass rolloff, near identical to the Tube Screamer, starting around 723hz. Progressively reducing the amount of bass signal hitting the diodes (by amplifying the bass *less* than everything above it) makes it such that pretty much all notes stand an equal likelihood of clipping. I don't know if one would call this a "smoother" sound, but it is more even-handed and predictable.
You will note that when Brian uses the larger-value (1uf) cap instead of 220nf, not only is there more audible bass, but the sound is also more distorted. Some commercial pedals will employ various means to reduce or introduce that bass level to yield more even or bass-heavy overdrive. It's a handy feature for adapting to guitars with greater and lesser bass content, or simply heavier and lighter-gauged strings.
Mark Hammer great synopsis!
@@GearGasms Thanks. Only took me 40 years to figure out! :-)
@@markhammer643 Ha Ha. 45 years for me!
Props to you and to whoever posed the question. Smart stuff.
Thanks, this sort of content is really appreciated. I've been spending my lockdown breadboarding and this has helped me organise my design process, tuning and refining my choice of BJT and diodes.
Such a great video. Your videos lately Brian have been amazing. I started building pedals a year ago and your videos have been inspiring and motivating me to do more. Thanks!
Another Brilliant video, Brian. Your videos have made me understand a lot more about how pedals are conceived, built and how and why they sound the way they do. From pedal stacking to in depth looking into tone and pedal building, the best and most informative video site by far. fun too. Thanks.
I have come back to this video a few times now, this is one of the most helpful resources to me as a new pedal builder. More videos like this please!!!!
Aside from how much I learned about pedal design, why hasn't anyone commented on the killer guitar playing happening in this video? Thanks for sharing your knowledge and playing!
So much yes!!! I have been very curious about how all of this works for a long time. Thank you for making this video and going through the trouble.
Thank you Brian for making this excellent video! Especially with the circuit diagram being shown in between each alteration to the circuiy. I learned more about what specific circuit elements do to the sound from watching this video, than i have done from hours of reading pages and listening to sound clips in the past.
This was really informative, thank you! I think the step-by-step format is great for understanding the individual part each component is playing.
This is the best way to understand how different elements work. THANK YOU!
Brian - thanks so much for doing these. It's helps everyone demystify gear. I do photography and I learned that I could waste a lot of money up front on it. For years playing the guitar I operated under the assumption that good tone costs money. With yours and others help I've learned that good tone takes research and understanding the technology just as it does with photography. Also, the Terraform is awesome. I've had it for a few months now and it's one of the best pedals I've ever owned. Thanks!
Brian, it is really impressive how you educate us on the science behind the electronics. Most youtubers don't get out the breadboard, love it. I'm still learning what any of these things mean
Excellent demo. seeing and hearing the circuit broken down step by step really helped me under stand its structure better I learned a lot from this video. Thanks!
Cool video Brian. I learned how to build pedals from the first iteration of your book and I'm forever grateful to you for it. Thanks for all the info you share
This is one of the most informative pedal videos I’ve watched on here. Brian you’re really on another level when it comes to tweaking drive circuits.
I just started building circuts in my own and this video was very cool to build along with.
Thank you for sharing it. Talking about the components on the feedbackloop of the op-amp helped me understanding it better.
Finally a video that shows you the effect different capacitors and resistors have on tone. I moved up another learning step tonight.
Thank you so much for this!! I won't even try to express how important something like this is at my stage of understanding circuits. Not to be sappy but it almost feels like you read my my mind and figured out what I need to know next in order to get better. This is really great \m/
Great video and details on the basics. The changes in the schematics help us out. Thanks for your time.
This is awesome! Every guitar player that owns a soldering iron should see this!
Best video on UA-cam! Thank you so much for providing this information. You are a gift to humanity!
One of the most informative pedal videos out there! Thank You!
Mind blown! Thank you for taking the time to present this. Great stuff!
Thank you for this video I been looking for someone to actually explain circuits and what the components are actually doing. This vid hit the spot! Def gunna geek out and binge watch ur catalog soon! Thank you!!
Excellent video Brian - sonic alchemy with electronics is a beautiful thing - and it's amazing how useful and good sounding the simple circuit turns out. The Bode plots are a fantastic companion to show us qualitatively what is actually happening. Tone controls and loading is where it is all at....awesome and thank you!!
I made my first DIY pedal with help of this schematics! Thanks for the video, it's very helpful!!
I love the premise of this video. Thanks for doing it!
Awesome vid. Very cool seeing the effect of each part as you go through the circuit.
Thank you Brian. Congratulations with those books! Interesting!
Greatly appreciated. I'm about to mod my 1st pedal. It's a TS type with 3 diff diode possibilities. I socketed the diode section to jump to the breadboard. I was fine with all of that. Got a good selection of diodes, caps & resistors. My head scratch was altering the caps. Thx much.
After watching many, many, many of your videos I have modded almost every pedal I own, its cost peanuts and I have made some radical advances in tone. I salute you sir, keep up the good work 👍
This taught me so much for my pedal building. Id love to see more of this.
I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to DIY electronics and pedals and I found this video extremely useful to understand how circuit design affects the sound. Thank you very much!
Thank God there are nerdy people like you who explain things with knowledge and experience in the best way and nerdy people like me who want to learn!
Thank you a lot for the info I found on the webpage and this video!
thanks a lot Brian, I am a student of electronic engineer, I decided to study this because of music.
It gets to me very helpfull this video to know more about the different configurations of the op amp for pedals. greetings from Mexico, I hope more videos like this one.
Great stuff, as always. Very well explained, love the frequency plots, love hearing the results too! Picked up an Ego a while back, great compressor!
I love this. I have always been a hands on electronics nerd so with the cost of many guitar pedals, this content is priceless. Thank you
this is super awesome, thanks for this level of insight!!! and i can't help but think that a generic kind of overdrive like this, with a few rotary switches for different value components and a few extra attenuation pots could be a REALLY fun pedal!!!
Very helpful for me. I'm a new guitarist (relatively) and it's hard to figure out what all these pedals and effects actually do. I have enough electrical background from my mechanical engr education to know about signals and filters and opamps and diodes... so this is incredible helpful.
It explains it in terms that make sense to me hahaha. But also having some objective way of explaining it ALONG with the sound is so good
I LOVED this video Brian! Do this all you want!
Having only built a couple of clone pedals from pre-designed and printed boards, this has been massively helpful in understanding the effect of different components on the overall output and tone of the guitar. I have a massive amount of components now, just need to get a few more - op amps, pots and some breadboard - before I feel I can start experimenting for myself! Thank you!
Great video, really nice explanation of each part. I’ve only ever built valve amps, the solidstate world is a bit new to me and this helped a lot! Thanks for making it
This was awesome! I'd love to see more of these style videos.
This is amazing, Brian! Thank you for this.
This is great, thankyou so much, this is the kind of pracs we require in Uni, so much more than simply running some calcs and reviewing bode plots..
Absolutely awesome video, it helps a lot to understand the interaction between components inside a pedal. Thanks!
Thanks, man. That was great. Very easy to understand without getting too technical.
Amazing Mr Wampler! Thanks for the distorsion 101 lesson!
I knew what the components are (remember from school) but I had no idea what they do to the sound. Thanks to the person who's suggested this and thank you for making this video! This was great!!!
do you know whats happens if I raise the tone pot ?
That sums up every information I needed right now ! Thanks a lot !
Thank You!!!
I cannot tell you how much this helped!
Great video! Very helpful to understand the structure of an o overdrive pedal! Also will help me much in trying some DIY stuff. 😄 thank you very much!
Really cool. Thanks for sharing Brian. This is really not found elsewhere so we who like circuits are quite happy new! :)
I liked how it sounds, and built it. Thanks for the guide
This is really cool and giving me ideas on how to customize the circuit to get the tone I want.
These deep dive vids are really informative and interesting!
Perfect video. Very understandable. Keep doing this with the most common pedals. I will build this one.
I'm amazed how such a fantastic sound could come from a circuit that is relatively simple.
Fantastic... thanks so much Brian! Great to see your 'books back in print'! As Oliver might say "Please Sir, can I have some more!?"
Notification pops up...
...instant like!
Thank you Mr. Wampler. Stay safe and healthy.
Thank you a lot! This seems like a great starter builder circuit, I will probably build a padal using this for a school project next year, but i will have to play around with the capacitors as I wanted to make a bass OD and figure out how to add a footswitch, but this really helps a lot!
Well done such a clean sound and good overdrive
I've always wanted to see a video like THIS!
Thanks. Excellent presentation with interesting discussion and demonstration.
wow this is the best video ever. thank you so much for sharing this knowledge.
This might be the coolest pedal video I have ever seen.
Loved it. Learned a nice bit from this real world demo.
Great video, thank you very much for this! I plan on starting with some DIY pedal kits and when I get the hang of that, I`ll try changing out some values!
Fantastic video, please do more of these!
enjoyed this one. one of your more informative vids. very helpful! thanks Brian!
Awesome video Brian. Thanks
This vid is awesome!!! You are really making me need to get started with pedal building!!! Thanks a lot, one more thing I'll suck at and don't have the money for.
Excellent format. Thank you for the great content
How you only have 100K subs is beyond me. Great video and thank you for making me feel more knowledgeable
My topics are fairly niched, therefore it’s a smaller channel by intention. I’d rather go a little deeper in a topic but reach less people then make a fairly generic video that doesn’t really teach anything or help anyone. I’m glad you like the channel 😊
As I learn more about electronics, more things in this video start to “click” whenever I come back to watch. Thank you Brian, invaluable info here!
You are a genius friend! Thank you very much for this video, this type of information is very useful for us sound enthusiasts. I send you a big greeting from Argentina.
I am just getting started with pedal building. Thank you very much for doing this.
Really fun to watch/listen. Thanks 😃
This is absolutely fantastic stuff, thank you sir!
Thank you. I''d been wondering where EQ/tone control would go for a drive, and you showed me that there re two places and explained the different results you'd get.
Whoa this is awesome! Thanks so much. Been looking for a demo video like this for a while
Great video, would love to see more like this one!
Super-great video. This man knows his topic!
Really learning a lot here, totally went and bought the book. Thanks man!
DAAAYYYUUUMMM!!! This pedal sounds GREAT!!! Awesome playing too!
Great video!
Well done.
Sweet share Brian. All the best, keep it up!!
Very nice demonstration. This is how I like to work... make small changes and evaluate their effects, either with sound, or a scope (for non-audio projects). Thank you.