Build Your Own Clone Message Board

I got an answer to this question before, but blamed if I can find it; maybe it got lost in one of the board outages. A friend has asked me to put three effects into one enclosure for him, aScript 90, a CE-2, and a trem. I'd use three separate PCBs. Two questions:

1. When wiring the switches, is it as simple as running from the output of the first PCB to the input of the PCB of the next effect in line, and so on until the output of the last effect, which goes to the output jack?

2. Will it be possible to power all three effects via one DC jack? I am having trouble imagining the wiring on that, and the usual diagrams at Beavis and the like aren't helping me so far.

I may not be too helpful, but I hate to see a question go unanswered

1). I don't understand your question. Are you using three independent switches, LED's etc, or are you tying them all to the same switch?

2). Yes, you can power them all with one jack. Make sure you wire them Parallel, as opposed to Series, so that all three circuits get 9V (I'll post a pic in a second here). Here is your problem: while your voltage to each circuit will be the same, the amount of current (amps) will be split between the three circuits. IE, you toggle on effect one, and it works fine, but as soon as you toggle on effect two, you will experience a drop in the output of effect one, because the current that was going solely to effect one a moment before is now split between the two effects. This might be a major drop, this might be a minor drop, it really just depends. The way to counteract this is to use a power adapter with more amps. My tuner runs off a 100 mA adapter, and my fuzz runs off a 2.2amp adapter. Both adapters give off 9V, they just differ in the amount of current. The thing is, I can use a splitter and power several pedals off the 2.2amp adapter, because each pedal will still get a good ammount of current. While I could do the same thing with the tuner adapter, I would lose some performance because each pedal wouldn't get as much current. Most pedals work best with at least 100mA or so, at least in my experience.

Best of luck,

Here's the Parallel and Series pic. You probably already know this stuff, but I prefer to over-communicate whenever possible. Annoying, aren't I?

So basically, to get each LED in Parallel to have 9V 300mA, you would need an adapter that gave 9V 900mA. I would not recommend wiring anything (other than LED's) in series under most conditions.

Thanks for your reply.

To clarify #1, yes: three separate switches and three separate LEDs. I found the other post I was referring to above, and DVM gave me an answer that I think will get me started at least:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=34932&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a


I'm assuming this trick can be repeated for a third effect.

I'm still not sure I get the power wiring, but it's late and I bet a fresh look at it next week will take care of it. My friend says he's highly unlikely ever to run more than one effect at a time, so the loss of current shouldn't be an issue… but I still want to make sure I get it right.

If you have a decent adaptor, you won't need to.worry about current. It's true that current splits in parallel, but each circuit will draw whatever current it needs to operate. As long as the total current of the three effects doesn't exceed the max current rating of the power supply, it won't be a problem.

With 3 effects in one enclosure you may also want to add a switch that will allow you to select the patching order of individual effects within the enclosure. I am thinking along the lines of the old Ibanez UE units.