Build Your Own Clone Message Board

I am taking baby steps into the world of DIY electronics. At some point I am wanting to start designing my own circuits and such but I have yet to wrap my head around HOW all these different components work together to produce a certain sound. I mean I can follow a schematic and put the pieces together on it but I don't really understand what exactly is going on in there.

Being an aircraft hydraulics mechanic for the Navy has helped me relate some of the parts to a hydraulic circuit (resistor/restrictor etc etc..) maybe someone could put it in that language for me

So basically.. circuit design for dummies go...

I think that the best way of learning, is by having your hands into it......., well step 1 is already going on, you DIY pedal hehe!

Why don't you choose the schematic of a simple effect that you have builted and you go throught the components explaining what you think is their function or role in the whole circuit, and then some circuit gurus here could chime in.

I'm not the one who knows everything about it, far from that....

I just think it could be a fun way

Actually that is not a bad idea. I'll get an example up with my understanding of it up tomorrow. No time tonight, gotta leave for work soon. After I post it maybe some of you can grade it and explain better what is going on lol.

imagine your electricity is flowing thru the circuit just like hydraulic fluid.

resistors are like a thin part in the pipe - they restrict the flow of electricity by turning some voltage into heat.
capacitors are like balloons - they stretch to fill with AC charge (your guitar signal), then spring back to let it out. They completely block DC from passing.
inductors are like a long-ass coil of pipe - voltage moves right thru, but it takes a while to get there. They also have resistance.
diodes are like one-way valves, but you need a certain amount of voltage to push thru them.

There are two kinds of electricity - AC and DC. AC fluctuates up and down. The signal from your guitar is AC. DC is at a steady, constant level. A battery provides DC.

To understand what's happening in a circuit, you'll need to be familiar with the relationship between three things: voltage (V), current (I), and resistance (R).
Current is how much fluid is flowing through your pipe at any one time.
Voltage is the potential energy of the circuit - like a tank full of fluid at the top of a hill. The higher the tank, the higher the potential to flow down a pipe from it.
Resistance is pretty self explanatory really. Without resistance, current in a circuit would flow at an infinitely high rate.
For any given circuit, I=V/R. This is known as Ohm's Law, and it means that the total current (in amperes) in a closed loop is equal to the total voltage (in volts) divided by the total resistance (in ohms).

That leads to a second very important concept. Whatever goes into a circuit must be used up. So if you have a 9V battery and you connect a 100k ohm resistor across its terminals, the resistor will drop (actually, dissipate as heat) all 9 volts. If you had two resistors connected instead, each would drop a portion of the voltage, but the two portions would always add up to 9V.
This is known as Kirchoff's Voltage Law. The related concept known as Kirchoff's Current Law proves that the amount of current entering any one point in the circuit is the same as the current coming out of that point.

There's one more thing to learn right off the bat: voltage is always the same in parallel branches, while current is always the same in series branches.
In the example above with the 9V battery and the two resistors, if you connect them in series (in a line) the current thru them will be the same, even if they have different values - but if they are different resistors, the voltage dropped on each will be different. Likewise, if you connected them in parallel (so the current splits, then comes back together), the voltage dropped on each one will be the same even if they have different values - but different amounts of current will flow thru each one. The easiest way to tell if two components are in series or in parallel is to use your fingers... follow the path of the circuit. If it takes one finger, you're in series. If it takes two fingers, you're in parallel!

That takes care of Ohm's Law, KVL/KCL, passives, and the simplest semi-conductor. When you've wrapped your brain around that stuff, we can talk transistors

Thanks Capt'n!

LOL

I did just what my teachers at school do when you ask them a question... spit out a bunch of information but don't answer the original question

Haha! Seen like that..........hmmmm True! hehe

But that's pretty much the «base» of the whole thing, so it's usefull imo.

WOW! Thanks Capt'n. That was more helpful than you may know. I had never considered that the guitar signal and the battery input were different types of current.

So (lets see if I am reading this right) A resistor reduces the current passing through it.. is there a way to then bring it back up? Say you need to reduce the current from 9 to 5v for a certain component.. can you then after that component bring the current back to 9v? And what is used to do that?

Sorry if this thread is a bit on the noob side and I know my question qualifies as such but I really appreciate this info. You guys are great

This article is excellent in my opinion. Not so much voltage and resistor basics, more of how all that stuff affects a guitar signal (low pass filters, etc).

"Cook You Own Distortion":
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/ric ... index.html

This is a really good "textbook" that explains things very well.

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/index.html

Edit: I had this open and was working on it while some posts were made. Those other links are excellent, definitely look at them.

You're crossing wires.

Voltage (9v, 5 volts), is like hydraulic line pressure.
Current (1ma, 100ma, 100 amps), is like flow rate.
Resistance (1 ohm, 500ohm, 1M ohms), is like the diameter of the hose and its length.

I'm going to bounce between hydraulics and electronics and draw some parallels. They're not absolute, but they're enough to get started so you can take what you know and learn what you don't. Sorry if you already know some of this. I tend to start at the ground floor and work my way up when explaining stuff.

Ok, so just like with hydraulics, you have a pump. That's like a batter and like your guitar signal, they're just different kinds of pumps. If you want to drop line pressure, you use a pressure regulator. Going down in pressure is easy, going up is tricky. Same thing in electronics, to drop voltage you can do it in a controlled manner (use a voltage regulator), or a somewhat uncontrolled manner (resistors). Same thing with hydraulics. Dropping pressure with a regulator grantees a constant output pressure, dropping pressure with hose is somewhat less controlled, though you can calculate it. Same with electronics. To calculate voltage drop with a resistor, you use Ohm's Law.

So, you drop some voltage and limit some current with a resistor. If you want to get some voltage back, you can use a voltage amplifier (transistor, op amp, charge pump, etc). What tool you use depends on what you're trying to do. Just like with hydraulics, there's the right tool for the job. Some pumps are lower pressure but higher flow, others are higher pressure but lower flow. If you are amplifying a guitar signal to clip is and cause distortion, you use a low current voltage amplifier (transistor, op amp). If you need to power an entire effect, you use a high current voltage amplifier (charge pump).

Now what about current? Well, you use a current amplifier (see a trend here? gotta keep it simple). Current amplifiers are often called "buffers" or "followers". The same devices used for voltage amplifiers can be used for current amplifiers, you use wire them up a little differently. These are used right before heavy loads (tone stacks) or on the output of a pedal so it can push the signal through the long cable attached between the two devices.

@defaced

Your post made a lot of sense thank you for that. The voltage/current analogies make a clicking sound in my head lol.

Lots of good info here and those links are officially in my bookmarks now.

Oddly enough.. today I received a package from a member of a guitar forum I frequent today (he mentioned giving them to me a while ago and I had forgotten about it till they arrive) with 3 books by Brian Wampler on pedal building and circuit design (The Complete Effects Guide, How To Build Effects Pedals... A Step By Step Guide, and Advanced DIY Effect Pedals) and as a bonus he also sent me a 1983 DOD Chorus pedal he said was dead and I could fix it or scavenge parts from. Has anyone read any of these before?

So now I have a TON of reading to do and lots to read from!

Awesome man!

I'm also getting that book (The Complete Effect Guide) as a trade with a friend for who i'm doing some studio shizzle for...can't wait to have it!

I'm also new at this, just started this year. Many of the BYOC kits have modifications, such as the Blues Overdrive that tells you how to increase the lower frequencies, and even gives you the alternate caps to get started! I recently picked up 'Electronic Projects for Musicians' and while its pretty dated it does have 'how it works' sections for each project that tells what the various parts of the circuit do.

I've picked up a few breadboards and packs of wires with tips from Mammoth ($5 for a nice board!) and have set up some basic circuits. I jump over to a set of components of various values with one end all on the same strip, then the other end each on their own strip, so I can take a second jumper up and down these strips while strumming to see how it affects the sound.

Good luck!