This is a library of perfboard and single-sided PCB effect layouts for guitar and bass. I'm not an electrical engineer by any stretch of the imagination, just a DIY'er who likes drawing layouts. It is meant for the hobbyist (so commercial use of any of these layout is not allowed without permission) and as a way to give back to the online DIY community.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Fulltone OCD - Version 1

There are now 4 version of the OCD. The latest has a few guitarist I know wondering what was wrong with the last version, so if you're looking to go back to the original circuit, this layout is for you. The OCD one of the most respected overdrives out there. Derived from the Voodoo Drive, it uses two 2N7000 mosfets for clipping. I opted to make the tone pot offboard to allow a little more freedom with pot placement in the enclosure. Might not be a bad idea to use long leg pots for the Drive and Volume pots.


Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Lovepedal Purple Plexi 800

Here's another Lovepedal circuit. It's similar to the Black Magic, adding a frequency control, and is supposed to sound like a Marshall amp.


Monday, January 19, 2015

Fairfield Circuitry Barbershop Overdrive


This one was a request. Two pots onboard and one offboard. The Barbershop Overdrive is a transparent overdrive/booster with medium gain. It has the expected Volume and Drive controls, but also has a Sag control which alters the voltage the pedal is running at. This can change the color and compression of the tone.




UPDATE:

I did a little research, and found out Q4 is just a fancy way of doing polarity protection and can be omitted if you want. Here's a layout without it.



Saturday, January 17, 2015

Zvex Box of Rock

This layout is for the distortion side of the Box of Rock. The Boost side is just a SHO. I've laid this effect out for top mounted pots like in my other Zvex layouts and should fit vertically in a 1590B. Pots are 1.1 inches (28mm) apart.

Board dimensions: 3.2 x 1 in. or 81.3 x 25.4 mm

Friday, January 16, 2015

Zvex SHO - Crackle Okay

The Zvex Super Hard On has become one of the sought after boost pedals today. Derived from the preamp section of a 60s recording console, the SHO uses negative feedback to control the gain (which is what gives it the crackle when adjusting the knob). It's capable of being a clean boost and adding some sparkle to your tone, or pushing your tube amp to break up and creating a great overdriven sound.



If you want to add a master volume control to it, remove the 47k resistor and use a 50k pot. Lug 3 to the Out pad, lug 2 becomes effect out, and lug 1 goes to ground.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Lovepedal Les Lius

One of Sean's many Electra Distortion variants, the Les Lius delivers both Tweed Deluxe and Fender Twin tones. The 3-way toggle switches between different clipping options and the 2nd footswitch acts like a separate gain channel. I couldn't find much info on what JFET is used for Q2, but I would imagine any DSG pinout device would be fine (J201, 2N5457, etc).



Update 9/21/15:
Found several errors with my original layout. If you tried to build it before, my apologies. This updated layout should work just fine.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Lovepedal Eternity

The Eternity Overdrive is kind of like the Big Muff of Lovepedal in that it has a ton of different versions (there are over 10 I believe), but it's basically a Tube Screamer without the input/output buffers. I've drawn up 2 versions here, the Black and the Burst. The main difference between the 2 is the clipping stage. The Black version has an asymmetrical clipping stage, while the Burst has a 4 diode symmetrical clipping stage. The other differences are just minor value changes.

I've added polarity protection and put the LED resistor on the board. I've also added a 47pf cap in parallel with the clipping diodes in the Burst version that MadBean added in his Drunken Dragon version of the Eternity. Sean from Lovepedal says that the secret behind the Eternity is a LM1458, but any dual op-amp should work fine (JRC4558, NE5532, TL072, etc.). They'll just sound different, so adjust to taste.




Board size on both layouts is 2 x 1.4 inches or 51 x 35.5 mm.