DEVLOG #1 - initial draft of the schematic
Hi 👋🏾, this is my first project and post and i wanted to share what i’ve done.

A while ago, I expressed my interest in electronics and a friend had given me some good advice on separating my projects into stages to try and understand things better and it was definitely helpful.
A distortion pedal usually amplifies your clean guitar signal and clips it which alters the sound.
From what I’ve seen online, the main features of the distortion pedal includes:

• Gain control: controls how much the signal is altered
• Volume Control: Controls the output volume
• Tone Control: Controls specific pitches to make them softer or harder.
  These can all be altered using a standard potentiometer.

For my schematic, I decided to break it into parts.

1. POWER SUPPLY: I intend to use a standard 9V battery, however, this only pushes electricity to one direction in contrast to plugging it into an ac supply. Guitar signals are typically sine waves so they go above and below the 0V line. To prevent harsh clipping of the signal, the stage creates a virtual ground at 4.5V

2. OFFSET CIRCUIT: This offsets the guitar signal so that 4.5V is the middle ground. This circuit prepares the tiny guitar signal for the amplification stage.

3.AMPLIFIER CIRCUIT: This is where the volume control happens, this stage amplifies the guitars signal so that it becomes easier to distort. This stage is defined by the inverting amplifier so changing the resistance of the potentiometer affects the gain.

1. CLIPPING CIRCUIT: Two diodes pointing in opposite directions toward the ground act like the ceiling and floor. When an amplified guitar signal hits that stage, they get clipped at the top and bottom of the wave. This is supposed to turn the signal into a square like wave but i’m having trouble getting that ideal shape in the simulation.

2. TONE CONTROL: The clipping stage produces a harsh and buzzy sound so the tone control circuit filters out the high frequencies so that the distorted signal sounds smooth.

ROUGH COMPONENTS LIST

• Shottcky Diodes(may switch this out for a regular silicon diode)
• Resistors
• Capacitors
• OP07 operational amplifier
• 9V battery
• Potentiometer

PROBLEMS AND THINGS TO WORK ON
This is only a rough draft but my simulations don’t give me the ideal waveforms that I want so i need to play around with the values and arrangements of the circuit. My main problems are in the clipping and tone control stage as the output wave forms aren’t ideal.

next actions: Work more on the schematic, start designing the enclosure, work on the actual pcb 👍🏾