KICAD PCB design
This was way harder than ltspice for me because i was still trying to navigate the software. A lot of time was spent on looking for the appropriate foot prints.
I honestly don’t have much to say apart from needing to cleaning up the layouts.
Next Action: I may take a break from Kicad and move on to fusion 360 . That would be better for figuring out what I want in my PCB design
2ND DISTORTION PEDAL DRAFT
#devlog 2
My initial distortion circuit had lots of problems regarding simulating the waves as the out put of each stage did not give the desired shape. I had to go back to some youtube videos and some examples online to see what I could improve to my circuit, comparing the picture below to my previous devlog, you can see I made some major changes regarding the amplifier, clipping and tone control stages.
NEXT STEP: I’m pretty confident in this schematic so next step would be designing the enclosure then the PCB
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:
For my schematic, I decided to break it into parts.
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
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.
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.
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
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 👍🏾
