DIY Starter project ABY box

[kip4]

This is a diy pedal building starter project primer.
Aimed at those of you who have been making your own cables and the like for a while but never really delved into guitar effects projects'
It's fairly basic.
I use mine to route one guitar signal to two amps.
It also doubles as DI box because it is buffered.
I can also use it as a reamp box too.


Heres the buffer schematic
I used the first revision theres no need for two outputs in this project.
AMZ Mosfet Booster Guitar Effect
theres not really much too it. a resistor/capacitor network circuit with a mosfet transformer.
Google anything you dont understand. Wiki is your friend.
Or simply ask me for help.
your soldering skills wont need to be fantastic and i reccomend socketing the transistor until your soldering skills improve.
You could also heatsink the transistor legs if you decide to not use the socket.
The socket needed is called SIP's.
To heat sink transistor legs what i do is put an elastic band around the long nose plier handles and grip the leg being soldered so as the heat transfers to the pliers rather than the transistor body.

The whole circuit should only cost a few quid to build.

For parts try the traders in the far east for super value. Check out Tayda.com.
(not affiliated.)

I included LED indicators in my box though its not needed and an on off switch (to save the battery life).

My box is a two piece project box from Maplins (UK) Try radio shack in the USA.

I used 3 stereo 1/4" jacks for the in/outs and an old guitar knob i had hanging around for the volume pot.

Heres the wiring diagram i used for the switches.


The buffer is wired in series with the input jack
So that means to say the buffer input wire comes from the guitar input jsck tip and the out put of the buffer pcb goes to the top left hand lug of the left hand 3pdt switch (A/B switch)

I hope this makes sense
heres a link to the pics i posted over on diy stompboxs

ABY (Ready Steady Rock Box)

I think the whole thing cost me about £15-20 pounds Sterling (GBP).
Considering i now have an active ABY/Buffer/DI/Reamp box i consider it good value for money.

If you have any questions please do not hesistate to ask and i will endevour to help.
Rich

 

[Jesse Schaefer]

Hey Kip4, thanks so much for putting this together, it looks great.

I'm new to building, so I apologize if these are basic questions.
How would I add in a tuner out/mute, as well as install a 9v power supply plug, instead of a battery?

Not sure if that's easy to add to the schematic.

Thanks a ton!!

 

[kip4]

For the tuner add a parallel Jack socket to the input Jack.
I've tip to tip and sleeve to sleeve

As for the DC Jack addition check out tonepad a off board wiring here

tonepad -- download warning

 

[ashcat_lt]

For the tuner add a parallel Jack socket to the input Jack.
I've tip to tip and sleeve to sleeve

That won't give you muted tuning, and it has the tuner input parallel to the your buffer's input (reducing total impedance seen by the guitar) at all times.

You need a third switch, preferably after the buffer, wired pretty much like the first switch with one of its outputs to the tuner jack and the other to the existing A/B switch. Course, you'd only need the one (fourth) LED connected to that switch. You could forgo that fourth LED and use a DPDT switch by just ignoring that right-most column of lugs.

The tonepad link you shared seems to assume that any power supply filtering is going to be on the "black box" pcb. You don't need anything really with a battery, but for a wallwart we usually want something. I would stick a diode (preferably shottky, but a 1N4001 would work well enough) in series with positive power input (anode toward the positive, cathode toward the buffer) then a smallish resistor (100Rish) and then a big ass capacitor (100uF or more) between power + and -. Take the "9V" for the buffer from the + side of the cap. Sometimes you'll see a smaller cap (0.1uF or so) parallel to the big one also, and both of those caps probably should be physically as close to the transistor as possible.