Yeti Rambles

I recently put together a mini pedalboard utilising my DIY PSU . This new board was a great idea and I'm currently using it more than my main board due to how focussed it is. The only downside to my PSU design is the fact that it's not isolated. This means I get some ground loop noise when I play directly into my PC via my interface.   The easiest way to fix this is to use a DI box that features a ground lift feature. I have some 10:1 "DI Transformers"  that I picked up cheap off eBay however with my testing these wouldn't work well passively. While I do plan to use these in an active DI, I'm impatient and took to the internet to buy a solution.  I quite quickly came across the Behringer Ultra-DI Model DI1000 (catchy name there guys). While I managed to find a handful of reviews online and a couple of videos I didn't find anything that went in-depth. There was no information on the frequency response or the distortion/noise levels. Without further ado here...

The Problem  I have built and bough quite a number of guitar pedals now and not only is my main pedalboard out of room, my power supply (Harley Benton PowerPlant Jr.) is at capacity. Rather than build a bigger pedalboard and upgrade my supply it made more sense to me to create a new, separate, board to take some pedals off my main one. Not only will this mean I don't have to spend any money it will also allow me to be more focused with the sound for each board so I don't have the "Jack of all Trades Master of None" board I currently do.  Now the obvious problem with this idea is that I have no way to power this second board, enter the DIY Power Supply. The Electronics There are a number of ways to create a DIY PSU be it a fully linear or fully switching design, or even a mix of the two. A decision also has to be made about where the PSU will draw it's power from, will it plug directly into the mains or be powered from a lower voltage source?  Luckily for me I had...

Here's my take on the Big Muff Pi. I started with the "Green Russian" circuit and added some modifications that make it my most versatile dirt pedal. It runs the gamut from clean boost to full on fuzz. I used the Tagboard Effects layout as a base. I'll start with the modification that's not obvious from looking at it which is the tone stack, I modified the values to more closely match the original circuit and provide what I thought was a better response.  As for the extra knobs and switches I'll run through them in order.    Bias Knob This 100k pot replaces the 100k bias resistor on the 4th stage transistor, turning this to the right brings the value down and further mis-biases the circuit. This lets you get some interesting effects even if it's not the most useful.  The further right the quieter your sound and the more gated it becomes, at the extreme settings you can get some truly weird noises where only your transients get through.  Tone Wicker  This ...