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Boost Effect My Designs

Micro Thunder Boost – Noise

I continue working on my micro boost effect. I wasn’t entirely happy with the noise performance from the first take. I wanted to investigate a bit more. How did it go? See the video. Links can be found in section where I’m trying to make sense out of all of this 😊. Intro As a […]

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Boost Effect My Designs

Micro Thunder Boost Design

I was thinking for a while to create a booster that is as small as possible. Ever since I bought an old guitar that was sitting unused on someone’s attic for 15 years I was thinking what could I do with it. I have a thing for Ibanez guitars … I don’t know, I just […]

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Boost Effect Builds My Designs

Building a Simple Op Amp Booster – Assembly

After the introduction, analysis and breadboarding of two op-amp based guitar boosters, I’ll complete the pedal. I’ll do the final schematic and bill of material, then do the soldering layout for a protoboard. I’ll plan out the enclosure, do some artwork and finalize the enclosure. I’ll finally assemble it and do test and demo. Final […]

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Boost Effect Breadboarding My Designs

Building a Simple Op Amp Booster – Breadboarding

After the introduction and analysis of two op-amp based guitar boosters, let’s see how they sound. I’ll breadboard them and try them out to make sure everything works as expected. I’ll give some effect characteristics, do a breadboarding diagram, then do the actual breadboarding (with bill of material) and finally test both effects out. Characterizing […]

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Analysis Boost Effect My Designs

Building a Simple Op Amp Booster – SPICE

I went through schematics for MXR Micro Amp and my Thunder, so now I’ll go through some SPICE analysis for them. I said the circuits are similar and should have pretty similar sound. Let’s see how they look when simulated and if we can learn anything. Schematics Here are the schematics in SPICE: The schematics […]

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Analysis Boost Effect My Designs

Building a Simple Op Amp Booster – Introduction

In this final build, when it comes to simple booster effects, I am going to use Op-Amps. An op-amp is an integrated circuit (a chip) containing several transistors inside of it to achieve a very large gain. But it does so in a way that makes amplifier design very consistent and predictable. In this post […]

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My Designs

Completed Prototypes for Thunder Boost

Last week I finished prototyping my Thunder boost pedal. I got boards some time ago, so I got onto soldering all those SMT components. The final result looks nice I think: The finished boards look pretty much like the 3D model in KiCad which is actually great. I was freaking out about soldering the components, […]

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My Designs

Prototype Boards for Thunder Boost

I just got some boards for my booster pedal design. I call it Thunder Boost. I’ll do a write up on it at some stage. This is my 2nd prototype board design – this time in SMT. I’ll try to assemble it in next few days. I ordered it from Aisler, the boards look good, […]