Showing posts with label active wiring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label active wiring. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

About Active Guitar Wirings - Preamps, Buffers, Pickups

I already have few post about active guitar wirings with on-board buffers, but I didn't wrote an article, about reasons of building that stuff and it's benefits. So, here it is.

Some people, who mounted an active wiring with an on-board buffer or a preamp, or have active pickups in their guitars, are saying that this stuff changing the tone dramatically and it's a little bit too bright or less full, smooth sounding. I think, that it comes from some kind of misunderstanding the way how this electronics works.

If you mounted an active wiring, with a completely linear frequency response (for example audio op-amp based), the tone should be much brighter. It's because of transporting a full frequency range. Passive guitar wirings usually cutting off a little bit of treble. Active wirings are usually - like I said before - linear. They will just transport a guitar pickup signal. Thy will not cut anything if you don't want it. It's because of preamp or buffer impedance – high on input, low on output – and characteristic of working with the signal.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

How to Make a Small On-Board Buffer?

Today, I would like to show you how to make a really small on-board guitar buffer.
It's based on the TL071 op-amp, which is very good for that purposes. It will allow you to make an active buffer with high impedance on the input (1M), and low impedance on the output (it's very important for buffers). The TL071 will not eat your power source too quick - will work hundreds of hours on one, typical 9V battery. 

It is a very popular construction in guitar electronics. Nothing original, but will work fine for the most of our purposes. You need only six parts to make it: the op-amp, two resistors, two capacitors (one film, one electrolytic) and some small multipurpose PCB.