Any pedal you can think of.
I got this idea while reading Electronics Projects for Musicians. There's a lot of cool projects in there, but like most guitarists you want something that has a sound that suits you, and I wasn't sure about building these whole projects without being able to try them out a bit.
I thought about breadboarding the circuits to try them out, but it's hard to hook-up an instrument to a bunch of parts on the bench and give it a workout under normal playing conditions. I like to try different amps, rooms, etc.
Then the idea came to keep the pedal form-factor but make replacing the electronics easier by replacing the circuit board with a breadboard. Not only does this make changing the pedal completely possible, it makes tweaking the design "in-situ" simple.
I also chose a breadboard size that exactly matches the Adafruit perma-proto so it can also be used for permanent designs if so desired.
Additional details about this project can be found in this blog post
- 3PDT footswitch (Amazon
- Potentiometers (BK10, 24mm x 17mm x 25mm) (Adafruit)
- 5mm LED (Adafruit)
- Phone jacks (Amazon)
- Power jack (Amazon)
- Breadboard (Adafruit)
- Toggle switch (Adafruit)
Ready-to-print files can be found in the stls directory. If you want to customize things, the OpenSCAD source is provided in overview.scad (be warned, it's a bit rough yet)
Parts are designed to print without support if placed in the vertical position like this:
Currently all connections are made with point-to-point wiring to bring the input and control signals to the breadboard. Eventually I'll design a circuit board for this to eliminate some of this wiring.
The footswich is wired for true bypass, leaving 3-4 connections leading to the breadboard for signal input and output (I say 3-4 because you could probably get away with a single ground).
- Finish parametricness (some things will respond to parameter changes OK now, but there are exceptions)
- Add some way to more permanently attach the cover
- Fix some weird bugs (like the tiny lip just below the control panel)
- Clean-up the code for modularity, configurability
- Add something to hold breadboard in place
- Add a schematic for the footswitch wiring
- Replace raw pushbutton with smaller internal button and turn cover into moving pedal piece