Guitar Distortion Fuzz Overdrive Pedal with 50 diodes!

 Guitar Distortion Fuzz Overdrive Pedal with 50 diodes!

Ordinary guitar distortion pedals usually have 0, 1 or 2 diodes. Some have 3. I've started making one with 50 diodes attached to 5 knobs. Each knob will have 10 diodes + 1 off/bypass setting.

They are 11 position, 1 pole, 1 deck rotary switches.

Knobs 1, 2 and 3 will have identical sets of 10 different diodes. 

Knobs 4 and 5 will have identical sets of 10 different diodes that weren't of the type used before.

That yields 50 diodes--that are 20 different types.

This allows for:

Matched pairs on 1 and 2. 

Matched pairs with asymmetrical stacking on 1, 2 and 3. 1 diode on one side, and 2 diodes on the other side.

Matched pairs on 4 and 5. Asymmetrical stacking with non-matching on 1, 2 and 4 or 5.

Smoothing using 4 and or 5 added to 1 and 2 and/or 3.

Here's the diodes wired up. Knobs 1 and 4 have the diodes going one way, 2, 3 and 5 have them going the other way. Diodes need to be opposing in the circuit so they clip the top and bottom of the signal--this is what creates distortion/overdrive/fuzz.

Opposing diodes:

Temporary schematic:

I will be adding a tone knob section (bass/treble) and possibly a selector switch which will short the knobs (diodes) directly to the ground wire which will yield a harder clipping to the voltage through the diodes--more a heavy metal tone vs blues and rock. 

Also, going with a 9 pin footswitch instead of 6 pin: that will make wiring easier. In the schematic I'm not liking the current setup for the footswitch (possibly should swap to top wires on right side around). 

My greatest issue with circuits: potentiometers (aka volume knobs). Sometimes they are used as voltage dividers/potentiometers--but sometimes as variable trimmer resistors (2 wires vs 3 wires). Here they're being used "properly" with 3 wires. 

This is a work in progress ~June 2024!