Distortion pedal inside guitar

Jibberin

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Im going to put a little electro harmonix booster pedal inside the body of my guitar and instead of a tone pot its going to be the one off the distortion pedal but I was wondering is there any way to power the pedal inside the guitar without having to have a battery?
 
yeah I was thinking ..Im not sure I dont know much about guitar electronics I've only worked off of schematics before but someone was telling me something earlier like I could plug the AC adapter in inside the body and get one of those input jacks with 3 ends on it instead of 2 and solder the end of the adapter to that or something and power it with the jack...not sure if that makes any sense haha but thats what I was told.
 
Somebody with electronics background would know more about this than me but id say

1) if it worked youd be getting noise from the power line in your audio signal
2) you might plug it in wrong and kill yourself.
3) you'll soon find it much more usefull to actualy have the pedal on the floor.
4) you'll grow tierd of the type of dist/overdrive you jammed into the guitar and start using a floor unit anyway.
5) the effect might sound bad with other stuff you buy or be in the wrong order with a wha or other device.

Not trying to be mean just giving some practical advice

Brian
 
If you're thinking of actually shoving the innards of a pedal into your guitar, I'd suggest using a battery. You actually could use an AC adapter and just put the AC connector from the pedal near the jack, but you'd be stuck with a second cord and a pretty short one at that. As an alternative, I think you can add some distortion to your signal with just passive components, basically what you want to do is clip the signal and add some filtering. As a final option, but that would take some designing, you could put a DI box in there as well and output your signal through an XLR connector. Those allow you to run a 48V DC 'phantom' power over them. You'd have to intercept the power in the DI box (it will probably be available at 9V because most DI boxes can also work on a 9V battery as well as on phantom power) and bring it to your disto circuit. The big disadvantage of this would be that you wouldn't be able to plug straight into an amp anymore, you'd have to run hrough a mixer that is able to provide the phantom power.
 
Anything is possible.....Check out Matt Bellamy from Muse's guitars.  They are built by Andy Manson in the UK.  They've got all sorts of stuff built into them.

http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/Muse%20gallery/pages/Manson%20Black%20Midi%20Guitar.htm
This one has a Korg Kaoss midi controller pad built into it.

Just goes to show the world is your shellfish.  It just takes some thinking about......
 
jimh said:
Anything is possible.....Check out Matt Bellamy from Muse's guitars.  They are built by Andy Manson in the UK.  They've got all sorts of stuff built into them.

http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/Muse%20gallery/pages/Manson%20Black%20Midi%20Guitar.htm
This one has a Korg Kaoss midi controller pad built into it.

Just goes to show the world is your shellfish.  It just takes some thinking about......
Matt has a real nice guitar that they don't sell it to the public, i want it.
 
I think I saw a vintage Vox guitar on ebay with a lot of effects buildt in. Even a wah with a expression bar right behind the bridge.
 
Yeah I've seen old vox ES-335ish guitars with distortion switches on them but Im not sure how they did it and I cant find them again so..
 
you could try black ice as an alternative. it doesnt need a battery. dont know what it sounds like.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Components:_Black_Ice_overdrive.html

Brian

 
I've played one of those electra guitars. LP copy, had 4 knobs in a row. 2 toggles. Overdrive and vibrato, I think. The selector in the top left was faulty, though.
 
bpmorton777 said:
you could try black ice as an alternative. it doesnt need a battery. dont know what it sounds like.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Components:_Black_Ice_overdrive.html

Brian

Thats actually a damn good idea and I think Im going to do that..it sounds like what Im looking for
 
Did you get one of those Black Ice devices yet?  If not, there's a much cheaper way of doing the same thing, 2 low voltage schottky diodes back to back in place of the tone control cap:

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/blackice.htm

I think you'd need reasonably high output pickups for this to work.

Rab.
 
I just spent some time googling left and right and didn't find too many people who seemed really satisfied with either the Black Ice Overdrive or the DIY version. It seems you need really hot pups and your amp cranked all the way up to have any effect, and then its still open to discussion as to how much of that OD/Disto is coming from the amp and how much from the circuit. Of course two schottky diodes won't cause you to go broke so if you like to experiment go ahead, but the results risk being less than satisfying.

 
Probably true, you'd need at least a 600mV peak to peak signal before you'd see any clipping at all, most pickups will give that kind of level in the initial attack, but decay pretty quickly.
Still, as you say, cheap to try and might be an interesting effect for those looking for a very subtle distortion effect.

Rab.
 
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