[Alexbergsland] plays electric guitar. More accurately, he plays two electric guitars, through two amps. Not wanting to plug and unplug guitars from amps and amps from guitars, he designed an AB/XY pedal to select between two different guitars or two different amps with the press of a button.
The usual way of sending a guitar signal to one amp or another is with an A/B pedal that takes one input and switches the output to one jack or another. Similarly, to switch between two inputs, a guitarist would use an A/B pedal. For [Alex]’ application, that’s two pedals that usually sell for $50, and would consequently take up far too much room on a pedalboard. This problem can be solved with a pair of 3PDT footswitches that sell for about $4 each. Add in a few jacks, LEDs, and a nice aluminum enclosure, and [Alex] has something very cool on his hands.
The circuit for this switcher is fairly simple, so long as you can wrap your head around how these footswitches are wired internally. The only other special addition to this build are a trio of LEDs to indicate which output is selected and if both inputs are on. These LEDs are powered by a 9V adapter embedded in the pedalboard, but they’re not really necessary for complete operation of this input and output switcher. The LEDs in this project can be omitted, making this a completely passive pedal to direct signals around guitars and amps.
I had no idea a guitar would draw 2 amps.
He mentions two guitars, wouldn’t they then draw 1 amp each?
It depends on if they are in series or parallel.
Probably for a standard guitar, but I bet his go to 1.1 amps.
I can’t tell if all y’all is joking or not.
Lol, I had trouble finding where he mentions current draw
Now make a matrix switcher for all the pedals you use. The sequence of processes have a major effect on the end result tone. Other than gain-distortion first most just use one at a time in a mostly random string.
I once replace a simple light switch with an 8 switch plate and wired then on an OR configuration. Some switches were up/down and others were left/right at random.
When asked I would say “any switch will turn the light on” and then be entertained as they try to work out the one combination of the 256 that turns the light back off.
Thank for sharing this. I’m a musician who got interested in DIY craft when I started out and was dirt poor. It’s absolutely insane how much music gear costs and when I found out that some bits retailing at $150-$200 have maybe $10-$15 worth of parts in them, I decided to figure out how to make my own. Even though I can easily afford to buy pretty much what I want or need now, I still fire up my soldering iron and fabricate the desired bit. So again thanks for posting this. Now off to the bench to make one of these.
Is it with this pedal still possible to work the other way around with two guitars on the outputs and one amplifier on the input, like with a standard ABY pedal?