Welcome to TG-World! My world, or should I say my... SPACE!?
It's about time for a rebranding, since my pages haven't really had any music since 2006 or so... But I'll still keep the tg-music.com domain, just to mess up the google search for one Goshen Indiana based music store/school thing. So, if you are looking for that... Hi! 😃
On this website you can:
Fun for kids and adults alike!
...or enjoy some other activities. Maybe go outside.
Under Eagle files for TG-Music effect pedals you'll find *.sch and *.brd files for many effect pedals. Most are designed for my "standard method" of building pedals in Hammond 1590BB enclosure. You are free to modify these files as you wish. These are not "ready to build" projects, and prior experience is needed. For example if you need BOM, you can export it in Eagle. I have extra PCBs for most pedals. If you want one, I can probably send you one. But I'm not selling components or kits or anything else.
At the moment of writing this, I'm on a hiatus from pedal building, and I'm concentrating my time on some other intrests, like making games, 3D-printing, fixing some gameboys and tinkering with other electronic devices.
First of all, before we start: before you jump into the modifying your pedals or other electronics, think about what you want to change. What is wrong in your device? Do you want something more or less? Do you want more bass or less treble? There is a difference. What do you think is wrong in your overdrive? Or booster? Or fuzz? Sometimes it makes more sense to sell the pedals you don't like to use. Because after you have modified them, it's much more difficult to sell them. Don't mod just because you read something from the internet. You should use these instructions only when you know what you aim to accomplish.
Internet is full of effect pedal modifications. Some are good, some are bad and then there are the expensive ones. In my view, information should be free. One can charge for the labor, but not for the information. I don't recommend you to pay for mod instructions. I bet you can find all the information you need free in the web.
I try to provide some good, useful and/or worth to try modifications. All of these are well known, and none of them originates from me. Implementation maybe "my own", but basics behind these instructions are not. I have picked these mods so that you don't have to drill any new holes to your pedals. I hate when people do that. Stop ruining stuff and stop making irreversible changes!
Hobbyist magazines have published many guitar effects and a metric ton of other stuff over the past decades. Popular projects were measuring devices and power supplies (often called "lab equipment"). In the dark times (before inexpensive multimeters) a simple DC-voltmeter was a really attractive and super useful project. And of course, a variable power supply was an absolute must project for every serious hobbyist. Radios were a particular topic for ham radio magazines, of course. And amplifiers... many many amplifiers everywhere.
History is a part of my hobby in electronics. I greatly admire hobbyists who build these projects back then, and I would also like to pay homage to original authors. Many decades before internet hobbyist magazines and books were the only source for projects. And your local ham radio club or electronics club was the only source of help if something went wrong. For a loner like myself, that would have been a good thing. Social aspects and all that. We are very privileged to have such abundance of information today!
I highly recommend you to try and build some of these old circuits. I'll present you good, bad and ugly from the past decades. And some of my favorites too.
Arduino Uno and its many derivatives are very capable devices for many projects. Including some musical instruments and accessories.
Arduino Uno and nano are based on ATMEGA328 microcontroller, and it’s very well documented open source device. Internet is literally full of projects from very simple to extremely complex. If you are an absolute beginner, choose the project accordingly. First you should make a led blink. Then make it blink without delay. Start from there.
My projects include clocks, games, musical instruments, peripherals and maybe some random things that interest me.
Talking about that... This is all about me and my needs. Arduino projects are perfect way to make something that will suit you. That's how I do these. I'll search for something that's close enough for my use, and then modify it as needed. I can claim very few things as "I created this", so I try my best to credit the original sources when possible.
And last thing: I’ll throw in some ESP8266 things with WiFi as well.