Steve Warson
New member
Hi everybody. I'm a musician, sound engineer and I recently picked up my old hobby, which is designing and building audio effect equipment, from guitar pedals to mic pre-amps, delay/chorus/lesley etc. It started back in 1986 when I worked at a organ builder where I designed a BBD reverb with 4 speakers (2 front and 2 rear) that got taken into production. Connected to an organ it created the sound as if you were in a cathedral or church.
Over the years I've designed and build things like guitar (pre)amplifiers, effect pedals, pzm microphone, compressors, noise gates.
Currently I've got 2 big projects that I am going to design and build.
The first is a guitar amplifier with neutral sound. Most guitar amplifiers all have their own sound. Fender, Marshall, VOX, they all color the sound in their own way. That can sound nice but you can never turn off the coloration that a speaker or speaker cabinet adds to the sound. Especially guitar combo's that are open at the back add a lot of (sometimes unwanted) coloration. For example, when I play my Rickenbacker 610 on some amps, the sound is defined for 60-70% by the amp and only 30-40% by the guitar. My goal is to build an amplifier and speaker housing that has a flat frequency response comparible to the sound of my home hifi amplifier and speakers. This way I have much more control of the actual sound using a pre-amp with a well balanced (partly parametric) EQ. This means that the amp can also be used as an active monitor for singing or other instruments.
The second project is a true challenge: I used to own a Echolette NG51 tube tape echo which had a great sound. Because it wasn't very easy to use at live gigs I sold it back in 1996. I still regret that I sold it... So now I want to design and build an Echolette NG51 tube tape echo using several PT2399 delays to create the same tape delay settings. After I get that working I want to add a tube pre-amp exactly copied from the original Echolette NG51.
These are long term projects.
Currently I am working on designing and building some guitar fuzz/distortion pedals. Most of the fuzz/distortion pedals (RAT, bluesbreaker, Centaur) are all build around the same sort of schematic. I'm currently working on a FET distortion and also on a asymmetric distortion where you can set the distortion seperate for the positive and negative half of the signal.
I will keep you informed and I look forward to being active on this forum.
Over the years I've designed and build things like guitar (pre)amplifiers, effect pedals, pzm microphone, compressors, noise gates.
Currently I've got 2 big projects that I am going to design and build.
The first is a guitar amplifier with neutral sound. Most guitar amplifiers all have their own sound. Fender, Marshall, VOX, they all color the sound in their own way. That can sound nice but you can never turn off the coloration that a speaker or speaker cabinet adds to the sound. Especially guitar combo's that are open at the back add a lot of (sometimes unwanted) coloration. For example, when I play my Rickenbacker 610 on some amps, the sound is defined for 60-70% by the amp and only 30-40% by the guitar. My goal is to build an amplifier and speaker housing that has a flat frequency response comparible to the sound of my home hifi amplifier and speakers. This way I have much more control of the actual sound using a pre-amp with a well balanced (partly parametric) EQ. This means that the amp can also be used as an active monitor for singing or other instruments.
The second project is a true challenge: I used to own a Echolette NG51 tube tape echo which had a great sound. Because it wasn't very easy to use at live gigs I sold it back in 1996. I still regret that I sold it... So now I want to design and build an Echolette NG51 tube tape echo using several PT2399 delays to create the same tape delay settings. After I get that working I want to add a tube pre-amp exactly copied from the original Echolette NG51.
These are long term projects.
Currently I am working on designing and building some guitar fuzz/distortion pedals. Most of the fuzz/distortion pedals (RAT, bluesbreaker, Centaur) are all build around the same sort of schematic. I'm currently working on a FET distortion and also on a asymmetric distortion where you can set the distortion seperate for the positive and negative half of the signal.
I will keep you informed and I look forward to being active on this forum.
Interesting projects, especially the PT2399 delay interests me!
