Simple Op Amp Based Booster Pedal

[DrNomis_44]

Do you plan to use an external power supply with the pedal? One of the things that came with my recent pedal was short chord to allow me to hook up an *external* battery. I noticed that you are keeping the internal battery. Do you intend to use it that way?

Yep, that's my concept for the booster pedal, basically a simple battery powered op amp based booster pedal, the original design was to have the circuit board mounted inside a guitar's control routing.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:

Made some more progress on the booster pedal build, both parts of the diecast aluminium case have been spray-painted with flat white prime n paint spraypaint, just waiting for it to dry so I can do the labelling and satin clear-coating, and then it'll be ready for the final wiring-up and testing.

Update_2:

I gave the two parts of the diecast aluminium case a spray with some satin clear coat after applying the paper labels I made with my Labelmaker, I think it looks pretty good so far, just need to let it dry overnight and then tomorrow I can do all the final wiring-up and testing.

[fender3x]

I was wondering how you planned to label it. I am slowly working up to doing one for a double footswitch. Thinking of using waterslide decals.

[DrNomis_44]

I was wondering how you planned to label it. I am slowly working up to doing one for a double footswitch. Thinking of using waterslide decals.

I used some white paper labels I made using my Dymo Labelmaker, very useful little device, though they can be a bit expensive.

My Dymo Labelmaker:




The finished and working booster pedal:

[DrNomis_44]

I managed to give my new Booster Preamp pedal a quick test out last night with my Fender USA Stratocaster going into the audio interface of my Studio PC, I had it going through FL Studio's Hardcore plugin which is a virtual pedal board and amp simulator, one thing I did notice is that at the lowest gain setting it still boosted the signal a bit, when you turn up the gain it really comes alive, my Fender USA Stratocaster has a set of three Fender Noiseless Single Coil pickups installed in it, they tend to sound a little weak to my ears, but when put through the new Booster pedal, they definitely sound like they benefit from having their output boosted, but it's a different tone than what I get when I try boosting them with my TS-9 Tube Screamer, the natural sound of the Noiseless pickups seems to come through along with the boosting, I noticed that when I was testing the pedal with my Digital Scope, if I fed in a 1Vpeak 1kHz Sinewave, the output signal was a bit greater than 3Vpeak.

[DrNomis_44]

I'm thinking of having a go at designing a Mk II version of this Booster pedal that includes a very simple Op Amp unity-gain input buffer circuit, which will allow the use of standard Dual Op Amp ICs like the NE5532, JRC4558D, TLO72, LF353 and etc, plus maybe some tweaks to boost the output level capability so you get almost 9V peak without clipping.

[DrNomis_44]

I tried playing my Fender USA Stratocaster through the preamp booster, into my Marshall amp, wow, the booster pedal really kicks things up a few notches, works great.