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Monday, 30 April 2012

Buffered Y Splitter Stripboard Veroboard

as an engineer of music one of my biggest frustrations has always been guitarists and "EQ creeping" because they never realize that to get the best results through a microphone you have to severely reduce the EQ settings that you would normally use because what you hear from across the room is much different to what a microphone hears at the sound source - so what happens is that you set the amplifier up for recording, the guitarist would think "that doesn't sound like it normally does, I better adjust it because it won't sound good on the recording" and usually when you aren't looking they go over to their amplifier and turn the mid down and the treble and bass up this is the phenomena of EQ creeping, it becomes a problem when you set up everything to sound good on a recording only to find after recording a whole ton of tracks it isn't to be a nightmare of EQing because of the EQ creeping that has gone on.
so in order to combat this I made a simple little Y box (or Why do they not listen box) which I use without their knowledge so that it records whatever turd they think sounds good from the amp and a separate signal directly from the guitar allowing me to set up an amplifier after they have pissed off to tell their mates how they "laid down some sweet tracks today and it's going to sound awesome cause I helped engineer it" 

so if you have ever been annoyed by "musicians" using the practice of EQ creeping - this is for you.
it needs to be buffered because a very low voltage signal is being split to 2 outputs




23 comments:

  1. Hi Paul,
    I'm looking at your layout, if i want to make a 2 channel buffer, all i need is cancel the jumper between pin 3 and 5. Have another input strip that goes through a 100nf cap with a 10M resistor that goes to ground and then enter pin 5?

    Rej

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  2. yes, basically remove that jumper and make it look identical to the top half

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  3. I don't suppose this would work in reverse (2 inputs, 1 out)?

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    Replies
    1. no - you'd need a mixer circuit for that type of thing

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    2. That's what I was afraid of. Ha. Thanks for all the layouts!

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  4. In order to make this an A/B/Y switchable box, is it as simple as just adding two SPDT switches after the output caps, which either let signal on the channel pass, or firing it to ground?

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  5. Does that 10M resemble 10MEGA Ohms?

    Thank you so much.

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  6. Hi there.
    I see more resistors in the picture, are you sure I have to use only two 10M resistors.
    Can I use ordinary sockets and a metal casing? Is the input and both outputs should have separate ground?
    Can I use LM741CN, instead of the TL072?
    Thank You.

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    Replies
    1. yes - you only use 2 10M resistors
      yes you can use whatever case and sockets you want.
      no - the 741 is a single op-amp where as the TL072 is a dual op-amp

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  7. Thank you for your response. I have one question. I have a splitter JetCity AmpSwitch, is quite similar, with the exception that it has a 4558 op-amp, 2.2 M resistors and 470nF input capacitor. The output capacitors are the same as your splitter, 10uF. In my opinion, it quite ugly boosts treble. That's why I'm looking for another simple solution. Is your splitter does not affect so much the sound? I'm not an audiophile guitar player ;) but I really hear that JetSity ugly boosts treble. I will be grateful for your advice.

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  8. the op-amp/resistors won't affect the sound
    however the capacitor will - the lower value it is- the more the bass is rolled off. 10uF is more than high enough to allow the whole bandwidth of the guitar to pass through it.
    the idea of this splitter is that you don't notice that it's there so you can record a clean signal and also play through your amp with no signal loss (or play through 2 amps etc).

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  9. Thanks for the post. I'm still new to this so I'm trying to troubleshoot my current build. I was curious if the 10meg resistors could be giving me problems with the active emgs? I noticed this circuit elsewhere with 1meg resistors. It is probably some fault of my own but I'm getting zero output. I'll bring out the multimeter to test things tonight.

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  10. will a heavily boosted fuzz going into this be ok before it splits to the two amps?

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    Replies
    1. awesome! im gonna slam the hell out of it. thanks for sharing!

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  11. Hello, thanks for the post. I have build it and I have 2 perfectly fine signals coming out of the circuit.
    But when I connect a silicon fuzz face pedal on one of its outputs, the signal is extremely distorted and with many high frequencies...
    When I connect the guitar straight into the fuzz pedal everything is fine and it sounds normal.
    Do you have any idea how to fix this? Could this be an impendancy problem?
    Thanks a lot!

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  12. Is there a way to make this a 4 or ven 6 way splitter?

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    1. hey yangu,
      i know its 5 years since this comnt but did you build a 4 or 6 way splitter?
      do you know if it works? im want to try one and other poeples succes will give me more motivation :)

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    2. Yes. I made a 4 way splitter using a TL074 and using the additional op amps (actually, it's a 3 way splitter with a separate buffer)

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  13. Hi. Really useful!
    I've just build it and realized that maybe it could be used as splitter/blender. Can I connect out 1 of the splitter to send jack, out 2 to lug 1 of 100k lin blend pot, lug 3 of the pot to return jack and lug 2 of the pot to output. Sorry if I'm not clear. Do you thing it is going to work good or I have to change something in schematic? Thank you

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    Replies
    1. Bit of a necro revival I guess, but yep - it works fine like that, used it like that many times now.

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  14. Hi. Thanks for sharing! Works Perfect.
    I wont use it for Roland GK-3, which haw 7 volt power. What I need to change in original layout?

    Thanks,
    Miro

    Reply

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