WHat do guitar distortion circuits sound like with ?

[lordvader88]

I need to buy some better op-amps overall, but for now I have some LM741, LM358, LM386. So for fun and math homework I should build some guitar pedal circuits with those. I'm wondering, what how good/bad they actually sound ??  I should check utube, but then again, maybe not. And of I have a guitar, and scopes and probes/etc, I never checked any of my guitars on the scope before.

I really should experiment more, rather than just collecting parts.


And to go from start to finish, through such a circuit, with say; 1 op-amp stage stage, 1 tone stage, 1 JFET stage, and calculate the ideal situations, I can't do that yet. Or can I ? I can do basic op-amps, with beginner level ODE's, and complex numbers. I need to do more ODE before I re-do Laplace transforms. I don't formally know AC analysis on filters either.

I've been off on a math/physics holiday from here and physical electronics. And it's all falling together perfectly.

Do I need Fourier series or functions/etc/? I've toyed with them over the years, but never delved in, I can't really remember any main eqn of them.

[unitedatoms]

one look at it is that the worse (non linear) the component is the better it sounds. I never did anything with sound generation, other than connecting speaker to lab generator. The sound of perfect sinusoid is terrible, thats all I know.

[UprightCitizen]

Thing is, as mentioned, distortion pedals that you are talking about are highly non linear. This means your ODE's, laplace etc is probably not going to do anything for you. So it might not be the best project based on what you seem to be looking for.

[Refrigerator]

LM358 is pretty slow with ok zero crossing, works for low frequencies. LM386 sounds pretty funky when you overdrive it.

[Jr460]

one look at it is that the worse (non linear) the component is the better it sounds.

Not exactly true.   A guitar into something that hard clips it into almost square wave doesn't sound good.   Makes for a very ratty, rather big full sound.  In general people tend to find odd harmonics in distortion as less musical.

Of course everything has it's place.  If you are playing simple chords, those higher odd harmonics make things more complex, for example taking a C and making it something like a C 7#9. Now if you really what very specific higher order chords, a bunch of distortion may be the last thing you want.   Or if you are Jimmy Hendrix, yea play the 7#9 with heavy crunch.