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Cigar Box guitar overdrive pedal for piezo pickups. Get great tone without all the feedback.

I'm sure that this circuit will work great with magnetic pickups as well, but the main point of this was to have an overdrive for use with cigar box guitars (or other instruments with piezo pickups) without tons of feedback which is a common problem for any instrument with piezo pickups. Keep in mind that my prototyping rig isn't perfect a perfect setup and is obviously not shielded. A completed pedal with this circuit in it wouldn't allow as much noise in the circuit (if you hear any.) In my opinion this sounds great for CBG and is very amp like. I'll have to get my strat put together soon so that I can sample it with magnetic pickups. Also, please note that it helps with feedback if you point your amp away from your instrument. The video starts out with the overdrive setting in about the middle position. I'm still trying to figure out where the best limit would be for the upper end. I end the video with the overdrive setting back at about the middle position and I'm changing the volume on my guitar a lot to show how it reacts to it at different volume settings.

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Comment by Jamie MacBlues on July 27, 2015 at 10:06pm: Belated comment, but great sound. Also., looks like ma ex wife's hair in the morning ( heck, her hair the whole bloomin day!) Can't wait for pocket size version ( of fuzz box, not my ex Mrs !!!)

Comment by BUGGY (C) on January 13, 2015 at 10:02am: wow that looks kinda kool

Comment by Cause the Blue rat on January 12, 2015 at 10:34pm: I like the deep crunch. Something I can't get with piezos with the distortion boxes I have.

Comment by RTZGUITARS on January 12, 2015 at 4:52pm: cool works great

Comment by Clock The Wolf on January 12, 2015 at 12:11pm: Groovy!

Comment by robert jones on January 12, 2015 at 2:17am: Clipping options would be a nice feature.

Might be worth offering the effect with just a gain pot, no vol or tone stack, for wiring up in a CBG in addition to a selling a complete pedal.

Comment by cigarBGuitarEfx on January 12, 2015 at 12:51am: I might be selling the finished product. Probably will. At one point I was manufacturing and selling pedals. I decided to go to school to learn more about it before I made any more though. This circuit here is the first one that I've made that is all my design, not just a tweak of someone else's design.

This one at this point is pretty much asymmetrical. It uses a green LED on one side and a Zener on the other. Whit IN4001's it was much more of a hard edged distortion.If I start selling these, what kind of clipping diodes a customer would like could be an option.

This circuit isn't done yet, I'm going to add a tone stack to it, either 2 or 3 band.

Comment by robert jones on January 11, 2015 at 11:21pm: Cool. Should work just fine with mag pups.

Symmetric or asymmetric clipping?

Ever tried the 2n3330? The 2n1936 isn't bad either but not as high gain so performs better cascaded, real fun with a blue LED for clipping.

That's what I love about breadboarding, trying different components until you get the sound you want. :-)

You going to sell finished product or will you be posting the circuit when finalized?