Electronics

-Electronics-

Winter 2014 For my project I am building an electric guitar analog effects pedal. The pedal is called the "Tube Screamer" and is an overdrive effect, which clips an amplified signal.

Why build a guitar pedal? I want to understand what makes overdrive sound good. Oftentimes, when people speak of "distortion", they are talking about noise that is unwanted, but with guitars, there is a good distortion, which make the guitar signal sound good. As I built the pedal, I analyzed it with an oscilloscope, as well as did research, to better understand what makes it sound qualitatively good to human ears.

• Basic Guitar Physics*

An electric guitar works by converting sound into an alternating current, using pickups. A pickup is a magnet with wire densely coiled around it. It creates a magnetic field around the guitar string, so that when the string vibrates, there is a change in the magnetic field, and a voltage is created in the coiled wires.