noobus questions

it seems to me as though this would be confusing on any schematic unless i am missing something grand (which is way more likely)

i am sort of a noob at this, but can you guys tell me what this schematic means? i've always wondered where exactly the ground points on a schematic go. do they solder to the chassis or one specific ground point? is ther more than one ground point they can solder too? for example: http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/3knob.php in these schematics, where do the ground points go? is there a certain place on the circuit board? do they go to the chassis? do they solder to the 3pdt switch? and do they all go to the same one or not?

also, while your at it, is there a minimum voltage a 5u4g tube can run at? im looking at using one in a pedal in place of diodes and idk if it will make any substantial effect at 9 volts.

thanks guys all help is appreciated.

[milkypostman]

Im more experienced with pedals than amps, but stll sightly a beginner. But i know the following,

You have to be careful with this grounding because it's a positive ground. Meaning it can't really share a power supply with another pedal that is negative ground otherwise you'll short circuit and blow out your supply. For these pedals I normally just do 9v exclusively. In this case you just ground to whatever. Doesnt need to be a single place but they should all be connected somehow. Normally I have a ground on the board I'm using and I connect that to the grounds of the input and output jacks and in the end they do contact the chasis but I never solder to the chasis for pedals because I don't need to and because I like to be able to take everything out easily.

I don't think this fits in this forum though. So maybe I shouldn't have even replied.


Some pedals do incorporate a tube which I don't know much about.

[smolder]

Try this:

http://www.aikenamps.com/. >tech info >advanced >star grounding

Good stuff from Mr Aiken.

[wall_of_sleep]

Thanks for that link! There is information in there I needed to read for sure.

[donnyjaguar]

The grounds are simply common with the chassis and the sleeve of both jacks. Note inserting a mono plug into the stereo socket completes the connection and powers up the pedal.

This is a positive ground circuit so it must have its own power supply or battery.

You could convert the circuit to the more common negative ground by replacing the transistors with NPN, but it'd probably sound different.

alright, that was very useful grounding information! thank you very much. what do you guys have to say about using a 5u4g tube in place of two diodes. i know it fundamentally works, but idk if 9 volts would be enough current to supply to the tube to allow it to work properly

[guiltless]

The point of a rectifier is to convert AC to DC. If you are using a 9v battery then you already have DC. And clean DC at that. If you were to pull in straight from the wall you would need to drop a ton of voltage to get down to 9v. And then you would need to filter the crap out of it to make it useful for a pedal. Why not just stick with pure 9v DC from the get go?

I guess I am thinking in more amp power supply terms, but still. Even in using transformers to drop your voltage, you would then introduce sag into your pedal (so I assume). Which could be cool as it seems to me like you would be simulating the whole dying battery thing, but you could use a sag resistor and get a similar function.

And with the 5u5g, you would have a not small tube stick up or out of your pedal somewhere. The real question is whether there are any positive gains to be had from it. Maybe, but it seems to me that they would be far outweighed by the costs. And if your are looking for a tube tone, then using a preamp tube might get you there a little better than a tube rectifier.

my .02