Musical and effects

The circuit of the unit is fairly simple, but is a bit irksome to set up. The reason is that obtaining matched FETs is not easy, so I had to make sure that the circuit would work with off-the-shelf FETs. The phase shifter is a standard opamp circuit, and has been used for this sort of application many times. After experimenting with alternative variable resistors, I decided that the FET was still the best choice, although they are fairly critical to set up, and have linearity problems...

This preamplifier was designed as a stand-alone portable unit, useful to control the signals generated by guitar pick-ups, particularly the contact "bug" types applied to acoustic instruments. Obviously it can be used with any type of instrument and pick-up. It features a -10dB, 0dB and +10dB pre-set input selector to adjust input sensitivity, in order to cope with almost any pick-up type and model. A very long battery life is ensured by the incredibly low current consumption of this circuit, i.e. less than µA...