How to Design a Distortion Pedal Circuit

HEY there! Just a quick note for you first... We'll be offering many more new things to our newsletter members starting immediately: *Monthly free pedal contests *Exclusive videos only available to newsletter members *First to be notified on upcoming limited releases (we have several coming shortly!) *First to be notified when we have sales, discounts, and extra "B-stock" *We'll send a notification when new Youtube, Exclusive Member videos and blogs are up And much more! Simply go here - https://www.wamplerpedals.com/members... It's free, and we don't spam you every other day with emails like so many do! _______________________ For years I’ve had many folks ask me to make dedicated courses on some of these topics that I dive into here on youtube, but have been wanting me to go into way more detail. I’m proud to announce that we now have two guitar pedal courses available that are deep dive on all of those pedal questions you’ve been wondering, and we are ALSO taking pre-enrollments for a huge “How to design overdrive and distortion pedal circuits” course for beginners and intermediates who are wanting to learn all about the electronics side of guitar pedals.* All of these courses are ABSOLUTELY RISK FREE - 100% money back guarantee within 30 days of your purchase. If you don’t love the courses, I’ll refund you, no questions asked. If the thrill of building and tweaking your own equipment ignites your passion, you’ll love it. Swing by my other website, https://www.guitarpedalcourse.com For a VERY limited time, you can snag any of our courses at a steal. Just type in the code 25offnow to slash 25% off any course. Don't delay though – this deal ends shortly. What have you got to lose? ;) ____________________ Comment below: Which one did you like best, and why? In this video, we're diving into distortion pedal circuits for electric guitars. While we've explored breadboarding techniques for building overdrive and boost circuits in previous episodes, it's a good time for us to focus on the realm of distortion. We start by revisiting the breadboarding process, a great tool for quick and solder-free prototyping, tailoring the approach specifically for distortion pedal design. Subscribe to our channel for more great content here: @wampler_pedals But what's the difference between overdrive and distortion circuits? We’ll dive into that, as well as some design philosophies and the nuanced differences between these two types of circuits. For those who love the technical details, we dive deep into a few different circuit types, discussing why they do what they do. We discuss everything from the role of diodes to the significance of gain stages, to help explain how these elements contribute to the overall feel, sound, compression and saturation of your sound. If you're a beginning DIY’er, you'll like this video as well. We'll provide a circuit walkthrough and explanation on breadboarding each circuit we explore. To keep things accessible, our component selection focuses on basic, readily available parts, like the TL072 op amp and 2n7000 mosfets. Overall, no matter if you're more into the guitar tone chasing side or the DIY electronics learning enthusiast, this video translates the complexities of pedal electronics into terms every guitarist can appreciate—how it all influences your guitar tone. Song at end written, recorded, mixed and mastered by my nephew Kyle Wampler: https://music.apple.com/us/album/jetp... Wampler Guitar Pedal Courses Now Available! https://www.guitarpedalcourse.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Beginning 00:22 basic non-inverting op amp with clipping diodes 01:35 playing through the circuit 02:06 soft and hard clipping through this circuit 03:19 schematic and circuit discussion of this circuit 05:49 adding another gain stage - an inverting op amp 08:04 soft and hard clipping through this circuit 08:47 schematic and circuit discussion of this circuit 10:39 using mosfets instead of op amps and diodes 12:52 schematic and circuit discussion of this circuit 15:44 My thoughts on all 3 circuits