Collaborate Disseminate
Distorted guitars were a big part of the rock revolution last century; we try to forget about the roll. As a youth, [David Hilowitz] couldn’t afford a loud aggressive amp, …read more Continue reading You Can Use An Old Tape Deck As A Distortion Pedal
It’s not often that a single photo can tell you pretty much everything you need to know about a project, but the spectrum analyzer screenshot nearby is the perfect summary …read more Continue reading Wien Bridge Oscillator Drives Distortion Into the Floor
Guitarists will do just about anything to get just the right sound out of their setup, including purposely introducing all manner of distortion into the signal. It seems counter-intuitive, but …read more Continue reading Guitar Distortion with Diodes in Code, Not Hardware
If you follow audiophile reviewers, you’ll know that their stock-in trade is a very fancy way of saying absolutely nothing of quantifiable substance about the subject while sounding knowledgeable about …read more Continue reading Know Audio: Distortion Part One
As we’ve traced our no-nonsense path through the world of Hi-Fi audio, we’ve started with the listener, understood the limitations of the human ear, and thence proceeded to the loudspeaker. …read more Continue reading Know Audio: Amplifiers And Distortion
What do you do with a cool-looking misfit guitar that has non-working built-in effects and some iffy design aspects? Do you try to fix it and keep it original, or …read more Continue reading Soviet Axe Restoration: Replace or Repair?
[Gijs Gieskes] is certainly no stranger to hacked cassette players, but his latest triumph may well be the most approachable project for anyone looking to explore the world of unorthodox tape unspooling. By attaching a fairly simple add-on PCB to a modern portable cassette player, the user is able to …read more
Continue reading Hacked Tape Player Makes for a Unique Instrument
There’s something seriously wrong with the Arduino walkie-talkie that [GreatScott!] built.
The idea is simple: build a wireless intercom so a group of motor scooter riders can talk in real-time. Yes, such products exist commercially, but that’s no fun at all. With a little ingenuity and a well-stocked parts bin, …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: The Arduino Walkie That Won’t Talkie
It’s one thing to assemble your own circuits from scratch using off the shelf components. It’s quite another to build the components first, and then build the circuit.
That’s the path [Joris Wegner] took with this video distortion effects box, dubbed PHOSPHOR. One might wonder why you’d want a box …read more
Continue reading DIY Vactrols Give MIDI-Controlled Video Distortion
When we are concerned with the accurate reproduction of a signal, distortion and noise are the enemy that engineers spend a great deal of time eliminating wherever possible. However, humans being the imperfect creatures that we are, we sometimes desire a little waviness and grain in our media – typically …read more
Continue reading OptoGlitch Is An Optocoupler Built For Distortion