I'm making a Metal distortion pedal
ill be using 6 potentiometers
POT1 Distortion 250K
POT2 low freq control 100K
POT3 high freq control 100K
POT4 mid 100K
POT5 Gain 10K
POT6 volume 50k
But which type of potentiometer is suitable for each ??
Logarithmic?
linear?
Distortion-Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of an electric musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones
Low, Mid, and High refer to the frequencies that effect the tone of the amp. Low being low frequency, Mid being middle frequencies, and High being High frequencies.
If you want your guitar tone to be bassy you'll turn up the Low, If you want it crisp or tinny you turn up the high. Mid frequencies generally are associated with clarity and definition or body of the tone. for example if you turned the Low and high up, and left the mid down, you'd get a boxy sound.
But i do not know which pot will achieve the required control over them LOG ? Linear? 🙁
Here is the circuit diagram
Best Answer
Well you can modify the linear pot to get an almost logarithmic response by adding a resistor from the CCW side to the wiper. Because of its simplicity this might be worth a try. Here's what the idea looks like: -
For the pedal circuit you need this might be ideal. It's not perfect of course but it reduces the risk of buying linear pots because these can be made "almost logarithmic by adding one resistor.
One thing to remember is that if the design calls for a 1M pot and you have a 1M resistor across wiper to CCW, the end to end pot value will change as the wiper advance towards CW. This would probably mean that you should use a 2M pot and 2M resistor.
Some experimentation is required and if you could post a circuit I'm sure better advise could be given. Pictures gleened from here
EDIT - picture of circuit attached with my best guess at log/lin: -