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how can it amplify anything if it doesn't even have an active component?

passive EQ, i'd accept that theory, but the microphone doesn't give a sound of that thing isn't plugged in .. so? power for the microphone with some caps for the usual filtering?

i'll try to draw something, 1rst try ever

3 legs, 1 cut really close to the body of the component.

I would love to experiment but the lead from the positive side of the battery unsoldered itself from somewhere as I removed the paste. But u have no clue from where

Years ago I bought a high level gypsy jazz guitar. With the guitar came a acoustic pickup and with the pickup a preamp. That gear was used for a long time by the professional guitarist who sold me the guitar. I actually used this pickup a few times and found it lacked output level and presence and moved on to a magnetic pickup for that guitar. Lately I thought about mixing both pickups and though I'd open the preamp to check what's inside.

This is what I found



Components are held in the box and together using this kind of paste.
There is a battery, but no active component (except a led?)




I'm actually not sure what the blue components are but they look like trimpots with long legs.

It looks like a passive network of resistors and caps to me

What I don't understand if that it the pickup is plugged directly into an amp.... Nothing happens so it's like there is some kind of amplification there. Or could it be that the pickup needs power like some kind of Fantom power and this is actually providing it to the pickup?

Anyway it's so ugly I thought I'd share it

I just watched the Ken Burn's Jazz Documentary in it's entirety for the first time. When I initially watched it, around the time of it's release, I only caught bits and pieces. If you haven't seen this documentary, then you should. I've been stocking up on Jazz albums to jam with ever since.

Cool! Glad to see someone discovering the infinite beauty that can be found in jazz in improvised music. Lots of joy and beauty in your path

be a booteek pedal builder and call it a feature?

If you just let the guitar idle, there will be a spot where it goes from being noisy to ... not noisy. If you keep turning it, you'll end up at a point where it's very quiet. The spot you want is just after it stops sounding noisy.

well that's what i'm wondering .. i didn't hear much noise coming from the pedal... but i also always played my guitar when plugged in, no idle time. also i kept the volume pretty low.

i'll try to make noise with the pedal to see what you're talking about ..
anyway. event with the trimpot cranked, i think it sounds better than the two compressors i've tried (cs2 and dyna comp). this is actually a very nice effect according to my ears.

The biggest drawback i have so far is the treble loss, but i've heard it's not something that can be avoided with a compressor..

thanks for your very interesting insight as always

I shouldn't make it sound like the trimpot doesn't do anything. But if you're outside of the very small operating range, then either you won't be able to produce a strong enough signal to trigger compression at all (even if you have gobs of gain), OR the FET will simply sit at a low resistance -- essentially be "stuck" in compressing. There are other limits to the design, like a longer decay time can be problematic, the lack of a buffer for the rectifier, an input-signal dependent threshold, etc.

thanks for your very interesting and educating answer as usual.

So if i'm moving the trimpot too high i'm essentially at 'full compression' all the time? it doesn't sound completely squashed to me.. at least not in a bad way at all.

should i try to lower that trimpot to recover a bit of dynamics then ?

Ooooooook...
So i opened my pedal again last night and it appears that the problem i describe will occur of you soldered your 9v supply to the LED pad instead of the 9v pad....

i feel ... not very smart ... as i'm writing this

Anyway, thanks for your help !

Also i tested the pedal last night, not very loud since the kids were sleeping, but is the effect supposed to be really huge with this compressor? I mean, i definitely hear compression, and a really nice one i might add, but in my memories of the boss CS2, a compressor can sound really artificial and have a pumping effect with each note if the compression is set too high. Here, no value of the pot controlling the compression amount produced that kind of extreme sound.
is that normal for that circuit in your experience?

do these kind of sales sometimes work? i mean.. is there someone out there willing to spend 11000$ on a tubescreamer?

i know about collectors and/or stupid people with a lot of money but still..

mix between electro and djent ... yes it does exists.. mind blown

pedalpartsplus drilling has been ok  for me, not that i have been a BIG user, but i had a half a dozen drilled enclosures from them
their shipping prices to europe, however, are NOT ok.. but theres no alternative

Here is an example of what i had in mind for the dirtbaby
https://www.dropbox.com/s/93gbs9nrmd736fn/dirtbaby.ai?dl=0

Would someone be interested in contributing? i can share those i make as i build (VEYRSLOWLY) some projects. but i think it would be great to cover as many projects as possible.

or is it just me ?

Since i can't drill at home these days, I need to ask pedalpartsplus to drill the boxes for me.

I found it takes some time to report the measures of the doc from madbean's projects onto their file and i thought that maybe we could share these files between forum members to gain some time?

maybe we could set up a shared dropbox or idk what to host the vector files required for the madbean projects.

Good idea or not? am i the only one using pedalpartsplus custom drilling option?

Available so far :
Dirtybaby: https://www.dropbox.com/s/93gbs9nrmd736fn/dirtbaby.ai?dl=0

a bit late to thank you for that information, but ... thanks