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Guess it's not nice of me to post that teaser without a pic.  A quick backstory, I turn 50 in March and for my 50th I wanted to go guitar shopping in Nashville.  I've been watching the Instagram feeds of all the major dealers, waiting on "the one" to come up.  Lo and behold, this came up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I was smitten.  Looked at the description and it said a 1975 Gibson ES-355, making it a birth-year guitar, always wanted one.  Albeit a little early, my wife surprised me and bought it for me.  We went up the next weekend to try it out to be sure and needless to say, it's hanging on the wall now.  Below is the pic I saw on Insta, then a pic of me playing it at Carter's Vintage Guitar. 

Hey guys,
Long time no post, but I have a feeling you guys can help.  I recently purchased a 1975 Gibson ES-355 with the stereo output and I'm looking for a passive summing box that will accept the stereo signal from the guitar, allow a switchable phase invert on one of the inputs, and output a mono signal to run to the amp or to my Helix.  Ideally I'd like the input to be a single TRS stereo 1/4" cable and have a choice of output to a single mono.  Bonus points for allowing me to use a single TRS input and also output as dual mono, using the phase invert to simply flip the phase on one of the input channels.   

There are a few products out there that get close, but end up being more than I want.  The closest is the Lehle P-Split III, which I actually already ordered, but the phase invert switch works on the isolated output, rather than one of the input channels.  The Lehle Parallel SW is a great option, as it allows the switchable phase invert on the input, but it's not passive, which is kind of a pain in the neck if I'm going to run into my Helix. 

The little Saturnworks 2-channel summing mixer is almost exactly what I have in mind, but with a phase invert on one of the inputs, and hopefully just using a Stereo TRS cable from the guitar.     

Does anyone know of a build project out there like that?  I'm happy to build it myself or purchase an existing pedal, if it's out there.  Thanks!

Jonathan

I just recently picked up a Rane AP13 acoustic preamp, which actually came with an AKG gooseneck internal mic for acoustic guitar. I'm currently playing an Alvarez Yairi WY-1 that I've had since '97, and I love it. I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and I'm considering installing the mic via Dual Lock or mounting a small wood block to attach it to inside the guitar. At any rate, currently the guitar sports a typical under-saddle piezo pickup and battery powered preamp. So I'm guessing the current wiring is hot signal from piezo to tip of TRS output jack, battery negative to ring and ground from piezo and battery to sleeve. Does that sound right?

I'd like to incorporate the internal mic and the Rane AP13 allows for TRS input, with tip from hot piezo, ring from hot mic and sleeve being ground. However, how do I wire this up with my existing battery powered preamp setup? I would assume that I still want the preamp to only power on when a cable is plugged into the jack, but I can't figure out how to make that work if I use the ring from the TRS for the mic hot signal.

Any thoughts and insight is much appreciated. Thanks!

Jonathan

Well I don't have the LM386 on hand unfortunately.  I would think that just about any opamp would work, but it looks like the 386 has a different pinout than others. 

Yeah, that second one looks pretty easy.  Let me see if I have an LM386 sitting around and should be able to test it out. 

Okay, this is going to sound strange.  My long-time (12 years) gigging buddy and bandmate is moving away.  I want to make him a one of a kind "tuner".  Basically I want a single LED that lights up when it receives any audio signal.  Preferably brighter with stronger signal and fading as the signal from the guitar dies.  Does that make sense?  Seems like it would be a very easy circuit to come up with, but I'll need someone more versed than I to draw it up.  Anybody feel like helping me out?  I would greatly appreciate it.  Yeah, so if you're wondering, he'd always be "in tune".   

Thanks!

Well I spent a good two hours with it this evening running my '82 Les Paul into a Fender '68 Princeton reissue and it was glorious.  I knew from the videos that this was probably the end of the fuzz search for me and I am now convinced.  Just epic sounding.  Great job again guys.  You can tell a lot of thought went into it. 

and of course the Clusterfuzz had to be the one.  I haven't been tempted by any other commercial pedal in a long long time, but this one had me from day one.  I was just waiting around until the right time.  I have been back and forth with a bunch of different fuzzes.  The Cosmo was fantastic, but I sold it and I never could quite get the synthy, 8-bit goodness out of it.  I've only had a few minutes with it this evening and it is just incredible.  I've got it loaded up on a grab-n-go board for a practice I have this evening for a Santana tribute band I'm playing in.  Already know I'll be able to dial in the tone I'm looking for. 

Great job to Brian and the guys for an incredibly versatile and great sounding pedal. 

That looks awesome.  I am so tempted by this project.  It would be a perfect fit for an ongoing gig I have, but dang that's a lot going on.  Great job getting it all together. 

That looks great.  I have this same project sitting unfinished for, well, heck about a year now.  Just waiting on me to order the right IC and pot.  Yours looks great!

New Year's Eve is awesome in your 40's. Get to stay at home with the family and go to sleep at 11pm! Maybe I'll get a social life again in my 50's.

Absolutely.  Watch a football game, drink a glass of wine or 2, go to bed at 11PM and know you have a better than 50/50 chance of getting lucky with someone you don't have to worry about catching the scurvy from.  Wouldn't trade this. 

This is just super.  That sounds like a very interesting circuit.  BTW, what font is the Dirty Drive?  I like it!

...but I'm a headstock snob (finally just started admitting it)

You have put words to what I've been feeling for years.  I almost don't care how good the guitar is if the headstock looks like crap.  Like those James Tyler guitars...they may be great, but no thanks. 

So here are some rules we can sum things up with:
-If you want a wide dynamic range, put the pedal with the lowest headroom (most distortion) before the pedals with the most output.
-If you want a small dynamic range, put the pedals with the higher output before the pedals with the lowest output.
-If you want more control over the quality of distortion, tone shaping pedals should go early.
-If you're overdriving your amp (that is, the amp is part of the "stack"), you might want the tone shaping pedal last in line.
-Don't forget that your guitar's volume knob can be used like a gain stage with the right settings on the pedals.

Man, I have been away from this board for a while and have been lurking a bit for the last couple weeks.  Just haven't been building anything since I've been happy with my board. 

It's posts like Jon's that keep me coming back.  Great stuff. 

And for what it's worth, I like having different drives on my board.  I don't have any multi-pedals yet, since I like swapping out my fuzzes.  However, I typically run a fuzz first, then the Bluesbreaker, then the TS.  I like having more tonal content from the BB available before the TS.  I have the BB set at kind of med-low gain, but slightly higher than unity output.  I love stacking the BB into the TS.  I'm currently using a Demo Tape fuzz, which has been fine and actually sounds good going into the TS.  Anyway, I like having the fuzz first, then BB, then TS.  But that's my $.02. 

Not to mention that my TS is the BYOC OD2, so it has a Boost built into the same pedal...so there's that.  Good luck with it!

You guys with all these looping set ups...I'd like to see some video of how you use it.  Is it in a band setting?  I pretty much only play in a band setting and I feel like I'm missing out, but I struggle to see how I could fit it in.