Correlating Vp with "Strong/Weak" Output

YourGuitarist

YourGuitarist

Active member
Hi,

Have a design where the gain product of the drive and volume control can introduce oscillations. I'm looking at trading post clipping volume for pre clipping gain.

I am wondering, what output level is considered weak for a pedal? I usually shoot for for full swing so 3.5-4Vpk but if I had to forfeit some swing how much is too much?
 
3.5-4Vpk is really about the max you can get out of a non-R2R opamp at 9v and pretty loud. That's way above unity gain, even with hot/active pups. I would think 2.5-3Vptp would be more than suffecient and even that may overload following pedals, depending on their architecture
 
Yeah so if I settled for 1.5Vpk would that still be considered usable?

The OD clips at .7ish (go figure) and there is clean 10.5dB (3.3x) gain after so 2.3Vpk theoretically.

From an oscillation standpoint, I need to drop ~4dB from the sum of the volume and drive gain. I could subtract from the drive and have more output on tap or subtract from the volume and have more dirt on tap.

If I knocked 4db from volume I'd have 1.5Vpk at the output.
 
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