What Should I Consider in Vocal Pedal Designs?

jdduffield

Active member
I’m thinking about building a reverb pedal for vocals. (FV1)
This means I would be working with XLR instead of 1/4” mono guitar jacks. What are some things I need to consider when designing a circuit with XLR jacks? For example, I imagine I will need to keep power negative and earth separated. I imagine I will need to handle the possibility of 48V phantom power making its way up the output cable. Any thoughts or advice is welcome.
 
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This could serve as some inspiration for your input stage.

What exactly you should do depends on what your signal chain will be. Are you expecting this to receive a raw microphone signal? If so, it will have to serve as a pre-amp as well as an fx pedal. In that case, you don't necessarily need a THAT1512, a 5532 will also do a decent job. However you need a way to unbalance the signal, the benefit of the 1512 is that the device serves as a balanced input, pre-amplifier, and unbalanced output.

As usual, Rod at ESP also has some inspiration for you https://sound-au.com/project122.htm (though no phantom power in this case).

I would personally use isolated DC-DC converters for power in this project, aim for 9-12v DC in, then use an isolated converter for either +/- 12 or 15v, a separate converter for 48v, and a regulator for the FV-1 which I think needs 5v.
 
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