Category Archives: Electronics Design

Phantom Piezo Preamp – new version available

Updated 1st December 2019 Updated 10 May 2018 Updated 1 June 2018 December 2019. Time moves on and the PF5102 has been discontinued by On-Semiconductor and is nearly unobtainium. It looks like the J111/J112/J113 are the only TO-92 JFETS suitable for our purposes. We are currently sampling the J113. Some Piezo Preamps will be shipped… Read More »

JFET guitar/instrument buffer pedal

Following on from our articles on the Unbalanced piezo preamp and Guitar leads, buffers and true bypass we present a project to build your own JFET buffer pedal. The circuit is essentially the same as in the unbalanced piezo preamp with a few tweaks and may be built into a Hammond 1590B or similar stomp-box… Read More »

Re-amper revisited

Update: reStomp re-ampers available for sale in the shop. Back in 2012, I wrote about re-amping and offered a design for a transformer-coupled interface between balanced-line output from a professional recording device and the unbalanced and lower-voltage input to a guitar amplifier. If you’re not familiar with re-amping, the idea is that you record (say)… Read More »

Theatrical power control – part 2

In the first part of this series, we introduced the idea of power control separate from the dimmer system and gave an overview of different ways we can manage switching of power to installed appliances. In this second part, we will look at remote-control schemas for independent contactors. One Big Relay So, the first option… Read More »

Theatrical cue lights – part 4

Updated 1st December 2019 Part 3 of this series introduced two professional cue light systems both using a three-wire system with an XLR grounded cable shield. One system is relay-based and the other microcontroller-based. Either system would be suitable for a professional installation. However, the two systems use different arrangements for the outstation. In fact… Read More »