making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

[grungeman55]

Hey Forum,
so I have this little solid state amp, a Robson GA-15TS.
It's a great little practice amp but I run it with the boost switch on, and the gain all the way up.
I just want to know if I could make a Distortion pedal based upon all the innards of the amp.
thanks for anyone who can help me out.

 

[GuitarFanatic]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

You can, but it would take a lot of work. You'd have to miniatureize the circuit and add another jack on it..

 

[DankStar]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

Is it really that good? That's a starter SS amp. There's like 8 million pedals out these days, many of which would probably trump the sound of a small practice amp's distortion for around 50 bucks.

Having said that, just try running out the headphone jack.

 

[DaveThePius]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

Yeah... I'd just spend the $30 on a Joyo pedal or something.

If you're looking for a pedal project for S&G's, I'd look up some schematics on some other pedals like a Rat or TS9.

 

[grungeman55]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

Is it really that good? That's a starter SS amp. There's like 8 million pedals out these days, many of which would probably trump the sound of a small practice amp's distortion for around 50 bucks.

Having said that, just try running out the headphone jack.

To me it is that good and I would love to have it in a pedal for because I like it's tonal characteristics. If I wanted something else I would look for something else but I would like this.

 

[grungeman55]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

Yeah... I'd just spend the $30 on a Joyo pedal or something.

If you're looking for a pedal project for S&G's, I'd look up some schematics on some other pedals like a Rat or TS9.

I don't want a joyo pedal, I want the challenge of trying to make my own custom pedal.
and I don't like the Rat ot TS9, I've had them both in my life and I've sold them

 

[Mad-Max]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

I don't want a joyo pedal, I want the challenge of trying to make my own custom pedal.
and I don't like the Rat ot TS9, I've had them both in my life and I've sold them

My question, is maybe you're not using those pedals right? It's honestly really hard to go wrong with the TS9, but maybe, just maybe since you're running a solid state amp, the TS9 doesn't react as well?

Also, what's the purpose of making this amp a pedal when you already have the tone and you don't want anything else? Your logic doesn't really make too much sense.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

If your amp has an effects loop, your work is done. Just plug the Send into the front of another amp and you are done, no need to reinvent the wheel here. If it has speaker out only, you will need to convert it.

I did something similar to this, but a but more upscale -- we took my EAST Studio 2 and ran it into a vintage Marshall Major as an overdrive/distortion unit ... was a glorious (and deafening) noise!

 

[DankStar]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

To me it is that good and I would love to have it in a pedal for because I like it's tonal characteristics. If I wanted something else I would look for something else but I would like this.

If you can find a schematic of the preamp portion you can probably recreate what's going on there in a pedal. I think most people want to do this with tube amps, which is trickier and uses FETs to simulate tubes. But without the tubes you may get away with just using the type of components already in your amp (diodes & opamps for the overdrive you're wanting, or whatever).

Here's an example of a tube amp to SS pedal: http://runoffgroove.com/thor.html

Either way, you're going to need a schematic or for someone to trace the circuit to know what's in there (on the preamp side). You may even need to add filters and such to get it to do what you want to do, like a breadboard project where you keep tweaking stuff until you hear what you like.

There's a SS Rickenbacker amp I played once that had a killer 70s fuzzy overdrive to it. I thought it'd be cool to have a pedal of it rather than the whole amp, but never took it any further.

 

[grungeman55]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

If you can find a schematic of the preamp portion you can probably recreate what's going on there in a pedal. I think most people want to do this with tube amps, which is trickier and uses FETs to simulate tubes. But without the tubes you may get away with just using the type of components already in your amp (diodes & opamps for the overdrive you're wanting, or whatever).

Here's an example of a tube amp to SS pedal: http://runoffgroove.com/thor.html

Either way, you're going to need a schematic or for someone to trace the circuit to know what's in there (on the preamp side). You may even need to add filters and such to get it to do what you want to do, like a breadboard project where you keep tweaking stuff until you hear what you like.

There's a SS Rickenbacker amp I played once that had a killer 70s fuzzy overdrive to it. I thought it'd be cool to have a pedal of it rather than the whole amp, but never took it any further.

This makes a lot of sense. thanks for that and your provided example! Since it's such a cheap amp I'm tempted to buy another one and open it up and learn it so if somehow it gets messed it won't matter much.
thanks for your help!

 

[IMENATOR]

Re: making a guitar amp into a distortion pedal.

Why not trying some of these AMT preamps? People claim these are very good