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I’m not sure of the reason the de-facto standard for effects pedal power became the 9V battery. Many low current pedals such as buffers, boosts, and distortions could easily be designed to run equally well on the more common AA battery type if we so desired. I’ll hazard a guess that history has a lot to do with it.… Read More »Batteries Included
Have you ever looked at the underside of a pedal or the rear of a guitar amplifier and wondered about all those little symbols such as FCC, CE, CSA, TUV or UL? Why is it that we typically see those on products from the big players, but not on the boutique devices? What does ‘This equipment has been tested and… Read More »What’s the big deal with Certification?
This is a follow on from a previous Pedal Power post on power supplies for effects pedals. In this article we are going to take a look at how to match power supply features with your pedals, and choose the right supply to meet your requirements. 1. Input Power First, you are going to need to check that the input power requirements… Read More »More Pedal Power
Here’s a quick guide to configuring the iRig Blueboard wireless MIDI controller with a Mission SP-1 switching expression pedal. We had a request recently via the Mission Customer Service queue about using the iRig Blueboard with a Mission SP-1. The Blueboard is a handy little battery operated MIDI controller that can send MIDI Program Change and Continuous Controller messages… Read More »Blueboard Expression Pedal
Someone asked me recently if the Mission Expressionator could be used as a multi-tap tempo controller, so I created this little hack to do it. It will work with any Expressionator, so read on to see how you can try this for yourself. Many modern digital effects pedals and multi-effects units include a tap tempo capability. By tapping on… Read More »Multi Tap Tempo Hack
Boost pedals are a paradox, at once the simplest of devices, most with just a single knob, they can also be a challenge to integrate to achieve the desired effect. Much more than say a delay, chorus, or even many distortions, the heart of a good boost lies not in the boost pedal itself, but in the complex interactions between… Read More »Give Me A Boost
Last quarters Gearphoria article is a look into gooping of effects pedals and it’s more legitimate parent, conformal coating. You can read the latest edition of Workbench Confidential at Gearphoria I don’t read music gear forums much, but recently I did a little weekend surfing and saw fair bit of comment about the ‘gooping’ of components in guitar effects pedals. Indeed… Read More »Don’t Goop Me Bro
Modern studio quality audio interfaces can support up to 192KHz sampling rates, more than 4 times CD quality. Can you hear the difference? Recently at Mission I’ve been performing testing on the digital audio interface in the Gemini Amplifiers. Gemini are a series of powered amplifiers with a digital audio interface on board. You can connect up a computer via the… Read More »Do I need a 192K Sampling Rate?
If you run an internet business, whether it’s an auction store selling home built pedals from your garage or a large commercial enterprise, sooner or later someone is going to try to scam you. Here are a few or my favorites from over the years and some suggestions on how to be prepared for them. These are all based… Read More »Six Internet Store Scams
Guitar players are often going on about clean headroom, particularly in relation to tube amps: “this amp has plenty of clean headroom”, or “there’s not enough clean headroom”, or even “there’s too much clean headroom”. We also hear it mentioned, though, in relation to effects pedals, and how plugging in a 12V power supply to a 9V pedal for example… Read More »Coming Clean about Clean Headroom