#1

Telling you that I’m half way through ‘electronics for dummies’ should give you an idea of my level of understanding of circuits and components. I’d love to make a kind of mult, panner box which would accept a 1/4 mono cable and output two 1/4 mono cables but with a single (ideally centre indented) pot that would allow me to pan the signal across the two mono outputs. This would mean I could feed a stereo looper with any mono instrument, and pan overdubs to wherever I liked, good idea right? I know that a passive mult should be pretty simple but I don’t know how to design a circuit that would feed this centre indented pot (and haven’t actually seen these centred pots in the electronics stores I’ve started to frequent, do they have a value and travel the same as regular pots but with 0 at the centre?). I’d appreciate any help, although very utilitarian, I think that a little box like this could prove very useful. Thanks HN

#2

Is there a reason that you want to build a custom box for this? I can’t help but think that if you’re using tabletop gear, a really tiny pre-looper mixer would not only solve this problem but be really functional in a whole load of other ways. And by the time you bought an enclosure for your custom project it’d be around the same price: http://www.thomann.de/gb/behringer_xenyx_502.htm

Alternatively if you’re using hands-on instruments (guitars etc) you could do this very cheaply with a splitter and two cheap volume pedals, once again really functional for a load of other things as well. (I use volume pedals as attenuators for CV gear, for example)

#3

I fully support your DIY idea but can’t offer much help. However, if you decide to go for a prebuilt thing, the Boss LS-2 should be perfect for your needs.

It also supplies power to other pedals if you use an ac adapter and it will take a lot of abuse.

#4

Hey Simeon, thanks for the suggestions, I didn’t realise that those thinkgs were so cheap. I do, however, still want to build the box for a few reasons; It could be really really tiny if I built it right, I was thinking like 6 x 6 cm tiny and I could build it into a small die-cast pedal style box (actually have one lying around somewhere), it could be passive (I think) so no need for extra plugs and power cables, I love the idea of it just being one knob (I spent the past year trying to minimise the versatility of my setup as I’m totally prone to option paralysis and compulsive tinkering), and lastly I just really enjoy making things myself, even rehousing guitar pedals feels great and makes them feel more mine. I’m sure this is the simplest thing in world for some of the brains on this forum (if they’ve migrated from monome.org yet). Thanks. HN

#5

passive will typically introduce impedance which may result in gain loss or unpredicatability depending on where the signal goes afterwards-- just a reminder.

the easiest thing you could do, for a an approximation of panning (this scheme would introduce substantial attenuation) is use a dual-gang potentiometer. it’s basically two pots hooked up to one knob. if you use a linear potentiometer (not an audio/exponential) you can feed the input signal into opposite sides of the pot, GND into the inverse, and use the center pins as L/R.

i must say, though. active circuits are awesome, and not much more complicated. an 8-pin dual op amp and a 9v battery is the next level.

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