This is a blog on how you can relay your guitar pedals with relays so that your boards dont eat up all your power.
What are Guitar Relays?
A relay is an electrically operated switch. They are used in many guitar pedals to control the power going to the pedal itself, so that when its not engaged, the pedal does not have any power running through it. This helps to keep your sound clear and also saves on power consumption by eliminating excess use of pedals that arent being used at any given moment.
You can relay your guitar pedals with relays so that your boards don’t eat up all your power.
This is a very important point to consider, if you want to use more than 2 or 3 pedals because you will start to suck the life out of your board if you don’t. For example, if you run a Boss DD-20 and a couple of other pedals (that are 9V) on the same board, you will probably need some kind of power supply (probably 2A at least). This is because a lot of pedals use up quite a lot of current.
If you have relays in between each pedal, then you can turn off the circuit using the relay when that pedal is not in use.
The way relays work is they have a coil inside that turns on when current is applied to it. When this happens, it closes an electrical circuit controlled by this coil. So if you apply power to the coil, it closes an electrical circuit that turns on your guitar pedal’s circuit.
So by having relays between each pedal, you can save power by only having one or two pedals turned on at a time. You will only need enough current to run those pedals and not any more than that.
This will be the first in a series of articles on relays when used in guitar pedals. I don’t think many people have heard of relays and how they can help you with your pedals.
I’ve been playing guitar for a while now and I have owned my fair share of pedals from overdrive to delay to flangers and phasers. I’ve used many power supplies such as the voodoo labs power brick, the voodoo labs pedal power 2+ and the boss psa-120p7.
Through all this time I noticed that my pedals would eat up all my milliamps. This was not always a problem but sometimes it was. So I started looking for solutions to this problem.
If you have a guitar pedal, you probably noticed that the power supply jack is on the back. This creates a problem for many pedal boards and makes it harder to use your pedals.
If you have some relays and want to learn how to relay in your pedals, this guide will help!
You will need:
– A soldering iron
– Some solder (lead-free preferred)
– Some wire
– A multi-meter (or continuity tester)
1. Find your power jack and determine which pin is ground and which is positive. Most power jacks are labeled but if yours isn’t, use the continuity tester to find out. If it beeps when touching two pins together, they are connected. If not, they’re not. Using this method, find out which pins are ground and positive and mark them on your pedal so you don’t get confused later. It’s usually a good idea to mark the negative one “ground” or “GND” because it’s easier to remember than “positive.” You can also color code them with tape or paint but that is optional.
2. Once you know which pins are ground and positive, it’s time to desolder them from their original locations on the board. Use
Guitar pedal boards are very useful for the working guitarist. You can organize all of your pedals in one place and transport them quickly between gigs. However, guitar pedal boards can have hidden dangers. Many pedals draw a lot of current from your guitar amp’s power supply even when they are off or bypassed. This can cause the voltage to drop which will lead to tone sucking and poor performance of your effects. In this article I will show you how to relay in guitar pedals to make sure that you are getting the best sound possible out of your rig.
Guitar Pedals are amazing. They allow us to do things we wouldn’t be able to otherwise; they allow us to alter the tone and dynamics of our guitar, and give us a way to express ourselves with our instrument. Pedals are an awesome thing, but they also have some major downsides.
One of these downsides is power consumption. Most people don’t know this, but stomp boxes can actually eat up quite a bit of power when they’re on standby. This means that if you have 10 pedals on your board, you may be using the same amount of power as if you had 5 pedals on and 5 pedals off. That’s a lot of power!
Now what if I told you there was a way around this? A way to not only save yourself from having to plug in every time you want to use your favorite pedal, but also lower your power consumption by upwards of 70%?
Well there is, and it’s called relays!
Using relays in your pedalboard is something that has been around for ages and all the pros do it. It allows them to run their effects for days at a time without having to worry about changing out batteries or even turning their effects off!
But how do relays work?
“Guitar relays” I don’t think that is the correct term, but that’s the term I’m using.
A relay is a device that allows you to switch something on and off without having to physically touch your guitar or plug in an effects pedal. A guitar relay can help you save power, as well as make it easier to use pedals.
Here is how a basic guitar relay works:
It is not hard to create a simple guitar relay. Just take a small piece of wire about 6 inches long and use it to connect two wires together. The wires should be connected so that when you press down on one end of the wire, it will turn on the other end. The best way to do this is to use insulated wire – so that it doesn’t conduct electricity when pressed down. It’s also possible to use non-insulated wire if you want; it just won’t work as well.
The next step is to connect the wires to your guitar pedals – either directly or by using a cable with solderless connectors (such as banana plugs).
If you want your guitar relays to be more powerful, you can use bigger pieces of wire or even multiple pieces of wire for each pedal.