Recipe Book — classic pedal topologies deconstructed
OVERDRIVE
DISTORTION
FUZZ
LO-FI
Pedal Chain — click to add, drag to reorder, signal flows left to right
Input Waveform
Output Waveform
Spectrum — Input
Spectrum — Output
How it works: Each pedal is a Web Audio node wired in series.
Filters use BiquadFilterNode; distortion uses WaveShaperNode or ScriptProcessorNode;
delay uses DelayNode with feedback. Drag pedals to reorder — try "filter before gain"
vs "gain before filter" and hear how pre-emphasis changes what gets clipped.
The presets show how classic pedals are built from these same blocks.
Turn up 60 Hz noise to hear how filtering and gain staging interact with a dirty power supply.
Circuit schematics: Each module card shows its analog circuit equivalent.
Gain stages use JFET transistors (common-source amplifiers — the building block of most guitar buffers and boosts).
Clipping stages use CMOS 4069UB unbuffered inverters biased into their linear region — the same
$0.50 chip from Craig Anderton's "Tube Sound Fuzz" that gives you six configurable gain/distortion stages.
Soft clip puts diodes in the feedback path (TS-style); hard clip puts them to the rails (RAT-style).
The noise gate uses a JFET as a voltage-controlled attenuator, with an envelope detector driving the gate pin.
Filters are passive RC networks; the tone stack chains three biquad filters (HPF + peaking mid + LPF) to
approximate classic Fender, Marshall, and Big Muff EQ curves.