Switchable pots

If I were to make, say, a tubescreamer, but instead of hooking a drive pot straight to the board, I ran the middle lugs of a 3pdt to the board and then wire two pots to the outside lugs, would that work? The point being to be able to select between 2 settable drive settings with out adding a boost or anything. It seems perfectly feasible to me; I'm just curious about if this would cause bad "pop"s or anything.

Yes, I have done the exact same thing using a tubescreamer circuit with 2 drive pots. I dont' recall having any problem with pops.

Pat

This makes me both happy and sad. Happy that I'll now have a cool new pedal in the making. Sad that my idea isn't as novel as I thought. Lol

The drive pot on the tubescreamer is wired as a variable resistor, which means that you're only using 2 lugs of the pot, so only 2 wires need to be switched. If you are using a 3PDT switch you can use the third pole to wire in a couple of LEDs, one for each pot, so you'll know which pot is active when you step on the switch.

That's an awesome idea! Too bad I didn't think of that too

Actually,you only need a single pole two-way (SPDT) switch because one end of the variable resistors (pots) can be connected all the time.

To expand this idea, then: I like having my overdrives before my compressor, but then you can't get any boost during solos because the compressor evens everything out. So if I made a pedal that had an overdrive going into a compressor, I should be able to use a switch (dpdt or 3pdt etc) to switch the drive setting for the overdrive as well as the volume for the compressor, right? So I would have 2 settable drive pots for the overdrive and 2 settable volume pots for the compressor. Then for solos, I could hit the switch for more gain and a boost.

Cool idea. I would put a good boost at the end of your chain and boost there. I would get all carnfused with all the switches.

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But then I would have to hit the overdrive pedal on before then compressor and then hit the boost on after the compressor. This way I'd only need to hit one switch! Worst case scenario I can label it "hit this for more louder guitar sound".

Hi Trey! I think you are much too hard on yourself when you say that you are sad that your idea wasn´t as novel as you thought.After all,Craig Anderton wrote an article in Guitar Player(that was part of a bigger article) which was called Fx Rx Therapy for vintage pedals.There he described how you could add presets to vintage pedals where the pot was wired as variable resistors and what you should do when all three lugs are used.Obviously he thought that this was something important that a lot of people didn´t know or hadn´t thought of.

P.S. If the compressors volume control use all three lugs (which is normal for a volume control) you can have lug 1 of both pots permanent connected and switch lug 2 and 3.For that ,you need a double pole double throw (DPDT) switch.If you want a led indicator you need a three pole double thow (3PDT) switch.Personally ,I would have used a simple booster,but it´s your decision.Good luck!