High Pass / Low Pass Filters (Guitar Pedals)

An indepth explanation of how high pass and low pass filters work
(DIY Guitar Pedals)

[@greensceneBirds]

This is one of the best fuckin explanations on how filters actually work that I have seen around here, you actually explained reactance.

[@FuzzlordEffects]

Thank you so much! You really covered all of the important points, and even went into more depth than some electrical engineering classes that touch on the subject. Also very nice description of how a capacitor functions in general.

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

JasonJohnson86 Thank you Jason, appreciate the compliment mate and glad the video helped!

[@paulkielt9301]

What I experimented is to place an inductor in series with a capacitor to ground for a low pass filter. It saves some mid frequencies and gets rid of unwanted screaming treble. A 400mH or a 1H inductor is a good starting point to choose the capacitor's value. I tweaked my tone stack by ear, without using crazy formulas. In my case, I connected a 1.8nF capacitor and a 380mH inductor (measured value) between the 33K existing Tone Stack resistor and ground. As seen on the Duncan Amps' Marshall Tone Stack freeware.

[@BryanDenham]

this channel has been a blessing for me trying to learn this stuff . thank you so much to everyone involved for taking the time to make these videos i enjoy watching them

[@andycowell608]

Wow, describing it as a voltage divider was a real eye-opener. Thanks!!!

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

Thanks Andy, glad it helped :D

[@Ian-Threaded]

The best explainer and the best channel

[@THEQueeferSutherland]

Thank you yet again. Saving my project as usual.

[@passerbycmc]

really great way at explaining things, feel watching this and playing with things for a night and i already have enough of it in my head to be productive with this concept.

[@therealmadferret]

Mind=blown. I don't think I'll ever forget this now. So simple, thanks.

[@MultitrackCassetteFans]

Great explanation, I’ve been trying to understand how this works for a long time, and I think I do now. Thanks a lot!

[@kaushikwavhal3403]

Thank you so much! This finally helps me to picturize basics of pedals. Now i am thinking we can replace the resistors connected to ground with potentiometers, so that we can play around with knobs to tighten/loosen the filters.

[@filipzarkovic5881]

Thank you so much! I finally really understand how filters work! What's even more amazing is that at the time of filming this you had just figured it out yourself.

[@claussoegaard]

This was what finally made it click for me. I’ve spent hours/days on more “academic” or “theoretical” explanations of basic RC filters/networks but never really got it until watching this. The whole reason I’m trying to learn is to be able to design my own effect/audio circuits one day, so don’t know why I didn’t just start here. Thank you!

[@sgallwey]

THANKS FOR THIS VIDEO! I have been having a problem with a project of mine. The portion on reactance, capacitance, frequency and resistance made a light bulb not only go off in my head but shine like the sun!!!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

[@thenewunderdog7123]

You are an outstanding teacher, this is perfect content. You know exactly what to leave out and that's usually what many others who try to teach fail to do. I'm already subscribed but this video pretty much cemented it.

[@davidashford6091]

Tricky subject nicely worked through. Great job!

[@johnwalsh6998]

Nice post! I think I get the general concept now, but I'm sure I'll go back to this video to more fully understand, once I start incorporating frequency controls.

[@dawsondavidable]

Thanks! This was exactly what I needed just now.

[@timonlehmann5179]

This is just beautiful! Thanks!

[@nickeax]

Thanks for such a great explanation.

[@tomblake3780]

Thanks! This was very helpful. I'm having trouble finding the voltage divider tutorial that you mentioned throughout the video.

[@henryrobinson9837]

good video man,But i know nothing about guitars or music,i got here working with an automotive oscilloscope trying to filter out noise,but i have learned a lot off of these great videos.

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

Awesome man! Hope I exampled it well enough!

[@RobCmusic]

Good info, thanks. I'm going to try making a pedal with a HPF and LPF to put in my pedal chain for more toneshaping options - all passive.

[@fastnewbie]

Again, fantastic videos. I originally viewed this when I began to learn about pedals and as I move forward in my understanding and journey of the various parts and pieces of the pedal, I do find myself revisiting these videos often as I understand more and more and all makes sense in the way you explain. Great job and resource you have been.

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

+fastnewbie That's fastnewbie, good luck with your progress and learning!

[@coltonjackson]

awesome video thank you! Can you make a video explaining the frequency ranges of guitars usually?

[@willyboy1985]

Simple trick : for a High pass, the cap is on the higher position of the diagram, for a Low pass, it's on the lower spot. The reason why you need one of the component on the ground is the the principle of a filter is to put to ground unwanted frequencies while still letting the wanted one flowing through.

[@stevebenitah7453]

Very interesting. Would a simple circuit like this be safe to run through an fx loop of a tube amp? I'd make a low pass filter pedal with a potentiometer (to get rid of the extreme high end, the fizzy distortion).

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

Cool tip Willy thanks!

[@lorenzowynberg]

Thanks a lot great lesson :)

[@DorMatt1]

Thanks for this super helpful video! Using pots I'm sure a simple EQ pedal would be a piece of cake. I'm not sure how I would go about a mid control, though. I'd imagine it involves combining both types, or just making a new LPF or HPF with different values. If I were to combine the filters by plugging one filter's output into the other's input, would there be any functional or tonal difference with different filter orders? Thanks

[@DorMatt1]

Thank you so much for the detailed and informative reply!

[@jackbyrd4921]

What value caps and resistor would I use in a low-pass and high-pass filter on a power attenuator I would reasonably bring up the frequencies that are lost during attenuation. Or at least what would be a reasonable starting point.

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

Thanks Alex :D

[@Randy-nb6fw]

thanks super helpful

[@giveitupforcheerios]

Nice hair cut!

[@Crunchifyable]

its amazing that more pedals dont have simple lpf and hpf. Everytime anyone records a guitar, first thing they do is slap on a lpf and hpf, so would turn out much better if it could be done pre-recording.

[@transcendkira]

Crunchifyable I don't know any producers who would just slap on filters to guitar and I'd be pretty worried if that's how they went about it... Filters can of course be very useful but you have to know when and why you should be using them. and they should not be a standard in an effects pedal unless required, pre-record effects need to be much more diverse than that.

[@gjin9]

It's not the frequencies in the preamp that are problematic for the mix, those just shape the tone. The problematic frequencies come from the speakers and you'd need a hpf built into the mic or something to fix that, not the pedal.

[@KimonFrousios]

I don't know what kind of pedals you mean, but every distortion pedal I've looked at does have filters, and not just the ones with tone controls. If it has capacitors, it has filters. Even the simple fuzz faces have two filters, one hi-pass on the output reducing the muddiness, and one lo-pass on the fuzz reducing nastiness. It is not every pedal's job to EQ your sound to sit in a mix. That's the job for a dedicated multi-band EQ tailored to the specific context of your band. The pedal just creates the foundation of your sound, the EQ then carves out slots of the right amount and at the right places for the other instruments. And of course, you CAN use an EQ pedal or the EQ on the mixing board before recording. But anything removed from the signal cannot be added back later. Information lost stays lost. Anybody who works on editing and processing data (audio, image, any other) will agree that it's always best to keep a raw un-edited copy of the source material, in case you need to start over or want to try something else. In fact some studios record the guitar directly, even before amplifiers and FX. That way they can try different amps and FX later, without the player having to re-play it each time.

[@percyhornickel]

Hi, I hope you can help me to understand. I am a beginner with pedals (DIY). Let´s say I want to design a pedal. Do I have to take "300 mV" (guitar volt output) like a "standar" criteria or normal value for the rest of calculations? What values are considered "normal" to start? If you get 150mV after the filter, what if you dont have a resistor in serial after the capacitor? (like Electra distortion). The resistor comes from the transistor´s Colector point and there is a voltage there already. Can you explain me this please? I just made a electra distortion and I´m studing it to start mods and learn with this. Btw, my electra looks horrible but it works!, I started to build it in 2006 :) Sorry about my english, isn´t that good.. ..., I like electronics but I am another class of engineer.. ..and, I´m in another country. Thank you

[@oservoasafe]

newbie here. any tips for building a simple on/off high pass pedal with a steep cut at 160hz?

[@josemartins90]

I think you got something wrong about the cutoff frequency. This is the point of half power, not half gain. I think the gain is about 0.707 at this frequency.

[@joshwheatstonemusic]

Wheres the voltage divider link?

[@nugenki]

Sorry I'm slow. Will it stop static , while letting everything else through?

[@TheBaconWizard]

I was about to answer this but it's 5 years old. If you see this, let me know and I'll try to help out if you still want.

[@Driftload]

I think I understood but the graph threw me a bit in all honesty - also I don't really understand why the resistor is added, is it to do with getting a corner frequency? I am appreciate you making this video though because I tried to look this up on allaboutelectronics.com and got some stuff about complex numbers due to the phase difference between capacitor impedance and the input signal, thus frying my brain N.B: Whilst I might not understand this topic to absolution there is a simply sublime application called falstad circuit simulator: www.falstad.com/circuit/ . If you download it and run the .jar file on your computer you can play about with example circuits to your hearts content, including high-pass and low pass filters where you can see exactly what the electrons are doing in a real-time circuit simulation

[@-DirtyDan-]

No voltage divider link

[@WindSlasher97]

17:29 how about "It's not resistance nor impedance but reactance!" lmao

[@tubeDude48]

For *"NEWBIES"* you should have added a link to *"Voltage Dividers".* Should have shown what you were entering into the calculator!

[@gigedit]

I wish you would get these values right when you seak them. For example... at 13:00 you have 16KHz written on paper, but refer to it as "sixteen hundred kilohertz". That's not the same, is it? A script might have helped, or redo the sections of voice over so they aren't confusing.

[@captainkarma7496]

Video is great until 13:00 then its only confusing. That's not good. All the good work is worth nothing if you confuse again what you tried to make clear at first. I think it is better to read a book from my local library than watch a youtube video about this. But thank you anyways for the first 10 mins that was interesting, than it gets boring, gave you a thumb down for that, as a video that is trying to explain physical matters to people with no experience will mess up all their thinking from basics. Don't do that again please, you are stealing time… do it right or leave it to the the teachers. Thank you!

[@DiyguitarpedalsAu]

+Captain Karma Your the only dislike captain, so I guess I cant have done too bad a job?

[@captainkarma7496]

+DIY Guitar Pedals Ok so I gave you a thumb up now. "So If you hit a treble note. A treble note is a higher frequency than a bass note" 19:56 All I want to say is: That is not true… A note played on the instrument produces a tone which has treble as well as bass. A higher note produces a tone at a higher frequency I guess.

[@PremiumExcelcom]

Good one