[sdiy] guitar effects (small stone Electro Harmonix) vs synthesizers

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Sun, 4 Oct 2009, mailing gigaspeeds wrote:

> I found this about guitar pickups  :
> The output voltage of pickups varies between 100 mV rms to over 1 V rms for 
> some of the higher output types.

I happened to plug my guitar to oscilloscope today to test just this 
thing. Using a standard vintage output humbucker (Seymour Duncan SH-1 
'59), I get up to 1.5V signal when strumming chords. Single notes are 
around 200mV - 300mV.

> I want to save the trouble on calculating and measuring stuff out :p , 
> surely somebody must have done it before on synths . Anyone can enlight 
> me on the output voltage rms of a synth (output VCA)?

There's no real standard, but +4dBu (1.74V peak) seems to be fairly 
common. As you can see, the difference to guitar isn't that large! I'd say 
the main difference is that guitarists are willing to tolerate more 
distortion, so pedals can get away with assuming lower signals.

Antti

"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow"
   -- Lt. Cmdr. Ivanova