[sdiy] Synth Jamming Monitor Pedal

[Stewart Pye]

Talk of the UK synth meeting reminded me of an idea I've had for years....

A pedal that has a headphone amp and monitor/main switching. I'll try 
and describe it in words, as the piece of paper in front of me won't get 
through the email system...

There is an input for the synth you're playing. This goes to a switch 
that selects between either a socket that goes to the main mix (probably 
via a balanced line driver) or to the local monitor circuit. There is a 
volume control for the signal going to the local monitor. The local feed 
that goes out to the mix via a switch is also fed via a volume control 
to the local monitor circuit, so that when you have your synth switched 
to go out to the main mix you can still add a bit more of your own synth 
to your local mix.

There will be a left and right mix input (probably balanced )  so you 
can  get a feed either from the main mix out or monitor sends from the 
main desk.  These will go via a volume control to the monitor circuit. 
These inputs can be muted by a footswitch for when you just need to hear 
your synth (to setup the sound or whatever).

The monitor circuit consists of a stereo headphone output and a line 
output to go to a powered foldback speaker.

I guess you could do this with a small mixer, but with this unit once 
you have the levels setup you can control it with a footswitch, so you 
can jam along until you come up with something good and then hit the 
footswitch to send it to the mix, all the time having the level of your 
synth balanced with the mix the way you like.

Does anyone else think this is a good idea? It's been a while since I've 
jammed.
If there are people interested I'll design a PCB and get them made. It 
would be good if I could recover some of the manufacturing costs, as I'm 
not sure when I'll get to use this but for some reason I still want to 
build it!

Cheers,
Stew.