switcheroo!: a Radial Engineering BigShot EFX clone
or how to save 150€ and have some fun with electronics
Dec 2023some backstory
since i've started playing with my band, i've always wanted to expand my setup beyond the run of the mill 2 channel amplifier you'll find in most live venues/rehearsal studios. this meant entering the magic world of pedals and creating your own tone. so, i borrowed my dad's good ole marshall guv'nor mk1 and korg toneworks ax1g, and bought a ehx bass big muff pi off our dear bassist. but then:
a challenger approaches!
my signal chain looked like this:
guitar -> big muff -> guv'nor -> toneworks ax1g -> amp
now i needed to find an efficient way to change between clean and distorted sounds. possible solutions were:
- learning how to tapdance (aka toggling my distortion and modulation pedals on/off depending on the sound i need)
- buying a loop switcher, such as a Boss Line Selector LS-2 (too expensive, the LS-2 costs around 100€) aaaand
- building my own loop switcher
as you can probably tell, i built my own.
enter switcheroo!
switcheroo! v1 was a more complicated A OR B/A AND B true bypass loop switcher, and while it worked, it had major noise issues when both loops were engaged (i may write a blog post about this someday). while trying (and failing) to repair it, i learned about the Radial Engineering BigShot EFX loop switcher:
and decided something like it would be a much simpler and better solution for my sound switching issues.
switcheroo! v2
switcheroo! v2 is an (almost) direct clone of the BigShot EFX, complete with ground lift switches for both loops, and a mute switch for loop B that grounds its output (making it useful as a tuner output).
i built it into a 1590BB enclosure, used pink and yellow LEDs (yay nonbinary!) for indicating which loop is engaged, some bog standard 3PDT latching footswitches and SPDT miniswitches and some (overly expensive) 1/4 inch panel mount TS sockets, as well as an 5.5x2.1 DC connector. the whole thing (including revision 1) cost me ~30€, but i could probably build it for even cheaper. if i were to change something, it would be the audio connectors, because they're unreasonably long and gave me hell when trying to implement the ground lift switches.
some tips:
- in order for the ground lift switches to work, you need to make sure both the return jacks are not grounded through the chassis. 2 layers of duct tape, making sure the holes' inner surface is painted and flattening the spiky parts that are connected to the sleeve part of the jacks did the trick for me.
- don't use a step drill unless you really have to. both the footswitch and the audio jack holes turned up oval-ish and oversized (i didn't use a drill press, but still, a 14mm hole is too big for a 1/2 inch part).
build your own!
switcheroo's schematics and plans are available on my git server. this project is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0, feel free to remix it as you see fit. it's free (as in freedom and free beer), let's keep it that way.
huge thanks to hackerspace.gr for providing some much needed machinery and materials for this project (and for being downright awesome) ❤️