This topic is to describe the challenges and solutions to using Zynthian as a guitar processor and to share experiences, hints and tips and of course .
Connecting Electric Guitar
Zynthian has evolved over the years to use various soundcards and there are also many custom builds that use other (non-official) sound cards. Invariably these cards do not have an audio input optimised for direct connection of an electric guitar pickup. An electric guitar pickup is a set of windings of (usually) copper which is connected via potentiometers, resistors and capacitors (volume and tone control) to its outlet jack. This expects to be connected to a very high impedance amplifier, in the order of one mega Ohm. This differs from electronic instruments such as synthesizers which are designed to connect to inputs in the order of a few kilo Ohms.
The science of impedance and its effect on audio is reasonably complex involving the use of imaginary numbers to represent phase shifts, etc. I feel this is beyond the interest of most gigging musicians so letās not go there but instead make some broad descriptions of behaviour.
Plugging a guitar directly into an audio processor with an impedance below 500 mega Ohms is likely to affect its tone and possibly increase the risk of hum and buzz. The impact on tone is the most significant here though. Most Zynthians will have an input impedance much lower than this and hence will not be optimised for direct guitar connection. You can certainly do it and the V4 series (and possibly earlier models) have a great Hifiberry soundcard with sufficient gain to boost the signal and an analogue front end that saturates (clips / distorts) quite nicely if over-driven but the poor impedance matching can lead to difficulty equalising the frequency response. The guitar can sound muddy, failing to cut through with notes sounding indistinct. This may not be an issue for some types of music but you may prefer to have a cleaner, more accurate reproduction.
You could try to use an LV2 effect to adjust frequency response, like a multi-band equaliser but this is fighting to fix something that you have just broken and is sub-optimal, generally giving poor results and using valuable processing power. A better way to resolve the issue of impedance mis-match is toā¦ well, match impedance. This is done by inserting a device between the guitar and the Zynthian.
You could plug your guitar into a guitar amplifier then use an effects loop or a direct output from the guitar amplifier to the Zynthian.
You could build or buy an impedance matching unit. These are usually called direct injection (DI) boxes but beware that many do not have the very high impedance input we want for a guitar.
You could use a guitar effects pedal. For example, the input of a BOSS pedal is matched well to a guitar as it expects one plugged into it. Its output should behave like a pickup coil (because it expects to be plugged to a high impedance guitar amp) but its electronics actually allow connection to a lower impedance such as our Zynthian. It may be able to be used in bypass (even without a battery!) but my BOSS pedal requires power to work in bypass. This may be the simplest method for many who already own a pedal as it allows for practice, rehearsal and performance rigs and decouples the guitar from the Zynthian by having the guitar cable (which may be moved dynamically) going to the pedal with a more static cable going to the Zynthian.
You may find plugging your guitar directly into your Zynthian is fine and I have been doing it for some time but you may, like me, have struggled with tone and want to add that extra device in an attempt to resolve it. (I am not at home for a few weeks so am without guitar and amp to test all this but will be adding my venerable Boss pedal to my rig upon my return.)
It uses a TL072 dual JFET op-amp, the board may be designed for 12V, but the chip spec suggests 4.5 V to 40 V operating range. (Have not tested mine) plug for the 3 pin connector soldered on the board I received, was not included.
Not really Zynthian related, the MIDI Guitar desktop and mobile app. does a good job of recognizing cleanly played chords.
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The developer of a single note guitar to MIDI app, apparently translated his commercial product code for the Raspberry Pi Pico, thereās little in the āopen source part pf the codeā seems that the Pi may just be am ADC that sends data to his commercial app on a PC.
Itās something that tends to get overlooked in the bench excitement of actually getting a sound out of things.
The hifiberry A/d & D/A card is a fine and wonderful thing as you say but the connectors, a 3.5mm stereo jack for input and two RCA ( phono) connectors are on the edge of acceptable for desktop work, but completely unsuitable for anything that gets near a stage.
What this means is you are either de soldering things to add more ruggedixed connectors and providing them with a suitable enclosure to protect them, which becomes a far more involved process than simply using a raspberry pi to do some processing.
The guitar itself, is as you say, a fairly simplistic high impedance source and requires some form of impedance matching to make it controllable, and one hopes that is placed as close to the guitar as possible. That of course, means you are needing power supplies and that really means 9v batteries because anything else is unwieldy , and even that is limited because op amps require a plus and minus supply and 9v gives you +4.5 & -4.5 which is a bit marginal.
Iāve tried in the past powering down the cable but it leads to lots of very nasty noises as the cable flexes and moves and briefly disconnects.
Anyone used wireless systems successfully, or do these simply open up a whole new set of problems?
I was in a music shop yesterday and as I walked in I heard the end of a conversation where the shopkeeper told the customer that wireless is generally shunned due to unacceptable latency. I think there is capacity to develop robust wireless connectivity but analogue wireless systems are being outlawed in various jurisdictions due to the RF bandwidth savings that digital provides. Here in the UK we have just lost the analogue bands for wireless microphones. Professional digital wireless is used extensively for broadcast and live audio.
I was not able to find information on such regulation changes in the UK, there is a group focused on preservation of radio frequencies for culture and media:
I recently got the Zynthian back out and have been experimenting again. I previously used a passive pickup guitar and definitely noticed muddiness and low volume when plugging directly into the Zynthian. But now the passive pickup guitar is in the shop and Iāve been using an active pickup guitar. Itās MUCH better and reacts like Iād expect it to. Very fun.
@riban I have an EP Booster (clone) pedal which provides the needed high-impedance input and low-impedance output. Iāll test that out when I have the passive pickup guitar again and report back.
@wyleu - I have a wireless system, but itās UHF and it doesnāt like the active pickups very much, itās not designed for such low impedance. But thatās a stroke of genius. I will definitely try it out when I get my other guitar back from the shop and let you know.
@riban The EP Booster clone has something wrong with it and the Zynthian does NOT like it. Whenever I engage it I get a āclick-click-clickā from the power supply, even when running on battery! I can see the light on my power strip pulsing slightly at the same rhythm. This is surely builder-error somewhere (I built the pedal) because my professionally-made pedals play nicely with it. So I canāt fully validate, but I think your theory stands. It sounds nice with my compressor in front.
@wyleu The wireless system works great. I was getting a decent amount of noise coming off the cable with my passive pickup guitar, bu this is basically gone with the wireless system. This is definitely my preferred way to use the Zynthian for guitar effects now. I canāt hear any latency with my UHF wireless system (non-affiliate Amazon link); the manufacturer claims under 2ms. I will also say that some reviews claim that the system introduces a slight noise-gating effect. Perhaps thatās a feature for me here? At any rate, it works great and I love it. Here are a few clips:
I (eventually) tested inserting an effects pedal between my guitar and Zynthian with good results. The low-pass filtering and general lack of presence is gone which gives me confidence I can get the sound I want from this setup.
Direct:
Via Boss DF-2 in bypass:
(Just a quick and unrefined recording into the Zynthian audio recorder for comparison. Donāt judge my playing!)
I donāt play a guitar, but I have used a Line6 G10 wireless system with my (now sold) AE-10 Aerophone wind controller. The latency is negligible. Theyāre not cheap, and the receiver is larger than Iād like, but they perform well (and I assume they provide high impedance). Mine even has a balanced output.
One caution is that they donāt work nicely with a stereo input socket (to the transmitter). Thatās not a problem with a guitar, but it was for my AE-10.
I know this was 8 months ago, but Iām reading this topic now and just wanted to point out that you can use two 9 volt batteries connected in series and get +9 -9V, and can get whatever voltages you want if youāre willing to use more-different batteries. You connect ground to the point where you connect the batteries together.
Thanks for that, and you are certainly right. Most of my teenage years were spent building 741 based op amp circuits so plus and minus 9 volt supplies from small batteries were pretty much the starting point for everything I did.
Keep in mind that Boss pedals are not really bypassed in the bypass mode. Instead, they have a buffered bypass, essentially acting as a buffer. Using a simple (e.g. DIY) buffer will achieve the same effect of matching the signal impedance.
Yes indeed! I use my Boss pedal as an impedance matching device. Of course I would prefer a high impedance input on the Zynthian but it is challenging and not required by many users. (Guitarist probably account for less than 10% of Zynthian users.) So a simple external buffer is a fair compromise. Maybe someone could design and build an economical device. Most buffers are rather expensive.
a bit dated but seems to be designed by someone who knows what he does and is well documented. Using an OPA 134 PA it can be powered by 5V. I think I even got the parts already but never came to solder them together, so canāt say anything about feasability/usefullness.
That looks like a very nice design and the article gives a lot of useful info. The idea of putting the actual āsolder-less breadboardā in a metal case both intrigues and horrifies me.
Another interesting possibility is the PedalPCB Terrarium:
Although designed to interface a guitar to the āline inā of a Daisy Seed on the board you could either just leave the space for the Seed open, use it for a modification area, or perhaps use a Seed to do some pre-processing before passing the signal to the next device - like a guitar pedal you can program.
The āBuild Documentationā includes Schematic and Parts List. The product itself is just the bare board, āNo components, hardware, or Daisy Seed is included.ā
A very common method of buffering (impedance matching) guitars is to use a JFET preamp. You can create large input impedance to a JFET amp and they can be run from single rail supplies.
This post describes how to build a very simple kit from this supplier / circuit. The circuit is simple but because this designer configures the board to support three different configurations (including NPN/PNP BJT& JFET) it looks more complex. The construction posting describes the JFET build which I would recommend.
Opamps can be a good solution, offering high imput inpedance but they do have complications that can lead to high frequency how-rownd (positive feedback loops). Such issues can result in the thing behaving very oddly as it makes lots of signal beyond the hearing range, i.e. it is hard at work but you canāt hear it!!! Of course these are simple to resolve, as described above but KISS is a good approach.
I think we should start to lobby for a selectable Hi-Z input stage on the V6. It could be on just one of the two inputs because it seems unlikely that many of us want to plug two guitars in at the same timeā¦ Adding a JFET input stage (as demonstrated here) is not that difficult or expensive but adding the switching may prove challenging, i.e. we would need to be able to switch the Hi-Z input stage in and out of circuit without adversly affecting the input signal which may be balanced (differential). Of course we could tie this in with the input configuation so that it would automatically configure as unbalanced (single ended) when the Hi-Z input stage is used. Gosh - so much detail too early in our lobbying campaign!!! But it is better to offer solutions and not just problems.
donāt want to be pedantic - and to protect people from following funny ideas - but Gallant clearly states:
This is useful for experimental work to see the effects of circuit modification. However, for best performance and greatest mechanical stability, the circuit should be finalized to a printed circuit-board.
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