2N2222 Boost Pedal

Loving this guitar pedal breadboard from CopperSound Pedals!

This is a simple single transistor boost, a barebones common emitter amplifier circuit using a “vintage” 2N2222 LOL from my junk drawer

Ok, this is what I love about guitar pedal circuits: you can wire things backwards and still be happy with how they sound. I mean sometimes they even sound better ;-)

I found my transistor tester to measure the gain on this transistor and discovered that I had the pinout backwards in the circuit... what?! Swapped it around and readjusted the bias and now it's even louder, hah!

Finally got a little project I’ve been working on across the finish line, a single transistor boost pedal with optional diode clipping. It was mostly an educational project, but I’m pretty happy with the result! The clipping would benefit from a second transistor stage, but the point of this project was to keep things minimal.

Here's a peek inside