Audio Circuit Design Software

If you already have the schematic, why not use PSPICE?

TTFN

Do you have to have Orcad seperately with this?
I looked at the website and found it a bit confusing. A little over the top for a "Ludite" like me. My background is in mechanical design but I'm presently making my own single coil pickups and selling them on the internet. I still have a hard time grasping the basics of electronics. I've built guitar wiring harneses from scratch but I don't really understand what's going on. I'd rather do my trial and error learning curve in a CAD environment and save some money on solder. (joke)
I tend to get confused easily with a jumble of wires and components in my hands.
Thanks for your suggestion TTFN.
Is there a PSPICE Lite?

I should have included words like "AC" and "Analog" in my original question. I suppose that's not always assumed with audio circuits.

Here is a diagram one of my customers sent me. He's customized a Fender Jazz bass with one of my pickups a la Barry Oakley from the Allman Brothers. I know this circuit has problems even though he claims it sounds good. I'd like to simulate it on my computer somehow and make improvements.

It looks like some of the pots and pickups are going to be loading each other the way he's got them connected. I'd like to know what happens when wires are re-routed and resistors inserted in places etc.

FH

You should still be able to enter input files into PSPICE using text.

Unfortunately, you and your electrical schematics are all missing critical bits of information. From your picture, it looks like the chassis is being used as part of the electrical circuit. This can be seen where one end of the pickups appear to be connected to the bodies of the pots.

The other part that's really missing is what the guitar amp schematic might look like. The frequency and saturation characteristics of the amplifier are critical to the sound of the guitar.

If all you're interested in is the harness itself, then there's really no software to help you, since it's just a collection of resistors and inductors.

While there may be subtleties to be explored in altering the way the connections are made, that's currently way beyond your capability to understand and my capability to explain.

TTFN

Take a look at Electronic Workbench Capture and Simulation.

Thanks again TTFN
I understand (theoreticaly) that there is a certain capacitance/impedence from the amp/cable affecting the circuit.

Grounding to pot cases is quite common in guitar circuits. Here's a simple diagram of a Gibson circuit showing the technique. The real cool thing is to have the circuit star-ground with all grounds including pot cases going to one central point avoiding loops etc....anyway here's the diagram.


I think what my customer's (not mine) diagram doesn't show in the other post are the caps and resistors. The little bubbles are for color code I think.

Is there really no software to simulate simple circuits like these? I don't need to simulate the "sound of the guitar" particularly although that would be nice. Just running a tone from a signal generator through it would tell me enough I think. Fact is I don't know for sure.

Maybe someone else has an idea?

FH

PSPICE will do simulations of this type, but you'd have to develop custom models for the pickups.

Maybe you need to describe what you're attempting to find out?

TTFN

OOops
I realize now the you're IRstuff not TTFN
Sorry about that. I was they had an editing feature here.

FH

no harm...

The issue is that the pickup is fairly complex and coming up with a decent simulation may not be that easy:


TTFN

Have to agree with IRStuff about the simulation not being easy.

If you are after a front end simulation tool Linear ( do a free downloadable circuit simulator as a marketing tool for their products which is OK and if you can get hold of a student/evaluation copy of Simplorer by Ansoft that does inductors really well compared to most SPICE programs - that may be of use

Cheers

Thanks guys.
The thing is that, I'm not sure I need anything so involved. The wiring harnesses are simple compaired to what I'm looking at in these software info pages. Couldn't I just assume a single AC frequency as a signal from a pickup going into the switches, volume pots, tone pots, caps and resistors could be simulated? I realize that there is a dynamic happening at different points of the sinewave through the coil.
I'm just want to understand what happens when I change cap or resistor values or be sure that I have the thing wired up correctly if I'm going to use switches to get series/parallel/pickup select,control bypass options etc.
Remember I'm a newbie at this.

what happens when I change cap or resistor values

Click to expand...

I guess that depends on what possible outcomes you're concerned about. If you're concerned about the quality or accuracy of the frequency response, then you'll need at least something like PSPICE to model the frequency behavior of the circuit.

Additionally, you'll need to be concerned about aging and other variational effects of the component parameters. Different technology capacitors have different aging properties as well as different production variances in the component values as well as different temperature behavior. It may well be that a certain capacitor will impact the frequency behavior differently on a cold vs. a hot day.

The problem is that the pickup is a significant portion of the frequency performance of the overall circuit. Which means that you'll need to have a good model of the pickups you use and what problems or conditions you're interested in analyzing.

TTFN

Hi Bassnut

Bit new to the audio game myself but I find myself being dragged into it more and more. Where I work we are about to start building some hi spec speakers for a customer and their audio specialist recommended some free software for some basic testing using the soundcard of a PC.

The software also has a crossover design aspect so if you know the basic schematic layout of your board then you can tweek the values. It gives audio frequency responses as well as impedance responses. and look up crossover design on the help tabs.

Hope this is a it more appropriate for your needs.

Martin