# Guitar voltage doubler for EMG pickups



## EGRENIER (Jan 31, 2022)

Not sure it belongs here, but I figured this could be interesting.

I have heard of people running EMG pickups of 18V instead of 9V as it give the pickups a lot of oomph.  So considering that to do that, you have to route a second 9V battery enclosure, I started wondering if a circuit board using a charge pump like it exist in the Episode Booster could do the trick.  Considering that in the Episode you have this entire circuit and with a flip of a switch you can run your pedal at 18V.  Could the same be implemented to run a set of EMG pickup of a single 9V battery ?

Seems it could be a nice PCB if there's a few EMG users out there !


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## vigilante398 (Jan 31, 2022)

Most pickup preamps don't pull much current, something like a 1044 (or similar) charge pump voltage doubler would absolutely do the trick.


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## jimilee (Jan 31, 2022)

Doesn’t EMG offer a two 9v old batter snap? Seems like I remember something about that when I got mine.


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## EGRENIER (Jan 31, 2022)

jimilee said:


> Doesn’t EMG offer a two 9v old batter snap? Seems like I remember something about that when I got mine.


I believe they do, however you need either a larger route or to route a second battery enclosure.

The concept of using a charge pump that could be under the pickguard is to avoid have to carve/route a second battery if you want to go to 18V.  However, from what I understand there is not option to switch from 9V to 18V unless you implement a switch to do so.


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jan 31, 2022)

There’s another method to achieve this that I’ll detail later when I’m out of my lecture. Just posting rn so I don’t forget to come back to this later.


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## EGRENIER (Jan 31, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> There’s another method to achieve this that I’ll detail later when I’m out of my lecture. Just posting rn so I don’t forget to come back to this later.


Looking forward to it... keep in mind the concept is to run EMG off a single 9V and offer the ability to use them under 9V or 18V with a switch in the pickguard to select the voltage...


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## Bricksnbeatles (Jan 31, 2022)

EGRENIER said:


> Looking forward to it... keep in mind the concept is to run EMG off a single 9V and offer the ability to use them under 9V or 18V with a switch in the pickguard to select the voltage...


Ok, so my method actually doesn’t use a battery at all, but it allows for selectable 9v/18v operation. 
In a 1590B enclosure you wire up a simple charge pump circuit to a footswitch to go between 9v and 18v. The Vout of the charge pump is hooked up to the ring connection of a TRS jack— the T and S connections are wired straight through to the TS output jack, or you can wire in a mute switch or something in between if you want. In your guitar or bass, you shunt the battery connection with a shorting clip (you can take a 9v battery snap and just wire the + and - wires directly together). Now all you do is put the box as the first pedal in your chain, and use a TRS cable in place of a TS cable as your instrument cable— clean, regulated  power is served directly to your instrument from your pedalboard, and you never have to worry about dead batteries again, plus you can go from 9v to 18v operation with just the tap of a footswitch!


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## EGRENIER (Jan 31, 2022)

Bricksnbeatles said:


> Ok, so my method actually doesn’t use a battery at all, but it allows for selectable 9v/18v operation.
> In a 1590B enclosure you wire up a simple charge pump circuit to a footswitch to go between 9v and 18v. The Vout of the charge pump is hooked up to the ring connection of a TRS jack— the T and S connections are wired straight through to the TS output jack, or you can wire in a mute switch or something in between if you want. In your guitar or bass, you shunt the battery connection with a shorting clip (you can take a 9v battery snap and just wire the + and - wires directly together). Now all you do is put the box as the first pedal in your chain, and use a TRS cable in place of a TS cable as your instrument cable— clean, regulated  power is served directly to your instrument from your pedalboard, and you never have to worry about dead batteries again, plus you can go from 9v to 18v operation with just the tap of a footswitch!


Hmm ok so basically the same idea I had, except that you put the circuit in a stompbox and use the extra wire of a stereo cable to deliver the power to the pickup assembly.... Hmmm interesting.  So off the other wire (guitar signal) you just bridge over to the "power box" output and connect to the chain using standard TS cables... Clever...  Did I get it right ?


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