The devolt

"It's like a variac for your pedals", Howard Kitty

Voltage sagging is fun. What?, you say? Perhaps you have heard pedal folklore about how certain pedals sound better with a dying battery. SRV favored a dying battery in his beloved tubescreamer, and fuzz fans in the know love to reduce the voltage on fuzz pedals for great lo-fi splatty fun.

A couple of years ago I build Dying Battery Simulator that used a simple potentiometer circuit to simulate the decreased voltage and the increased series resistance of a dying battery. And the results were quite fun.

Now, in response to customer requests, beavis audio research is happy to offer you the devolt. The devolt is a passive voltage divider. You plug one end into your power source and the other end into the pedal you want to have fun with. Then simply turn the knob to control how much voltage is applied.

What Kind of Pedals are Fun to Sag?

Sagging voltage works great on all types of analog pedals. Overdrives, distortions, fuzz boxes, even things like compressors or phasers. How will you know which one to try? Just try it! The devolt makes it easy to turn pedestrian pedals into glitchy nasty discoveries.

Here's a video with various pedals and the devolt:

What Kind of Pedals are Not Fun to Sag?

Anything digital. Digital pedals, including modeling pedals, digital delays, COSM stuff, etc. all require their full voltage. Sagging digital pedals will usually just make it turn off.

Can I Damage a pedal by using the devolt?

Nope. Because the devolt never supplies more voltage than is supplied. It either supplies the input voltage unchanged, or a decreased voltage according to the knob setting. As long as you are using a 9vDC power supply (either a battery or a BOSS-type AC/DC adaptor at 9 volts), you are good to go.

Is there a User Guide?

Yep, you can download it here.