a drone pedal with weather in it.
press on. play. stomp strike. two oscillators you can tune and beat against each other, a storm that rumbles and crackles around them, and a strike switch that rolls thunder through the delay. drag knobs up or down, double-click to reset, hold s to strike.
Drone
Level of the drone: two oscillators plus a sub-octave underneath. The main voice of the pedal.
Tune
Sets the drone's root note, in 12 steps from C to B.
Detune
Pulls the second oscillator off pitch. A little gives a slow, throbbing beat; more gets sour and wide.
Cloud
Cloud cover over the drone, in oktas (eighths of sky, how meteorologists count clouds). Clear is open and buzzy; overcast is dark and woolly. A warm low-pass with the resonance kept low, so it never squeaks, and the clouds drift slowly on their own.
Octave
lowThe small switch between the footswitches. Flips the whole drone up or down one octave.
Wind
A low rumble at first. Past halfway it opens up and tears into a gated, sputtering fuzz. Your guitar stays clean.
Rain
Crackle and static, from a few drops to a full downpour.
Sky
Delay on everything. Dubby repeats up to about 75%; near the top the feedback runs away.
Blend
Crossfades your guitar against the storm. Left: all guitar. Right: all storm.
On
Left footswitch, yellow light. Switches the pedal in and out (true bypass).
Strike
Right footswitch, red light. Tap for a short swell of rolling thunder; hold and it keeps building, then dissolves when you let go. Keyboard: hold S.
audio in & out
Organ: a looping figure that follows the drone's Tune knob, straight to the output. Press Play to bring in your guitar.
Output: system default.
Latency: press ON to measure.
playing live with a focusrite scarlett on a mac
- Plug the guitar into Input 1 and press its INST button. Set the gain so the ring around the knob stays green when you hit hard.
- Turn Direct Monitor off, otherwise you hear your dry guitar on top of the pedal.
- Plug headphones or monitors into the Scarlett. In System Settings → Sound → Output, choose the Scarlett.
- Open stormchaser-v1.html in Chrome (the Claude viewer blocks audio inputs). Choose live input, press Play, and allow microphone access.
- Pick the Scarlett under Interface and Input 1 under Channel.
- Pick where the sound goes under Output: your interface, a USB mixer like the StudioArc, or headphones. If the list only shows "Output 1, 2…", press show device names once.
If Chrome refuses access when opened as a file, run python3 -m http.server in the file's folder and open localhost:8000/stormchaser-v1.html.
getting the delay down
- Use one device for input and output (e.g. guitar in and headphones out on the Scarlett). Two separate USB devices make the browser add an extra buffer to keep their clocks in sync.
- Match sample rates. In Audio MIDI Setup, set your interface to 48 kHz. The latency line shows what the browser runs at; if they differ, audio gets resampled, which adds delay.
- Use Chrome, wired headphones (never Bluetooth: that alone adds 150+ ms), and close other audio apps.
- Reload the page after changing devices or sample rates.
A browser on a Mac usually bottoms out around 10–20 ms total. A real pedal is under 1 ms; a native app or plugin can get to about 3–6 ms.
amp
deluxe reverb style · 1×12Your monitoring amp, not part of the pedal. Modelled on a Fender Deluxe Reverb: the real AB763 tone stack from its component values, two 12AX7 stages, 6V6 push-pull power amp, a 2-spring reverb tank and an open-back 1×12. Clean up to about 5 on Volume, breaking up from 6. Switch it off to hear the pedal straight.
v1 circuit plan what each control becomes in hardware
| Control | Circuit block |
|---|---|
| Drone | Two oscillators on one 40106 chip, each rounded by a small RC filter, plus a smoothed sub-octave from a CD4013 divider. |
| Tune | 12-way rotary switch with a resistor ladder setting oscillator 1, one semitone per step. |
| Octave | DPDT toggle adding a second matched timing cap to each oscillator: exactly one octave. |
| Detune | Free-running pot on oscillator 2, for slow beating against oscillator 1. |
| Cloud | 12 dB/oct Sallen-Key low-pass after the drone mix, swept by a dual-gang pot. Q is fixed below 1 so it can't squeal. A small vactrol (LED + light-dependent resistor) fed by the slow LFO adds the drift. |
| Wind | Transistor noise, low-passed into a soft rumble. A dual pot opens the filter and drive; in the top half the noise goes through a gated fuzz and sputters. The guitar stays clean. |
| Rain | Noise into a comparator that fires random clicks, high-passed into static. |
| Strike | Momentary switch charging two capacitor envelopes into an LM13700 VCA: a soft swelling hit and a slow rumble that keeps building while held, then dissolves through a gated fuzz. |
| Sky | PT2399 delay. One dual log pot raises mix and feedback together: usable to about 75%, runaway near the top. digital chip |
| Blend | Dual pot crossfading guitar and storm. |