DIY guitar pedals

[iamgoat]

I’ve been thinking about getting into building some myself and I am going to start getting things together.

My knowledge of electronics isn’t much.

Anyone here experienced with such?

I’ve found some websites with kits, schematics and tips. Should be a lot of fun

Poor man’s outboard gear

[Lavabug]

I've done some half-assed builds. Currently using a diy channel switcher. Been procrastinating a build of a rangemaster clone (the thing tony iommi and kk downing/tipton used to boost amps on all the 70's records). Ultimately haven't built anything more complicated cause I haven't had the need. Silicon fuzzes and booster pedals are notoriously easy. There are several <10 parts count schematics out there.

Kits are the way to go for a total beginner if you don't know how/where to buy electronic parts and how to look for the right types and such (tayda is the best site for individual parts), and many freely available schematics only give you general ideas of what parts could work, best to buy a kit with tried-and-true values for all the parts.

The amount of electronics you need to know is relatively small, and soldering technique isn't awfully hard to learn if you have a temperature controlled iron. Much like cooking, you don't need to know all the science underneath and still be good at it, but it really helps if you have an understanding of kirchoff's laws and how a transistor works, because most of the famous beginner boost/fuzz circuits are something comparable to exercises in an analog electronics class in my experience. Basically it's only marginally harder than changing the pickups/wiring on a guitar.

One word of advice is if you get kits, get PCB kits. Breadboard/veroboard is harder to learn on. If you do go with vero use lots of space and don't worry about getting the circuit to fit in a small enclosure, bunching parts together as a beginner is a quick way to get stuff shorting out together if your soldering technique isn't great. Always use a hot iron (above 400 F) and apply heat for the shortest amount of time possible to avoid damaging parts when soldering.

There are a number of proco rat kits available, you should try one of those.

[iamgoat]

Yeah I’ve seen the proco rats (rodents) kits. Cool stuff. I’ve found a dutch site with a webshop that sells kits. I’m gonna start with those. Simple fuzz pedals.

[zim]

I've been building my own midi controller board with an Arduino for my axe fx, not an actual pedal but still pretty cool

[zim]

some pics of my project, it's super janky and messy but it's just something i've been poking at when i get bored. everything 'works' but i have to rebuild the midi circuits on pcb and finish up the programming.

it's actually not that complicated. sending midi is surprisingly easy but reading it requires special circuits (like an optoisolator) which makes it a little more annoying. the hardest part was programming some of the reading stuff from the axe fx

i'd really like to have a 3d printed enclosure which makes me not even want to finish this but i'll probably eventually finish this and just build another one. since it's just a midi controller i could set it up with a daw or something cool like that.

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i bought this stupid box thing at hobby lobby because i couldn't be bothered to build my own

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[iamgoat]

How do you like the breadboards? Look simpler than a PCB

[zim]

breadboards are the best way to go for prototyping, no soldering required. if you mess up then no materials lost. you can even buy these cool wires that don't require you to do any stripping and what not https://www.amazon.com/Smraza-Breadboar ... uino+wires

@lavabug, not sure what you mean by breadboarding being more difficult to learn on?

the process is something like this with a breadboard https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/ ... box?page=2

either way, just jump in and try something, it's a lot of fun. be aware of cheap beginner soldering kits though, they tend to burn out very quickly and stop working.

[iamgoat]

Nice. Well I found some nice and cheap kits for a simple fuzz pedal. When I have some more experience I’d love to make a rat clone.

[Lavabug]

sorry i meant to say veroboard, of course breadboarding is simpler.

I'm actually gonna try to build this little pedal-sized poweramp, it's essentially like a mooer babybomb, but it's ~$10 in parts and 60W.

I just bought mooer the day before I found that circuit. I'm not sure if I like how it sounds yet, I think it colors the sound of my s&k vhd (ampeg vh140c) preamp pedal noticeably and doesn't sound as clear at loud volumes as my rack poweramp, so I think it's not gonna work well for my portable live rig. If this build ends up sounding clearer/flatter, I'll probably sell off the mooer.