Do It Yourself Pedals

[grondak]

Does anyone here build them? From kits ? How do you get your circuits? Design your own? Work with books? Use the internet?

Metal Method is helping me across the board!

[rorygfan]

I believe it may be difficult to find discrete components locally anymore with Radio Shack going out of business in retail… perhaps on eBay, and online component sources you can order- like Digikey who has a huge inventory  https://www.digikey.com/ or others like Arrow who have been around for a long time:  https://components.arrow.com/products/

There are alot of circuits available out there you can copy, check this site out- https://www.muzique.com/     but most pedals are quite inexpensive to buy and I would imagine more expensive to build your own, not counting the value of your time. (And time away from practicing guitar!)

https://www.electrosmash.com/crybaby-gcb-95  cry baby pedal.   This site has some stuff on it and circuit analysis…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv5iQ_aenX8  youtube has tutorials too, and the DIYguy mentions he has a store to buy the stuff in kit form.

[Anonymous]

There are several sources you can buy DIY pedal kits from. Build your own clone and Mammoth electronics come to mind. Build your own clone sells a starter kit for ~$70 + the cost of a pedal kit that includes all the tools you need to get started.

Starter Package +1

[safetyblitz]

rorygfan wrote:

believe it may be difficult to find discrete components locally anymore with Radio Shack going out of business in retail… perhaps on eBay, and online component sources you can order- like Digikey who has a huge inventory https://www.digikey.com/ or others like Arrow who have been around for a long time: https://components.arrow.com/products/

Digikey is great, but any city of more than about 100,000 people has a good chance of having some kind of electronics supply company, if only to serve local industrial customers. Since many common components cost less than a dollar, you can save a ton on shipping if you find a local electronics supply place. And the bigger advantage is in time when you realize you’re missing something and can pick it up locally in less than a day. Also look into whether there’s some kind of “hackerspace” or similar electronics club in your town/city. Those kinds of groups often do group purchasing of supplies, plus you might meet some like-minded people and learn a thing or two.

[rorygfan]

Safetyblitz… You sure are correct about time savings…. absolutely.  Really.. you have retail stores around that stock resistors, caps, op amps, ic’s, etc?, what city are you in?…. I am glad that is true.  All I know is the mom and pop sort of parts stores I used to go to when I was into ham radio way too many years ago have all but disappeared at least in So Cal- and thats about 17 million people from SB to SD.  I used to buy and sell surplus electronic test equipment and components in bulk quantities and the customers in So Cal that I located and bought them were few.  Come to think of that, that’s another resource is any surplus places too…. you can go into ask them where they buy parts locally.

[safetyblitz]

rorygfan wrote:

Safetyblitz… You sure are correct about time savings…. absolutely. Really.. you have retail stores around that stock resistors, caps, op amps, ic’s, etc?, what city are you in?

I’m near a city of more than a million, so I’m spoiled, but I visited a store just like I described when I was visiting family in a small-ish city in the Canadian prairies over Christmas holidays. I needed capacitors to fix a dead LCD monitor. The place was in a strip mall in the industrial-zoned part of town. Shelves of cut-open numbered cardboard boxes and you bagged your small components in little plastic baggies kind of like at places that sell food in bulk. Pricier items like high-end meters and scopes were under a glass display counter. Larger cheap items (solder suckers, etc.) were in blister packaging hanging on a pegboard style display.

[superblonde]

rorygfan wrote:

have all but disappeared at least in So Cal

Fry’s Electronics replaced these, they have components. Better to mail order for the selection and price though. Jameco can be good for basic things. Sparkfun or Adafruit can be okay for ICs at a big markup.

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
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[grondak]

🙂 I have the parts and the test equipment, or access to the suppliers; those are not a problem. I’m more interested in the circuits (analysis/design/behavior) than in the building-to-save-cost idea.  For example, I like the explanation of the fuzz circuit in the Electronic Projects for Musicians book.  It’s a simple amplifier and comparator: everything that triggers the comparator gets turned into a square wave with (theoretically infinite) harmonic content that sounds like fuzz.  Anything below that threshold is passed on as “clean” as the circuit can make it.

Kits might follow the same principles or something different. I tried ordering some Mammoth kits but the ones I wanted had out-of-stock components and thus wouldn’t add to the shopping cart (even if I had the components at home in my bench stock)  I’ll probably get a pedal housing and see what kind of neat stuff I can dream up.  Anyone else building kits or designing pedal circuits?

Metal Method is helping me across the board!

[Author]

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