Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
I was recently commissioned by a couple of guys at my church to build some Strymon favorite switches. These are pretty easy to build and are a great place to start if you’re getting into building pedals. Not much to say about them other than that so let’s get into the build. Parts You will need … Read more
Today we’re going to be looking at the Friedman BE-OD, a distortion pedal that was designed to emulate the Friedman Brown Eye Amplifier. If you’re wondering how it sounds, just go check out the demo done by Pete Thorne here. While he makes everything he plays sound great, this pedal was really easy to dial … Read more
Let’s build the Madbean Turnabout (a.k.a. JHS Andy Timmons clone). I got the chance to play the JHS @ (Andy Timmons) at the Chicago Music Exchange a while back and it sounded pretty freaking good. It had a nice, thick overdrive/distortion and the clipping options made pretty drastic changes which was cool. So when a vero … Read more
In this post I want to talk about the order of a build. When I started I just put everything on one piece at a time and that made it hard to get things looking neat. Sometimes components fell out of the holes while soldering and made things down right ugly. It also took a … Read more
This post is an in depth look at the Ernie Ball VP tone suck mod. It works on all passive Ernie Ball volume pedals and can also be applied to other passive volume pedals. I’ll go over why people experience “tone suck” (hint: it’s because of impedance) and a step by step on how to … Read more
The Joyo Ultimate Drive is a cool little pedal based on the Fulltone OCD. In fact, the circuit looks a lot like a V3-4 OCD. But what we’re looking at today is how to take a cheap, $35 pedal and turn it into something awesome. We’re going to be changing the gain pot so it … Read more
The 1776 Unicorn Breath Buffer is based on the buffer circuit in the famous Klon Centaur but with a little something extra that makes it a really cool/handy little project. I’ll be going over the bare bones of why you would want a buffer in your signal chain and then what makes the Unicorn Breath … Read more
Here you’ll find my most up-to-date list of resources for parts. There’s also a description of each of the vendors with stuff to look for and avoid from each. Lastly, there will be a breakdown of how I usually order parts for a build. Vendors Tayda Electronics This is a great resource for passive components … Read more
The two most popular ways of building guitar effects on are PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) and veroboard (a.k.a. Stripboard). I’ll go through the pro’s and con’s of each so you can decide which is best for you. So let’s start with… Veroboard (a.k.a. Stripboard) Veroboard is essentially a series of parallel copper strips with holes … Read more
Alright, let’s look at what materials you’re going to need to get started Soldering Iron This one is rather apparent. You’re going to want something that will last you for a few builds and not fall apart on you. DO NOT BUY FROM RADIOSHACK! Radioshack soldering irons will corrode really quickly and will only last … Read more