Pedal building fun

Paul_C

A few years ago I made myself an Ampeg Scrambler from a Fuzzdog kit to see if I could, and more recently I built myself a couple of Parasit Studio kits from Musikding - the Into The Unknown and Raygun Youth.

While pondering another kit build I considered taking things a little further and now I'm getting into the wonderful world of building on stripboard from layouts and accumulating numerous resistors, capacitors and transistors etc.

I started with the simplest layout I could find - a DeviEver OK - and it didn't work . . . I then built a second and that didn't work either. . . with the parts left over I built another DE layout, an Electric Brown, which did work and sounds pretty good.

I then tried a Mid-Fi Random Number Generator, which sounds wild but not really much like a demo video I've seen. I get the impression that what it needs is some transistor swapping, which I'm going to try once I've finished the next project.

So now I've ordered a component tester so I can make sure the parts I'm building with work before I start, and a breadboard to test circuits before I start soldering, plus more components to build a Parallel Universe.

I also plan to go back to the OK layout to see what I got wrong (if anything) and get one built.

Here's a pic of the two successful builds with a simple black marker pen and silver paint pen finish, which I'll leave on until I think of some better finish ideas.



. . . and the latest from Sonic Koalas is a one-take piece with Electric Brown into Bakvendt into Random Number Generator into BitQuest.



I've got no plans to sell anything commercially, just have fun while learning about how pedals are built.

grappagreen

Fab mate..

I’ve built about 10 kits but am just starting to look at maybe having a go at breadboarding from scratch. Big leap as I know f’all about electronics but I’m slowly learning along the way.

It’s addictive stuff!

Si

Adam_MD

Any chance of some gut shots for those of us with a pedal guts fetish?  

Paul_C

I've nothing right now other than this shot of the two OK boards that didn't work - they've since been stripped of parts but the boards themselves are fine, so once I've worked out what the problem was at least one will be put into an enclosure.



a lot of the parts I ordered have arrived this morning so I can make a start - the component tester won't be here until next week, but I do have a digital multimeter which I can test some parts with.

One of the good things about this is that the pedals are only costing around £30-£50 which is a lot more affordable than £200-£300 and I'm learning new things as I go

TateFX

Paul_C said:

I've nothing right now other than this shot of the two OK boards that didn't work - they've since been stripped of parts but the boards themselves are fine, so once I've worked out what the problem was at least one will be put into an enclosure.


a lot of the parts I ordered have arrived this morning so I can make a start - the component tester won't be here until next week, but I do have a digital multimeter which I can test some parts with.

One of the good things about this is that the pedals are only costing around £30-£50 which is a lot more affordable than £200-£300 and I'm learning new things as I go

Most parts are going to be good enough to work even cheap ebay ones. The fault probably lies with unwanted solder bridges on vero board. 

Make yourself an audio probe, Just a jack one cap and a couple of bits of wire, that way you can trace the signal flow and find the problem 

Paul_C

It's on the to do list - I did check the completed but not working boards for shorts using my mutimeter set to bleep and found nothing, plus I rounded up the components from the two stripped down boards and put some of them into a slightly different build which only partially worked, so I'm still assuming I may have had at least one dodgy transistor.

Exorcist

FWIW I always used the little pin sockets for transistors, makes it easy to swap, and also try different types. They are super cheap and can save a lot of hassle. I use them for resistors and all sorts when I want to try different values before I stick something in permanently.

Paul_C

I've just bought some transistor sockets so that I don't need to solder in transistors, especially if I want to tinker with a layout to see what happens

Exorcist

Your welcome... They are the ones! I use them for everything when I want to tinker with different values.

Paul_C

More bits and pieces on the way, mostly transistors for experimental shenanigans

In other news, despite deciding it was way too much to be bothering with, I'm wondering how much fun spin-chip pedal making might be . . . 

springhead

I've build loads, initially from veroboard and PCB's I had made up, more recently from fuzz dog boards or full kits.  Mostly the usual Fuzz Faces, Tonebenders, dirt pedals, tremelo's etc.  I went down the Jimi route with Fuzz Faces including converting a modern Dunlop FF shell back to a 60's grey finish and making it take interchangeable Si or Ge boards, positive or negative earth.  Also Octavia and Wah pedal mod's and tweaks.  Most complex build was a Univibe.  I bought a PCB and sourced all the bits separately.  Bought a dozen LDR's and selected 4 from them.  Tweaked and tuned it and compared with the two original Univibes that a mate has, mine sounds like the better of his.  They're both lovely, but one just does it better.  Here's a few pic's.  The 'temporary' blue-tac to hold in the light shield/reflector seems to have become a permanent feature now sadly.

One button is the usual true bypass, the other is the original 'Cancel', triggered by heel down in the original Univibe.  It just stops the LFO. So when you hear Jimi playing and the vibe isn't vibing his signal is still going through the whole circuit, which is part of the tone.

Lot of work, wouldnt fancy doing it again!

Milk

Do the kits come with the metal housing? or do they need making themselves?

Paul_C

The kit sellers that I've used (Fuzzdog and Musikding) both give you the option of buying a pre-drilled enclosure along with the kit.

Paul_C

Update: The bug has well and truly bitten

Five completed pedals, two of which I'm in the middle of re-finishing, one that needs the enclosure drilling, finishing and all the wiring doing, and I just placed an order for seven enclosures as I've only got one (previously used) left

I'm slowly learning more and more as I go, and spent an hour this morning removing transistors from my Devi Ever BDSM so I could fit sockets - this allows me to swap different types in and out as I've discovered that some can improve* the sound hugely. I haven't done much yet, but the new transistors sound good to me (MPSA18s out, BC108s in).

I even managed to create something new** which has become a pedal I call a Happy Little Accident - it produces a stutter sound that speeds up and slows down depending on the strength of the signal and it sounds great

My box of bits has grown exponentially along, with a list of things I'd like to try building before I properly delve into making things that make utterly pointless weird noises. I'm not looking to sell, just amuse myself and learn a little as I go.






*it sounds better to me.
** I swapped an MPSA18 (NPN with an hFE (gain) of 430) for an MPSA13 (NPN Darlington with an hFE of 24,000)