Post-Lockdown pedal building

roberty

Cookiemonster said:

roberty said:

@Cookiemonster I ordered a bunch of mylar caps in common values in bags of 50 from China, and a big bag of mixed value resistors from Amazon I think. It works out maybe £10-15 cheaper per build when you have your own components. Sourcing them can be a hassle though and the postage can add up if you need to source from various suppliers

Awesome any links at all.

Can't remember, the caps were on eBay. Worth getting decade sets of polarised from bitsbox.co.uk too

rsvmark

So having watched from a distance, I feel myself falling down the rabbit hole. First kit is now on order- Angry Andy from fuzz dog. I have grand plans for high quality graphics and paint so can anyone Provide advice or point me in The direction of any resources on painting (I don’t think I will be able to find a local powder coating co) would be much obliged- specifically what primer and clear coat sprays do you use for best results?

stickyfiddle

@rsvmark ; One of us! One of us! 

I got the Sex Drive put together last night. I still have a mental note to swap in the proper cap at some point but no hurry. I *still* need to put labels on all these do I don’t forget what the knobs do...

rsvmark

@stickyfiddle Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. There is excellent work on here, including that one you have just posted. While I have lofty aspirations, I reserve the right to swear a lot, get it wrong, burn myself and come up with an utter botch job that is so utterly embarrassing that I leave tfb in an embarrassing flounce. Be prepared.....;-)

stickyfiddle

rsvmark said:

@stickyfiddle Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. There is excellent work on here, including that one you have just posted. While I have lofty aspirations, I reserve the right to swear a lot, get it wrong, burn myself and come up with an utter botch job that is so utterly embarrassing that I leave tfb in an embarrassing flounce. Be prepared.....;-)

We all started somewhere. I have some pedals that work but are utter shite inside. I have others that I made such a hash of I couldn’t even diagnose, never mind fix, and they ended up in the bin. 

Start small and go from there - and we’ll be happy to assist with any questions or problems

LastMantra

Couple of things about the WS decal paper...it's quite thick (compared to the airfix ones) and has a noticeable edge so what I would usually do is highlight the edge and try to make it look like it's been done on purpose. If that makes any sense? Also it's not particularly hard wearing and will lift eventually so a clear coat on top helps a lot.

Cookiemonster

Just want to say Jed's Peds are awesome kits, and have a great Facebook support group. 

Thankfully the fuzz I built was fairly smooth except my own silly mistakes, it was the wiring that I found the hardest.

Mudcrutch

What price do these pedal kits sell for ?

Cookiemonster

On Jed's page. There is a beginner section and price is around 30 for the full kit

Cookiemonster

https://www.jedspeds.co.uk/product-page/bass-fuzz-the-best-beginner-kit

english_bob

Mudcrutch said:

What price do these pedal kits sell for ?

Very much depends on what you want.

You won't get a great deal of choice with a budget of less than £30-40, but some of the bigger kits featured on this thread can be comfortably over £100, not counting the cost of paints or fancy knobs, which can be quite pricey by themselves.

For that sort of cash you're talking about things that require either a *lot* of components, or very high quality and/or difficult to find parts, and/or vintage "new old stock" parts that need to be tested for suitability by someone who knows what they're doing.

But there's a huge range of complexity inside different pedals.

For instance, here's the BYOC Stereo Flanger:



On the other hand, here's someone's stripboard build of an Emerson EM Drive:

stickyfiddle

Yup - what @english_bob says. The Fuzzdog KOT kit I built was about GBP 100 for everything except the knobs and bigger LEDs with bezels, and the Quaverato was around the $100-mark including knobs iirc.

Those are about the most expensive I've seen other than the Ceriatone Centura, where you're paying for the fancy case more than anything. 

If you're starting out it's a good idea to try something fairly simple - anything with just 1 knob is usually a good bet. Bigger kits aren't any harder to build - either way you have a bunch of parts to sort and install correctly then a load of soldering to do. But can be harder to diagnose if they don't work simply because more parts means increased odds of doing something wrong and more things to check if it aint' working! 

Cookiemonster

At the moment I am very much a beginner. So sticking to starter pedals and have a SHO next to do. However would like to try a Trem if I can find a fairly simple one

english_bob

stickyfiddle said:

anything with just 1 knob is usually a good bet. 

Except if it's a phaser  

stickyfiddle said:

Those are about the most expensive I've seen other than the Ceriatone Centura, where you're paying for the fancy case more than anything. 

BYOC make a few that are £100+, but they're all fairly complex builds- flanger, analogue vibrato, programmable 8-way looper(!). 

english_bob

Cookiemonster said:

At the moment I am very much a beginner. So sticking to starter pedals and have a SHO next to do. However would like to try a Trem if I can find a fairly simple one

I built the circuit Fuzzdog sells as the Throb tremolo on stripboard. Definitely a step up from the SHO in terms of the number of parts but still not too complicated, and you end up with a nice amp style tremolo with two switchable speed ranges. (don't worry too much about the parts count- just takes a bit longer to build, and requires a bit more organization when you first sort your parts).

https://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/Throb_Tremolo/p847124_9404696.aspx

Won't do anything all that crazy though. For that there's the Vox Repeat Percussion, which is also reasonably simple.

https://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/Repeater_-_Vox_Repeat_Percussion/p847124_9673280.aspx

Cookiemonster

english_bob said:

Cookiemonster said:

At the moment I am very much a beginner. So sticking to starter pedals and have a SHO next to do. However would like to try a Trem if I can find a fairly simple one

I built the circuit Fuzzdog sells as the Throb tremolo on stripboard. Definitely a step up from the SHO in terms of the number of parts but still not too complicated, and you end up with a nice amp style tremolo with two switchable speed ranges. (don't worry too much about the parts count- just takes a bit longer to build, and requires a bit more organization when you first sort your parts).

https://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/Throb_Tremolo/p847124_9404696.aspx

Won't do anything all that crazy though. For that there's the Vox Repeat Percussion, which is also reasonably simple.

https://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/Repeater_-_Vox_Repeat_Percussion/p847124_9673280.aspx

Would like to make the repeater

roberty

Did the primer yesterday and the colour just now. It's got some crud stuck to it from being outside but hopefully it'll pick off when dry. I saved a little bit of paint for touch ups, took just about a whole can to do this

andy_k

I have built 2 Fuzzdog noisy crickets, first one was first attempt at building from a kit, couldn't believe how well it worked, so got another one to try and make it as neat as possible.
Still couldn't believe how well no. 2 worked, and now my imagination has got the better of me.
I want to squeeze a rangemaster type circuit, into the front of the noisy cricket, so you get a fully featured master volume amp in a 9v pedal, that just goes into a speaker cab.
Further research showed me I wasn't the first with this idea, check out MYLK AMP on t'web.
I managed to get a good deep soldering iron burn on my second build, which has only just healed--so proceed with caution.
I recommend the Noisy cricket as a first kit, but a bit like crack, once you try it you can't go back.

Fuengi

This thread inspired me to dip my toe in, first build the simplest one possible... Really enjoyed it, want more of a challenge next time. 

Fuzz Dog supplied, can't fault it except maybe put the 'things to check' at the beginning rather than the end. Serves me right for not reading it through first - I put the green LED in the wrong way around.

Paint job is my design with Posca Pens.

stickyfiddle

Glad to see this thread is inspiring some folks. Somewhat ironically I've just put a new board together and not included a single home-build. I might have to rectify that..