Greetings

[zelix]

Hello everyone. I'm new to the fun world of electronics. I have been reading up and learning as much as I can. I'm setting up a nice workstation in my garage. I've been messing about with with music and guitars forever. I'm excited to make some cool pedals. I look forward to learning a lot from you all.

Z

[stringsthings]

Welcome!

[sonnyboy27]

Welcome to the club. This is a great place for picking up on stuff. Read any of the tech blogs by Coda-effects (http://www.coda-effects.com/) and electrosmash (https://www.electrosmash.com/) for some really good intro on the building blocks of guitar pedals. I also run a blog with a few theory articles that might be helpful (as well as some getting started stuff) and were inspired by their sites.

Also, if Midwayfair writes anything over a paragraph then you should read it and take it as gospel. He explained impedance to me using gorillas once.

There's a ton of other super useful sites that I'm forgetting at the moment but definitely do some digging around here. The folks are super helpful.

[zelix]

Welcome!

Thanks. 

[zelix]

Welcome to the club. This is a great place for picking up on stuff. Read any of the tech blogs by Coda-effects (http://www.coda-effects.com/) and electrosmash (https://www.electrosmash.com/) for some really good intro on the building blocks of guitar pedals. I also run a blog with a few theory articles that might be helpful (as well as some getting started stuff) and were inspired by their sites.

Also, if Midwayfair writes anything over a paragraph then you should read it and take it as gospel. He explained impedance to me using gorillas once.

There's a ton of other super useful sites that I'm forgetting at the moment but definitely do some digging around here. The folks are super helpful.

Thanks. I'm a hopeless noob at this point. I have a copy of Electronics for dummies, a breadboard, assorted capacitors, a hand full of leds, a cheap multimeter, and a soldering iron. I'm talking the extreme basics and just starting out. That said I'm a pretty quick student and I simply am fascinated with anything electronics. I have high hopes in myself that I'll be able to pull this off.


Mind if I ask you a question? What would you start out with as a first pedal? I'm thinking of doing an ABY pedal as begining then going forward to a simple fuzz. Does this make sense?

Thanks for the links. I'll read them. This forum seems like a great group of people.

Z

[sonnyboy27]

TL;DR: An A/B switch is a good place to start if you need one. But overdrives aren't too complicated to build. Designing them is where it's more time consuming. I'd say build an OD, distortion, or fuzz.

It really depends. If you need an A/B pedal then I'd build that first as you can learn a lot about how switches work. But honestly, if you want to understand the blocks of a pedal then I'd read those various blogs first. That will give you a decent amount of circuit theory. Then you can say to yourself "Oh I really like pedal X, but it doesn't have enough bass". Because you now have the theory you can say "I'll build that pedal but change the coupling capacitors to let more bass through" or something like that.

Keep in mind that I'm of the mindset that you should build pedals you really want because that will push you to understand why they work. That's why the pedals that are on my blog are there. I loved each of those pedals and wanted to understand why I like them. So I built them up and studied the schematics. That way I could tweak the things I liked about them to suit my amp/guitar.

Is there a particular pedal you'd really like to have on your board?

[zelix]

TL;DR: An A/B switch is a good place to start if you need one. But overdrives aren't too complicated to build. Designing them is where it's more time consuming. I'd say build an OD, distortion, or fuzz.

It really depends. If you need an A/B pedal then I'd build that first as you can learn a lot about how switches work. But honestly, if you want to understand the blocks of a pedal then I'd read those various blogs first. That will give you a decent amount of circuit theory. Then you can say to yourself "Oh I really like pedal X, but it doesn't have enough bass". Because you now have the theory you can say "I'll build that pedal but change the coupling capacitors to let more bass through" or something like that.

Keep in mind that I'm of the mindset that you should build pedals you really want because that will push you to understand why they work. That's why the pedals that are on my blog are there. I loved each of those pedals and wanted to understand why I like them. So I built them up and studied the schematics. That way I could tweak the things I liked about them to suit my amp/guitar.

Is there a particular pedal you'd really like to have on your board?

I need a A/B pedal. I also have been wishing for a Fuzz pedal. I've researched the forum a bit after my post in this thread and pulled the trigger on a JMK 5-Knob Fuzz PCB. I'll continue to research and hopefully will make those two successfully. After I get those wins under my belt I'll 'soul search' for what I need next. I'll most likely think a tube screamer.

Thanks for the reply. I've been looking at your blog.

Z