This is a spin off of something I just said in another thread, that I thought might be a cool topic. What made you start to build? Was it curiosity? Necessity (no money to buy boutique pedals)? Or something else?
For me it was a mixture of the first two. Here's my story, copied from the other thread. I can't wait to read some of yours.
"The Woolly Mammoth is the pedal that started this whole thing for me. I really wanted one for my bass, but definitely couldn't swing the $359 price tag. So out of curiosity, I searched to see what was on the inside that made it cost so much. Then I stumbled upon the FSB thread on it, and was shocked that I could build my own for like $30. I dove in head first and etched a board based on Brian's layout, and never turned back. The rest is history. :)"
Ian
Hey, you DID make a new thread! Yayz ;D
My wife bought me a BYOC Chorus kit for my birthday a couple of years ago. I hadn't even thought of building my own stuff before that. I ended up doing 3 BYOC kits before finding this page and continuing on with it.
The "name brand" pedals that I've sold after doing my own builds have literally paid for pretty much all of the parts and equipment that I've bought thus far, so it's been a relatively cheap hobby if you look at it that way!
My start with this hobby is pretty convoluted but it's fun. I had just sold my El Capistan in anticipation of the Timeline release when Strymon sold out in like a minute. After getting over my disappointment I began thinking about a delay pedal that costs as much as a refrigerator, painful sales tax as I am 30 miles away from Strymon and used prices unlikely to drop below retail for a long time, if ever. This lead to thinking about alternatives to the Timeline while still getting some of those sounds and just how many pedals I could build for 500 bucks so I started researching builds and ordering parts.
Now I have an Echo Base happily living in a parallel effects mixer with phasers and trems and [soon] filters. All of my commercial effects have been sold and my DIY dirt collection is growing nicely. This has lead to a nice little unexpected benefit: While I have never gotten along well enough with Muffs to justify a pricey boutique variant I can most certainly justify having a 48 dollar Muff that has been well tuned to my rig. So now I have pedals in the build queue that I never would have considered owning at 200 bucks but 50 sits really nicely!
PS: phase modulated delay repeats are about the coolest sounds around!
Quote from: lloyd17 on November 02, 2011, 07:26:55 PM
PS: phase modulated delay repeats are about the coolest sounds around!
:o That is brilliant! What if you could make a pt2399 based delay and process the repeat signal only with modulation effects before they are blended with the dry signal and sent through the feedback! Holy smokes this may be my next project...
I started building when I was a kid. Never had any money so I figured I could build expensive pedals for nothing. I started with treble boosters (I was digging the Brian May tone at the time). After that I didn't build anything for a while. Many years later in college I began fixing and modifying the production pedals I had and discovered that it would be relatively inexpensive to build pedals from scratch. Someone over at FSB pointed me here when I went asking for a Klon PCB.
I sold my amp via eBay to Paul (chromesphere) who turned me on to pedal building. I'm a gear whore at heart, like to tinker with stuff, love good tone and figured why not. I built a BYOC OD2 to get my feet wet. Paul convinced me that etching, sourcing parts, enclosure finishing isn't as difficult as it sounds. With his kind and generous help, he directed me to this forum and away I went. I still feel like a total noob, but I'm learning with every build...I think.
I really enjoy building the circuits and playing and seeing the finished product. I also enjoy the people on this forum. You guys have been a huge help and are incredibly generous and kind with your time and knowledge. Usually, forums get filled with flame wars and turn into pissing matches, I haven't seen a single one here.
I think I've got 11 builds to date, just waiting for decals and clear powder coating and I'll start posting some build reports. I've also built an amp which was a huge challenge, but incredibly rewarding. I know I'm not designing the circuits I'm building and owe the credit to Madbean and others, but it is gratifying to assemble these things, strike a big chord and bask in the juicy tone which I have soldered together.
I have worked on tube amps since I was in high school and really never used too many pedals. I think the first one I bought was a Danelectro DanEcho in the 90's and I also bought the cream colored overdrive they were making, but I sold it right away as i didn't care for it. After that I didn't use anything besides the DanEcho until I got an Italian Vox Crybaby from a pal as a gift. I had no idea what it was worth when he gave it to me, but it did get me on the path of modding wah pedals. I sold it a 4 years ago and missed it badly, so I bought a V847 and modded it with a whipple inductor, true bypass, and some resistor changes. It sounded good, but I wanted another vintage wah so I sold it on ebay and made some good money on the deal. That made me realize that I could mod a few v847's a month and have some extra money to play with. I started with Vox V847 true bypass conversions, and doing inductor and resistor swaps, but now I go as far as doing conversions to the small italian style PCB, changing caps, and transistors. I got a lowrey organ that is chock full of 2n2924 and 2n2925's, literally hundreds, so I can swap MPSA18's out of V847's and GCB95's for some time to come.
Then I build a BYOC ESV 2 knob bender for a buddy. That did it, I realized that I could do all the tooling of the enclosure and source parts myself and save alot over BYOC kits. Then I found GGG and built my first rangemaster clone, the next I did on eyelets, that was my nephew's christmas present last year. After that I built the Bad Stone that was worked up on FSB. I have gotten really serious about building in the past 12 months or so, way less amplifiers, way more pedals. Aquaboy, Echobase, Boomstick, Uproar, 1 knob fuzz, fatpants, many more rangemasters. Last winter I figured I had bought, modded or repaired, then resold 25 wahs, it must be 25 more since then...
I think the reason I have gotten into pedal building is that you can build something, rock it, and if it isn't what you are looking for you can sell it on ebay and make back everything you had into it plus a little sometimes. People are willing to buy a pedal from a relatively unknown builder if the youtube demo sounds good. It is much harder to do that with amplifiers, especially if you are buying the cab from a builder, and having a speaker built by Weber, you can end up with $600-$1000 into an amp pretty easily and might not have the ability to sell it unless you are selling to local players that know your repair/building reputation and are in the market for a handwired PTP amp. My first 18 watt was a kit from GDS, $1200 was in it when all was said and done and I sold it for $899. Not good business, but I learned the lesson about sourcing my own parts the hard way, and somewhere in Chicago there is a happy guy with a KILLER 18 watt that was a great deal. Now I only build amps to order or for personal use, but I experiment heavily with effects builds. Brian has done such a good job of facilitating my experimentation with his PCB's he should get a freaking award! On the bench now, Dig Dug, Cosmopolitan, Quadrovibe... With so many new things getting rolled out I can't wait to get my next order in. Gonna have to sell some more wahs.
Quote from: JakeFuzz on November 02, 2011, 07:40:23 PM
:o That is brilliant! What if you could make a pt2399 based delay and process the repeat signal only with modulation effects before they are blended with the dry signal and sent through the feedback! Holy smokes this may be my next project...
That pretty much what the mixer does with the help of the dry kill mod on the Echo Base. Now I am totally hooked on what kinds of crazy things I can do to delay repeats: filter, octave, fuzz, true chorus! The list goes on and on. One really terrific benefit of being able to effect repeats only is EQ. I built up a SBEQ which is a tad subtle up front but perfect for brightening or darkening the EB's repeats. Plus when one cranks the SBEQ volume the EB input section overdrives pretty nicely for that gritty, dark sound. I like the EB so much it is staying on my main board but I am building up an Urchin with kill dry to go permanently on the 'weird' board along with the parallel mixer, upcoming Lowrider and some kind of filter which at this point will be Taylor's Meatball clone. I am more excited about this stuff every day. Can't wait for Brian's reverb project to get some soupy, reverb-on-the-repeats type sounds happening!
Used to do some hobby electronics when I was kid. Still had the iron and some other bits that got used for odd things. Dunno what made me decide to do it other than I like building things... Got a BYOC kit and off I went.
Quite addictive.
I owed a lot of money due to a serious gambling problem and a streak of bad luck. My attorney was kind of a wild man but we used to hang out quite a bit. We took a crazy drive through the California desert on our way to Las Vegas for a little story I was hired to write. When we got there we somehow landed at a giant law enforcement convention. My attorney was under the influence of various recreational pharmaceuticals (I, myself, did not partake) so we high-tailed it out of there and stayed in lock-down in our hotel for several days. My attorney went a little nuts and tried to stab me so I hid in the bathroom most of the time. That's when I first registered at DIYstompboxes. I had hours to kill until he came to his senses so I got hooked pretty quick on the pedal thing.
Some other stuff happened after that, but that's the gist.
Sounds like a Robert Downey Jr. story.
Quote from: madbean on November 02, 2011, 10:58:50 PM
I owed a lot of money due to a serious gambling problem and a streak of bad luck. My attorney was kind of a wild man but we used to hang out quite a bit. We took a crazy drive through the California desert on our way to Las Vegas for a little story I was hired to write. When we got there we somehow landed at a giant law enforcement convention. My attorney was under the influence of various recreational pharmaceuticals (I, myself, did not partake) so we high-tailed it out of there and stayed in lock-down in our hotel for several days. My attorney went a little nuts and tried to stab me so I hid in the bathroom most of the time. That's when I first registered at DIYstompboxes. I had hours to kill until he came to his senses so I got hooked pretty quick on the pedal thing.
Some other stuff happened after that, but that's the gist.
:D Fear and Loathing on the Stompbox Trail!
Quote from: lloyd17 on November 02, 2011, 08:11:22 PM
Quote from: JakeFuzz on November 02, 2011, 07:40:23 PM
:o That is brilliant! What if you could make a pt2399 based delay and process the repeat signal only with modulation effects before they are blended with the dry signal and sent through the feedback! Holy smokes this may be my next project...
That pretty much what the mixer does with the help of the dry kill mod on the Echo Base. Now I am totally hooked on what kinds of crazy things I can do to delay repeats: filter, octave, fuzz, true chorus! The list goes on and on. One really terrific benefit of being able to effect repeats only is EQ. I built up a SBEQ which is a tad subtle up front but perfect for brightening or darkening the EB's repeats. Plus when one cranks the SBEQ volume the EB input section overdrives pretty nicely for that gritty, dark sound. I like the EB so much it is staying on my main board but I am building up an Urchin with kill dry to go permanently on the 'weird' board along with the parallel mixer, upcoming Lowrider and some kind of filter which at this point will be Taylor's Meatball clone. I am more excited about this stuff every day. Can't wait for Brian's reverb project to get some soupy, reverb-on-the-repeats type sounds happening!
Damn the lowrider would be crazy. Every time the signal repeats you would be getting an octave lower/higher depending on where the repeat return point is (before the feedback). Man that would be too cool to play with... Damn another delay project to add to the list :D
my motives were pretty similar to irmcdermott and jcuempire. I caught GAS quickly after picking up guitar--and was just like any TGP-er until I asked myself "why?". Now it's my dream to build mic preamps, amps, etc
The guys in one of my favorite bands, Built to Spill, always alluded to homemade pedals in interviews so I wanted to get into it to chase that tone...
I really wanted a fuzz factory too...frankly because it was marketed to be even more amazing than it actually is :P
Quote from: JakeFuzz on November 03, 2011, 12:40:38 AM
Damn the lowrider would be crazy. Every time the signal repeats you would be getting an octave lower/higher depending on where the repeat return point is (before the feedback). Man that would be too cool to play with... Damn another delay project to add to the list :D
I saw a video that employed that idea, but with an EHX POG and doing the dotted eighth note delay shtick. It was AMAZING
Quote from: jtn191 on November 03, 2011, 02:22:09 AM
one of my favorite bands, Built to Spill
I. Love. Built to Spill.
:)
Quote from: slimtriggers on November 03, 2011, 12:26:47 AM
Quote from: madbean on November 02, 2011, 10:58:50 PM
I owed a lot of money due to a serious gambling problem and a streak of bad luck. My attorney was kind of a wild man but we used to hang out quite a bit. We took a crazy drive through the California desert on our way to Las Vegas for a little story I was hired to write. When we got there we somehow landed at a giant law enforcement convention. My attorney was under the influence of various recreational pharmaceuticals (I, myself, did not partake) so we high-tailed it out of there and stayed in lock-down in our hotel for several days. My attorney went a little nuts and tried to stab me so I hid in the bathroom most of the time. That's when I first registered at DIYstompboxes. I had hours to kill until he came to his senses so I got hooked pretty quick on the pedal thing.
Some other stuff happened after that, but that's the gist.
:D Fear and Loathing on the Stompbox Trail!
lol
I started electronics about a year ago now, conquering the 'wish I could do that' I got when I saw peoples DIY gear or our tech at work open up my camera and start soldering. In typical nzCdog fashion I have become completely obsessed and manage to churn out a pedalboard's worth of projects so far, with many more projects half started... Thanks to the internet and cool communities like this, I learn something new everyday... :)
Quote from: jtn191 on November 03, 2011, 02:22:09 AM
I saw a video that employed that idea, but with an EHX POG and doing the dotted eighth note delay shtick. It was AMAZING
I have to try this now. In fact I see a little mod opportunity in the dbag schematic. An extra cap and an NC jack could work. I don't know if i'm going to be able to cram two extra jacks into the BB I have set aside for this... ???
I had Craig Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians back in college, and built a couple things, but the "bug" didn't really kick in until maybe 2 or 3 years ago. I wasn't happy with the sound I was getting from digital modelers and I knew that the solution was a tube amp and analog stomps. The problem with those things is the inflated economy TGP creates around them. Most of what I wanted was out of my league financially.
I knew how to solder, so I went looking for DIY alternatives. Ended up finding Tonepad, GGG, GeoFX, DIYStompboxes, Freestompboxes..etc. etc.. There was such an incredible wealth of info out there it was overwhelming. It was like discovering the Library of Alexandria behind the shrubbery in your own back yard!
I've been mostly a lurker, trying to soak up as much knowledge as I can. From that perspective, I have to say that the DIY guitar community is the friendliest, most helpful and generous group on the WWW. Not only here at the Madbean forums, but universally. It blows me away-especially when the rest of the 'net is so vile toward noobs :)
Someone should look into what makes guitarists so willing to help each other out. It's a trait the world could really use more of 8)
I had a regular Russian Big Muff that I was bored with, and went online in search of a way to make it sound better. I think I spent three days awake after stumbling upon GGG and BYOC. Even more amazing was the fact that for less than $4 spent at Radio Shack I was able to make the Big Muff sound a hell of a lot better...the rest is bliss!! thanks y'all!
Dennis
Well, it will be hard to top Bean's story but here goes. To get the true essence for me I'd have to type a lot so I'll condense. Last December I "checked out" meaning I was through with politics, sports and negativity in general. I'll leave it at that as that would require another post altogether. So, I had this void. I had picked up and put down the guitar over and over and decided now is the time to really dig in. At the same time I jumped on some blogs of some dudes. Started reading about guitars and amps in general and being a big Gilmour fan I landed on Gilmourish.com. Love that damn blog...anyway, I decided to model my pedalboard after Gilmours, but a poor man's version of course as homey don't make that kind of coin, and I kept reading about a BYOC muff. Had no idea what that was. Well I found out and when I got on that site a light bulb simply went off in my head. I had never picked up a soldering iron. I literally couldn't have told you the difference between a resistor and cap. The rest is history. I've since started building a speaker cab, putting together a Tele from scratch, waiting for the BYOC amp kit to come out soon to begin that...and on and on....
By the way, there is not a day that has gone by that I miss politics and sports ;) I recommend that path to everyone for peace of mind.
I was at a book store and found this book in '98, Guitar Player Presents Do-It-Yourself Projects for Guitarists by Craig Anderton
I built a few circuits out of it, poorly I might add... Then I found a distortion project on the web using radio shack part #'s. It sounded pretty bad. I may have kept going but it was hard to find parts, even on the net, expensive too. I remember looking for a footswitch and it was $30.
I abandoned the DIY route for the next 12 years. Then I built a computer from parts off Newegg and thought about checking out effects again.
I found BYOC and built a 250+ I started looking into building other pedals and found FSB which led me to MB's and I haven't looked back.
I hate paying people for something I can learn to do myself, in all aspects of life. Autos, Home DIY, etc. So it was only a natural step.
Josh
I also learned to play harmonica around the same time. I have now been stopped in two states for playing while driving, and as it were, there are no laws concerning the playing or a harmonica while driving in NY/CT so after a quick blues lick, I was let go on a bluesy way!
It was a Muff for me too that started it, an NYC Muff. A hissy, bassy piece of shit. After googling around for mods for a while, I stumbled upon Tonepad's muff layout. I sold the NYC Muff to a friend (who seemed to like it) and used the proceeds to buy the Tonepad PCB and the components. The finished product was so much better than the original and I've never looked back ...
I started building amps as a hobby when the 18 watt craze hit. After about a dozen different builds, I realized, dang, amps are expensive. Building pedals is a whole lot cheaper and nearly as much fun.
I've been into building things myself for most of my life (blame Legos). It first happened when I built a pedalboard out of a skateboard ramp I wasn't using. Then a couple of years went by and I googled how to build a guitar pedal or something like that. Build Your Own Clone came up, and while I didn't get anything then the idea was in my head for a while.
Cut to this summer, when I was working in Washington DC with nothing to do but surf the internet for 9 hours a day. I saw the guitarist in a band I was really into at the moment, Josh Hayward of the Horrors, built some of his own pedals. After a few weeks of researching pedal building, I finally bought a few things from Madbean and BYOC. So while I'm still really new to this, I am probably way further than most people my age. And this is definitely going to be a life-long hobby.
My wife made me quit WoW and I needed something to do at 2am since I couldnt turn my amp on. Saw something called a "Big Muff Clone" and it peaked my interest. Found beavisaudio and the rest is history. When I got my noisy cricket working I was hooked!
lol some cool stories in this thread
Back in 93 or 94 I found an article in a Guitar Player magazine that had a schematic for some sort of an otave fuzz. Not knowing a thing about electronics, I decided to try to make it. I went to Radioshack and bought all the components and tried to make it. I even had my dad try, he ended up taking it to work and having one of his electrical engineer buddies take a look at it. I never saw of it again.
Than the bug hit me again about 10 years later - I was working as a warehouse manager for an electronic component distributor - I had access to plenty of resistors, capacitors, LED's, diodes, IC's and transistors. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find much online to help me, so I lost interest.
Than the bug hit me about a year ago but this time I found a wealth of internet forums with more than helpful DIY'ers. I bought a breadboard, learned to read schematics and built plenty of simple fuzz boxes on it. I took the first plunge to actually build on perfboard and house a pedal 6 months ago. It worked so my second build I etched my own board with success.
I just finished my 4th build, an egodriver, and I'm ready to start my 5th build.
Quote from: glowsheep on November 04, 2011, 10:05:19 PM
Back in 93 or 94 I found an article in a Guitar Player magazine that had a schematic for some sort of an otave fuzz. Not knowing a thing about electronics, I decided to try to make it. I went to Radioshack and bought all the components and tried to make it. I even had my dad try, he ended up taking it to work and having one of his electrical engineer buddies take a look at it. I never saw of it again.
Than the bug hit me again about 10 years later - I was working as a warehouse manager for an electronic component distributor - I had access to plenty of resistors, capacitors, LED's, diodes, IC's and transistors. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find much online to help me, so I lost interest.
Than the bug hit me about a year ago but this time I found a wealth of internet forums with more than helpful DIY'ers. I bought a breadboard, learned to read schematics and built plenty of simple fuzz boxes on it. I took the first plunge to actually build on perfboard and house a pedal 6 months ago. It worked so my second build I etched my own board with success.
I just finished my 4th build, an egodriver, and I'm ready to start
my 5th build.
Wow you blew by the slow learning curve that I'm on :D
Similar to TNB I found BYOC through Gilmourish. I started with a few commercial pedal mods via ebay and Monte Allums then graduated to BYOC and finally buying PCB's from Bean and others.
I have been doing basic repairs and hacks on electronics for a long time, but building pedals is especially rewarding because each time I fire a new one up for the first time (kinda like something else...) it is extremely rewarding and inspires me to play more.
I saw a thread on Cheap and Easy DIY SHO over at a Telecaster forum.
Decided to give it a go and was hooked from there. This was January this year.
Ive gone on to do stuff I never even dreamed possible, and save for overtly complex and/or digital effects, I dont think ill buy another stomp box again. Far more satisfying to build one yourself.
I started as a sort of experiment.
I had done tonnes of DIY stuff for my guitars in the past - tuning guitars, changing out speakers, simple mods on pedals, etc. I also had a fairly large Pedalboard I had built for myself full of pedals that you could call workhorses, or perhaps bang for buck.
I had at one time had an 82 tubescreamer that I just loved, but at one point I wasn't using it and sold if (making a tidy profit I might add) but soon regretted. I looked into the Fulldrive a couple years later but couldn't afford it.
Then one day I stumbled across General Guitar Gadgets. I thought I might be able to take the Tubescreamer project they had and mod it to build the fulldrive, but as I was researching this I discovered Tonepad and BYOC. I ordered a few boards from Tonepad, then got some BYOC kits, and joined up at DIYStompboxes when I couldn't make a couple of my Tonepad boards work. I got very involved over there for quite a while, I think I hit 1000 posts within a year or so.
It was at DIYStompboxes I was first introduced to madbean, in the form of the original PCB service Brian was doing. I remember him submitting a layout for the Silverfox/Barber LTD Silver just after Dave generously supplied that Schematic to the forum. I got in contact with Brian about some other projects, and then began to check into his website for updates on his projects, then when he launched up I was one of the early customers. I joined the Forum, and slowly migrated from DIYSB to here as my primary forum.
I love this stuff. DIY pedals has replaced playing for me really. I like to use these boxes, but it's as much if not more fun to actually be building and designing. Lord knows I spend many, many more times on the DIY stuff than I do on playing.
Jacob