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Madbeanpedals forum taught me most of the things i know about pedals since day 1 and helped me a lot when starting this completely new hobby-passion in my life! This is my way of saying ''thank you for everything guys'' by posting my first and my last builds showing all the fun i am having all these years.

First Build WTF fuzz  :


Pork Barrel:
Great pcb is great!!! I cant find a pic of the populated pcb at the moment. I remember i drilled the back cover of the enclosure because a capacitor was so tall it couldn't close and it doesn't stick out just barely. (I ll post it later if i find it or just take a new photo).


Custom Bad-ass Modified
Diy clone of the "MXR custom badass modified O.D." on veroboard with freestyle marker artwork shielded with a clearcoat varnish.


Deep Blue Delay
Diy clone (on vero) of the Deep Blue Delay. Decorated with 24k gold leaf for classier sound    . A momentary footswitch is added that engages "self-oscillation mode" for as long as you step on it. The self-oscillation can react with changes of the effect's controls in real time with very interesting results. Inside though its not that good looking  i put some pieces of foam around the spaghetti wires to stabilize the pcb!


P.S. All of the above builds sit now in my pedalboard adn are getting abused every day (poor golden delay - i didn't clear-coated ), the fuzz obviously had an extreme make over and after that was put in a new enclosure. 

Dear friends!

As a young pedal builder, most of the problems i encountered before and after completing a pedal build were related to pour quality building materials.  I learned from my mistakes and i started buying good quality hardware (switches, jacks, foot switches, enclosures etch)  but i dont know where to find good quality pots. One out of 5 pots (the ones i am using right now) will fail in some way immediately or after a while.

Are the small pcb mounted green pots most reliable than the ones i already have?
Where i should check to buy my new assortment of pots?

[For those who would bother with the extra info read a brief description below:]

Dear All

As the title states i would like your advice on where (in this forum or anywhere on the internet) i could post for Guitar Amp tech help for my DRRI. Thank you in advance.

For those who would bother with the extra info read a brief description below:

After reading on a hurry some advice on the internet ''I did something stupid'' . I tried to eliminate the popping sound that the vibrato foot switch was making when turning on and off on my modified DRRI by wrongly connecting a 220pf cap to the white and the grey wire of the vibrato/reverb foot-switch.

After that turned the amp on and quickly realized that:

• The vibrato effect stayed always on, no matter what (even when i removed the cap and disconnected the switch)
• The Power tubes started to glow bright red hot (something is going really bad)

I closed immediately the amp to prevent extra damage.The current state of the amp is:

• Power tubes get red hot when opening the standby switch
• Sounds comes from the amp normally (with the exception that Vibrato is always on)
• Reverb is working
• Controls are working
• No sign of burnt or damaged internal components(visual inspection)

The amp was biased properly components are all new (caps, transformers, pots, tubes, reverb tank, switches and sockets) and was working great up until now.

I have built some pedals and amps in the past and i know that you should never do something you are not sure or does not understand completely (especially in a hurry) but it seemed like a simple fix with not much risk at the time and i feel really really bad that i damaged my favorite amp with my stupidity.

P.S. .The closest amp tech is located 400km away so i think i have to do it by my self. My soldering skills are up to the task but i don't have a deep understanding of of the amp circuit (just a basic understanding of how some components can affect the signal path).

Today i modified my BB2 to  true bypass and i was thinking if i could easily do the soft/hard cliping mod that is mentioned in the 8BALL document.

Pic of the pcb


thanks in advance!

Is it possible to make an Effect loop in Deep Blue delay?
What i want to do is to have an output only for the repeats, connect this to modulation (Chorus for example) and then send it back to the pedal.

[Strong mojo alert]

A friend that doesnt really play guitar had this guitar gifted to him from his father 20 years ago.

Strong mojo alert - ( please keep mojo unbilievers away at all costs  )

The legend has it that his father was a gambler and he got the guitar as a payment instead of money after winning a bet (unfortunately not against devil). The guitar seems to have been played a lot as the inlays, the frets and the fretboard is preety worn out. The neck joint has some stability issues - bigsby is rusty - nut/intontation/action etch are not even there since you cant string the guitar at all (tuners are completely broken). So after an inner dispute with myself about my luthier skills i took the decision to restore it only to find out that the guitar was ... cursed to play and look bad in a good way.

This is my journey
With a hand full of frets


with work, sweat & blood


and my few trusty tools (and handmade fretpress )


and the vintage not potted michrophonic humbuckers that i replaced (and saved them for later wax potting and maybe use)


and toothpicks (lots and lots)


shimming and leveling the neck joint and a drawing of BMO for good luck and mathematical sound


the guitar started to regain some of its former glory


(i moved the volume for ease of use)


I could post everything i did and believe me it was a lot of work (nut,bridge,electrics, bigsby cleaning & bigsby refiting and repairing the screwholes etc.) but i dont want to make the thread bigger than it is already.

But i feel that something is missing and i cant quite catch it (maybe the sustain ? or maybe it is my years playing solid body guitars telling me that the guitar i hold is a different animal).

Now no frets are buzzing, intonation is just, even with 12s flats the action can get really low, nut is low as it should, it keeps the tune good and it feels really smooth. Overall i am happy with the result and the guitar is really playble (you can even shred with a radius that flat) So i hope you enjoy this journey as i did, restoring an instrument almost double my age.

[Step 1:]

The past year i am going through a financially not so good period of my life as i am tryin to help the family business, find a job relative to my degree and find my own place to live. So not a lot of money are spended for guitars,pedals and amps. In contrast with the above the diy fever is stronger than ever before so I always try to find ways to keep the budget low and still make it possible for me to build stuff.

So with no further ado this is a guide on DIRT CHEAP enclosures

Step 1:
Go to your local  metal supplier (the place that ussually have heavy machinery to cut,bend or weld metal) and search for
      -   1,5mm or 2mm thick square pipes
      -   Standart dimentions i found that are suitable for pedals are
           4cm X 10cm wide and long as much as you want and
           4cm x 12cm
      - and a 4cm wide strip of metal for the sides (you will see it in the next steps)
      *PROTIP search for leftovers i purchased the two pipes in the photo for 7euros
PIPES

STRIP for the sides of the enclosures


Step 2:
     -Cut the pipes in the desired size
     -Cut the back opening of each enclosure
     -Then weld the side strip from the inside with small dot like welds or anyway you like it to form the box
     Unfortunately i didnt take photos of these steps but you can see what i did in the finished product
After the welding

After the paint preparation

Detail of the back opening and the side welding
I also weld two smaller strips afterwards to screw the backplate on

Detail 2


Step 3:
You can now drill the enclosures or just paint them and store them for later use.
I bought 350ml Automotive paint and paint preparation for around 12 euros
You have to drill the holes for the backplates and make the threads for the screws


Step 4:
Enjoy your diy heavy duty enclosures
I spend 20euros overall (7 for the material + 12 for the paint + 1 for sandpapers) but i had a variety of tools at my disposal (cutting and welding machines) + some hard work is involved too so its better to do a big batch all at once


now some finished enclosures in action




I hope you liked it

I just build Serendipity on an etched board and tested it to see if it works.
***but i put it by mistake in reverse polarity for a few seconds - caps started to get hot and immidiatelly i disconected it.
When i connected it correctly i heard the following

-A bit Hissing even if the power is disconnected
-Drive and Tone seems to work
-Voice squeels at high settings
-Volume on low settings gives a nasty hisss and at maximum the hiss gets overall quiter but i get an detuned fuzzy sound (like a starving fuzz)

I replaced the ic (bb opa2604) in case that was the problem.
and i checked for etching/soldering/pots and polarity faults but everything seems ok.

Is it possible i fried something??
here are some pics
Testing Wiring


Front


Back ( i scratched the flux while searching for a sorted connection so its a bit messy)


Thanks in advance

I want to paint my enclosures, print graphics and then seal it with clearcoating, or use some black decals on top of the paint but it seems that my forum searching skills didnt do me any good.
Is there any guide or any usefull post in the forum that would help me with that (what paint/clearcoat to use, how to apply ech.) ??
Thanks in advance

[zener 1n5817 1W Diode]

Noob reporting in. I etched and tryin to build a WeenerWah. In the schematic/BOM i see i need a zener 1n5817 1W Diode but i only have  1n5817 - Schottky 1A 20v. Should i put the Schottky diode or replace it with another 1w Zener diode like the 1n4744A - Zener 15v 1W ??

Thanks in advance

Greeting fellow DIYers

My name is George and in a nutshell, i am a 25 yo unemployed Civil & Structural Engineer from Greece with love for good music, women and fishing. I like making stuff in general, mainly because as you may already know, you cannot easily find/buy customised and quality products.

Throught the projects and posts of the madbeanpedals community, my knowledge and love about making my own pedals grew more and more. So i started maintaining and then modifying my own gear, a journey that led in making my own guitars, speaker cabins, cables etc (and pedal,only 1 ).

I dont sell any of my creations, i find pleasure in helping others customise or upgrade their gear because i believe that musical instruments/gear are not only tools for making sounds but also something that can inspire you to play and create more.

And now that you know a few things about me i'd like to ask you a thing or two. My experience with soldering is wiring guitars and modifying some of my pedals (for true bypass switching and other small mods). For starters i want to make a BOOSTER and a FUZZ, from what i know both of them are not super difficult to make (later maybe i try a delay).

• BOOST: Clean boost that can also be dirty with a switch or somethin
• 
  FUZZ: All around, smooth and harse, mainly classic sounds nothing too extreme

From your experience making and playing with pedals from madbean projects what should i choose (from old or new projects)?

THANKS a lot for the knowledge that obtained lurking here and your replies.

P.S. I didnt find a post in this forum with an image as a signature, and i thought maybe its in the rules or somethin not to have an image. I search the rules and found nothing about it so i made a signature image for fun, if its against the rules let me now.