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First let me say, I think BYOC is an awesome company and had it not been for me buying on of their kits and having everything explained so perfectly, I would probably not be building the stuff I am now. Their kits and instructions are great and very easy to follow

I really like their Soaring Skillet (Ibanez Flying Pan Clone) and wanted to build one. Customer service was really helpful and sold me just the PCB for that, and a few other PCBs. So I began sourcing the parts recently and noticed that it takes (2) Dual Element Opto Couplers that says that they (BYOC) have custom made.

Now I am not a tech head yet like most of you guys so substitutions don't come naturally to me. I like to build things as closely as I can to make sure it comes out right. Hopefully one day I will have a better understanding of stuff and be comfortable with mods, substitutions, etc....

So anyway, they sold me the Dual Element Couplers for $15.00 each. I paid it because they went to the trouble to sell me stuff that's not currently on their website and, well, I want to build the pedal.

Can someone lie to me....ugh...or tell me that these are custom components and it's an ok price?

Hi Guys,

I decided to go ahead and post my first three builds. I am not showing the internals because ...well, you know....ugh....they aren't the neatest.
Anyway, they are a BYOC reverb kit (my first build and where the addiction began) and a Fuzz Face and Rat from Synthrotek.

I know the "Honey Badger" has been played out but I still couldn't resist. It's part of our pop culture and maybe 20 years from now it will bring a laugh to the people that remember.

I am starting to get an itch to try a DIY synth

Anyone progressed from pedals to synths? I have always been an analog synth lover and it seems there are some sites out there for the DIYer

just wanting to hear from any members that have or wanted to get into this.

Just curious what's out there that is similar to the EH Small Stone. This was an old favorite of mine and I especially liked the depth of the color switch.

Thanks

Hi all,

So I am feeling like my Nautilus just isn't working 100% like it should.

I have watched Jon's video demo on youtube, and while I can achieve some of the sounds, it just doesn't seem to be able to achieve all of the sounds. Not only that, but at some settings I start to get some squealing, noise, feedback ect.

I can achieve some decent sounds with the range setting to the left (LED dims with dynamics) but I really can't achieve any decent standard envelope (wha-wha) sounds with the range to the right (LED brightens with dynamics)

Bypass works fine, no grounding noise, LEDs work fine. All the pots work as they should besides the noise/squealing at some settings.

I checked all resistors, capacitors, reseated ICs, checked all soldering, ....

I used the MI1210CLF-R from Smallbear. Only thing I changed I was the Gain pot to a 1MC (which helped). I didn't have any box 1n8 capacitors so I used ceramic 1800pf.

Any ideas?

Okay, so I did Jons recommendation of the gain pot being switched out to a 1MC, and this helped out a lot.

That being said, is there any other mods people have done to this?

This is such a great pedal but it's also very sensitive to certain settings and gets "out of control" pretty quickly.

Having never played an original, I am not sure if this was how the Mu-tron behaved as well.

Any tweaks people have done?

So I just finished the Mudbunny Mayo build and while everything went smooth, I noticed that it just didn't have enough distortion and was really missing that "Muff" sound.

So after a little forum searching, I realized that the BC550s are actually mounted opposite of the PCB graphic layout. I assumed (stupid,  stupid me) they mounted per the pcb graphic since the note in the build document just mentioned the BC549C as having a reverse mount.

Anyway, I didn't socket them, again...stupid me, so do you think I just just clip them high up and then heat & pull the leads out one by one? Or should I even attempt to pull all (4) transistors out and try and save them? I have removed capacitors before by doing the "rocking" method but that seems to be much easier with two leads rather than a 3 lead transistor.

thoughts?

Hi all,

So I finished my Nautilus build last night and everything went smooth. On first launch it was acting a little funny so I took the socketed ICs out and reseated them. It seems a little more consistent at that point.

While I was able to get some interesting sounds, I was also able to get really crazy, pretty unusable sounds as well. I also noticed a "little" overdrive/distortion on most settings. I was definitely able to get that envelope-ish effect, but I could quickly lose it and get some pretty noisy  sounds. I also noticed that extreme change in the gain in the last 15% that the build document mentioned. I might do the mod mentioned there eventually.

The build isn't boxed yet so it was a little pain to tweak the knobs/switches while playing.

I am just not sure if I am getting the sound I am supposed to.

Any info on this build and what to expect, what to tweak, etc., would be appreciated.

Hello all,

Can anyone explain what exactly one needs to do this and/or links to some past discussions about it? I did some searching but it seems there is a ton of info about it and maybe someone knows a better place to start. I have read the article on GPBC but it seemed that a part 2 was never created.

I am looking for info like: what you are looking for, tools needed, can it be done by ear without tools, etc. and so forth.

I have some builds coming up that will need biasing and I am not sure where to start or what equipment is essiential.

Thanks!

Greetings Everyone,

I am new to the forum as well as pedal building. I have been playing the guitar for about 25 years and recently stumbled across a DIY pedal site and thought that it sounded interesting. Without knowing a whole lot about it, I decided to order a pedal kit (Reverb) from BYOC and give it a go.

Although I crawled through the build at a snail's pace, ...to my surprise, the pedal started up perfect at the first go. I had already convinced myself prior to launching it that it wasn't going to work and I had screwed up somewhere along the way. I seconded-guess every thing I soldered. So, you can say that when IT DID work, I was totally thrilled and completely addicted to this new hobby.

Soon after that, I started reading, video watching, reading, more video watching of anything and everything that related to pedal building I could find. I knew that I didn't want to buy "kits" anymore and wanted to source the parts myself. I ended up building a RAT & Fuzz Face from Synthrotek, as well as a EA Tremolo from GPBC, stocked up on components, PCBs, etc. All pedals worked on first launch, and haven't really had any trouble besides realizing that I soldered the wrong "X" to "X" right after I soldered them because I was rushing and not paying enough attention.

So now I am finishing up the Nautilus (waiting on some trim pots) and I am hoping that it works on first launch. This was obviously my most complex build so far but everything seem to go smooth.

My question is (if you even made it through all this rambling) is .....this just luck that I haven't had any issues up to this point or is having pedal build issues more rare than I thought? Are most pedal issues bad components? And if so, is it pretty common to get bad components?

Personal stories welcome

(Promise future post will be shorter!)


Thanks!