DIY Info Collection.

[Scruffie]

Well alot of the books on Amazon go for stupid amounts of money, there was a thread on here with some downloadable E books if you can find it, but i'l add a list of the Popular books a bit later.

Regards the theory, the books are pretty good for that sorta stuff, Geofex which is listed in the links has lots of information on it if you search for it, it's difficult to find a begginer level of theory the best way I found was to jump in and start messing about with circuits and then it begins to come to you and then you begin to understand the information that seemed to make no sense before.

The simplest sort of mods that can transfer to alot of things will be changing the type of diodes in a circuit for a different type of clipping (e.g. changing the 1N4148 diodes to 3mm Red LEDs in a Proco Rat will make it louder with a more compressed sound) changing the chips/ transistors in circuits for different ones.

The best thing to do is buy a breadboard, build a circuit and alter all the values and see what differences it makes, you'll learn alot faster doing in electronics than reading i'd say but i'l try and add some info on this sort of reading later.

[Carl_Hungus]

Gotcha. Do you agree with Beavis then that kits are the best way to start getting your hands dirty, assuming you don't have any pedals you want to risk trashing? Or is it better to buy some cheap Bosses and start modding first?
Thanks again man.

[Scruffie]

Interesting question about modding... I wouldn't start with a Boss as alot of them are quite complex inside, I think a good thing to buy would be a cheap tube screamer clone, there are alot out there and they're very easy to mod with plenty of info on doing it.

The Beavis Board is very good though and there are alot of circuits to try, you can have it cheaper if you want to source the stuff yourself and build it up but it's certainly a useful tool, modding a pedal that already works could be easier or harder really, I think i'd have to reccomend the Beavis board as there is no initial soldering required, the circuits are already layed out for you and have mod information and it's very easy to correct mistakes also and to mod a pre built pcb you're gunna have to be careful with your soldering.

Also if you mod a pre built pedal, you're gunna have trouble changing parts easily unless you socket them so you're not going to know what's going to sound good to you, going straight off online mods could result in a pedal you don't like.

If you get some protoboard or veroboard though you can quickly practice your soldering and get the hang of it and then modding your own pedals can be very rewarding and done extremley cheaply, then you can start making those mods switchable and trying your own mods, to try your own mods though it'd be best to build the circuit on breadboard for ease of component swapping anyway.

I hope that makes sense, but breadboard is my overall reccomendation, I see you're located in the U.K a good supplier of components is www.bitsbox.co.uk they stock all the basic guitar pedal electronics and gear you'll need to get started and do lots of value packs for building up your supply of stuff for breadboard experimentation etc.

[Carl_Hungus]

You're a king, Scruffie.
Thanks yet again for the info. Especially ofr the supplier in the UK, I was wondering about those. I think Banzai Musical probably ships here as well.

[Scruffie]

You're a king, Scruffie.
Thanks yet again for the info. Especially ofr the supplier in the UK, I was wondering about those. I think Banzai Musical probably ships here as well.

Banzai do but I hear bad things, apparently it can take up to 3 weeks for delivery, the prices are high and they miss alot of stuff out and don't reply to emails, that is only what i've heard though.

Futurlec will ship to the U.K I just got an order from them it took 2 weeks (comes from asia) but the prices are very cheap and it's only $4 shipping for smaller orders.

Other U.K suppliers include maplin & rapid but they have high prices and high postage charges (unless you live near a maplins) as do mouser and farnell (both of whom have hard to navigate sites)

And as you're in London you might be able to get to Cricklewood electronics, they have a good stock of some harder to come by parts.

[kosta]

Just chiming in to say thanks to you Scruffie. This is all great stuff. I'm hoping to start building some projects soon. Very excited about all of this. Thanks for all of the info so far.

[Carl_Hungus]

Scruffie,

Have you gotten a Beavis Board sent to you here in the UK, or any of the kits they recommend, by any chance? Just wondering how it all went with customs, or if there is a UK equivalent. Would really like the Beavis Board, but haven't been able to reach them.

cheers!

[Scruffie]

Scruffie,

Have you gotten a Beavis Board sent to you here in the UK, or any of the kits they recommend, by any chance? Just wondering how it all went with customs, or if there is a UK equivalent. Would really like the Beavis Board, but haven't been able to reach them.

cheers!

No I haven't had one sent, reason being is if you take the time, it can be cheaper to assemble something simmilar yourself.

However when i've ordered from abroad, customs have never gotten involved in about 10 times even when I had an entire guitar body shipped from the U.S. (doesn't mean it can't happen though I suppose)

If you were to assemble something yourself (which can be done easily with the info on Beavis site) go to the bitsbox site I linked, grab 2 breadboards, a bitsbox, a multi resistor, cap & trani pack a few jacks... a plank of wood to mount on... you get the idea.

If you want cheaper parts than bitsbox i've found www.futurlec.com to have very cheap parts and cheap U.K shipping and mutli packs available.

If you want ease though, people from other countries have ordered the Beavis board so i'm sure it'll be fine and I wouldn't worry too much about customs, can't cost that much anyway if it is charged.

[elbandito]

this needs to be sticky'd.

[nbabmf]

I have a Facebook group called "I love the smell of solder in the morning"

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=inf ... 7752242282

[Nychthemeron]

Something that I've never understood is how different chips work. I know that the PT2399 is good for delay and pitch modulation, but I don't understand why circuits work the way they do. How do you know when you're making a delay where you should put a pot for delay time and what value it should be. Do you just have to experiment mostly, or is it easier?

Then again, I still have no experience building circuits, so I may just sound like a complete moron right now.

[Scruffie]

Something that I've never understood is how different chips work. I know that the PT2399 is good for delay and pitch modulation, but I don't understand why circuits work the way they do. How do you know when you're making a delay where you should put a pot for delay time and what value it should be. Do you just have to experiment mostly, or is it easier?

Then again, I still have no experience building circuits, so I may just sound like a complete moron right now.

It's an interesting point and I know what you mean, you can go through life without knowing those things though and still get on fine, it takes many years of learning to actually understand what's going on inside them as far as I know... something I haven't personally done, I prefer to learn through experience.

With something like the PT2399 which is a digital chip, the datasheet basically tells you the basic design (which it needs to function) and then you take it from there.

For chips all you need to know is the datasheet then you can add things around it to make it more desiriable to your needs, the datasheet will tell you the function of the chip, looking at the PT2399 it tells us, the chip is designed for Echo/Delay and what not, perhaps I want it to sound more analogue so perhaps i'll add some high or low pass filtering to voice it that way.

So without learning... it's a paint by numbers system, experiment, see what happens, look at how other designs implement something, look at ways of doing what you invision adding to the sound, learn the theories & terminologies then get your breadboard out and try!

[elbandito]

I found a very clear and concise step-by-step tutorial on soldering perf boards. Nice pics!
http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/SolderingAPerfBoard

[Scruffie]

I found a very clear and concise step-by-step tutorial on soldering perf boards. Nice pics!
http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/SolderingAPerfBoard

Smooth , forgot about updating this, added that link to the main post and i'll try and get some more info on here (i'll add vero tutorials, and making layouts tommorow)... anything anyone feels is particularly missing or they'd like to see?

[moose23]

Just to chime, I've never had a problem with Banzai, generally does take about a week to be shipped. In the UK bitsbox and rapidonline are both worth a look. Rapid do free shipping to mainland uk too which is great. There's also musikding and uk-electronic who both sell really good value kits as well as plenty of components. I'd generally start with rapid for most components and then banzai or one of the others for more specialised pedal stuff.

https://www.rapidonline.com/
http://www.bitsbox.co.uk/
http://www.musikding.de/
http://uk-electronic.de/

Some reading materials:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24053844/basic-Audio

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15818874/Valve-Amplifiers-Third-Edition

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15887683/Morgan-Jones-Building-Valve-Amplifier

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15887683/Morgan-Jones-Building-Valve-Amplifier

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19400164/Mullard-Circuits-for-Audio-Amplifiers

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14830016/Analog-Electronics-Second-Edition

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25188476/The-Art-of-Electronics