ilovefuzz.com

So, I'm a total n00b when it comes to anything even remotely related to building pedals or any electronics.
The more and more I look into pedals and stuff the more and more interesting it all seems.
A friend of mine also recently built an suped up Fender Champ and it sounds AWESOME. He's using it more than his other amp lately and his other amp is a '79 Marshall Super Lead Mark II.
So if I run into trouble I could ask him for help I guess.

BASICALLY, what got you guys into building and or modding pedals?
Where did you start? Where should I start?
Is there anything I really need to know before I look into this more.
Keep in mind I know nothing. I mean absolutely nothing.

I thought I'd ask you guys over here because you seem like a pretty friendly bunch and there's a bunch of builders on here.
Any help would be appreciated.

There's two parts to building pedals. There's the skill of physically building and the knowledge of the electronics themselves.

You can learn to physically build pedals by building pedal kits, or doing clones based on schematics. There's a ton of resources for that sort of thing. The most important will be your soldering ability. Don't worry, it's not that hard to solder well enough to make things work.

Knowing what the components do is a bit more complicated. Unfortunately, you'll have to just learn it. Best way is to google. Wanna know how transistors work? Google "Transistor", and go nuts. Same with resistors, capacitors, etc. The most dumbed-down sites are places like howstuffworks.com. Wikipedia can be a great resource as well, but very hard to understand at first. It gets a bit technical.

http://www.beavisaudio.com <-- absorb this site. The tech section is GREAT. It has a great tutorial on soldering, as well as a few pages on how some parts work in pedal circuits.

I'm thinking there should be a "How stuff works-- stompbox edition" thread here. Like the DIY info thread. Or maybe just a series of posts in that thread?

One of my favourite sites, that I've never seen linked, is http://www.allaboutcircuits.com . It has nothing to do with pedals. It's all about the individual components and how they function. it cleared up a lot of mysteries for me. Most pedal-based sites don't explain what's really happening, just what happens to the sound.


That's basically how I did. Research, trial and error, etc. Maybe not what you wanted, but there ya go. I'll be glad to maybe help explain some simple circuits to the best of my knowledge if it helps you out. Just let me know what you're interested in.

I got into building because I heard it gets you laid. I started with a BYOC fuzz face kit back when they.were more than just solder by numbers, not that there's anything wrong with that. Like Spunk said, there are the building skills and then there are is the electronics knowledgr. The latter came over time with much reading, tinkering, and asking questions.

i got into it because i wanted my rhodes and other electro-mechanical (note - NON-MIDI) keyboards to sound like my bloody valentine and/or boards of canada live. i couldn't find any pedals that got me there and decided that i would teach myself and eventually figure out how to build my own...

hmmm i still can't really get that exact sound, but i've gotten a whole lot closer (pretty damn close!) and found something of my own that i'm quite content with!

Thanks guys.
I just found out my new teacher is really into modding stuff so I will just ask him for some help and then take it from there.