Where are you at in your pedal building journey?

Big Monk said:
One of the things about building commercially that I've found works for me is the designing, revising and engineering the pedals. That was always my favorite part and it has greater focus in this arena.

Building then becomes the sort of chore it's supposed to be but I can even enjoy that a little more because I get to do the design part more and assembly line building takes on a fun of it's own.
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I don't wanna learn layouts, sit behind a computer, I don't wanna do enclosure design, order parts or solder components. I'm content with my rig. I have my tone. I'm the last person Robert wants on this forum 😂 I am the embodiment of the diy grim reaper 🤡🤡🤡
 
I jumped into building in 2020 and have mostly done PPCB builds, with a few others thrown in. I started building clones of stuff I saw in stores and couldn’t afford, and eventually started selling the ones I didn’t totally fall in love with.

A couple years ago I decided to make a circuit of my own for mass production. I analyzed the circuits I loved the most and tried my hand at designing the pedal I wish I’d had when I was in high school in the late ‘90s (a darker time which required a lot of compromises in sound).

Two years later I now have a name, an artwork design, a BOM, and PCB files ready for fabrication just in time for this tariff bullshit. I even have a couple of guitar shops interested in carrying it, but until prices come down I’m in a holding pattern. A new golden age, indeed.
 
Bro, maybe you're just bored because you only build boring Boss pedals? :ROFLMAO:

jk - I'm sure in 9 years you've covered all the bases. I've just been around for the last couple during your epic final Boss of Boss phase.

I'm in the sweet spot where there's still tons of cool stuff I haven't messed with. Pedals disappearing into the hands of friends and family is also a big driver of pedal building for me, not just building out my personal tone library. That, and I just like building stuff.

Reading about your experience made me nervous for a minute that I'd eventually build everything worth building and have nothing cool left to do, but then I see folks here making PCBs out of wood and melting down beercans to cast their own enclosures, and it seems like even if the work is gonna get weirder, there will always be something to do.
 
Erik S said:
Bro, maybe you're just bored because you only build boring Boss pedals? :ROFLMAO:

jk - I'm sure in 9 years you've covered all the bases. I've just been around for the last couple during your epic final Boss of Boss phase.

I'm in the sweet spot where there's still tons of cool stuff I haven't messed with. Pedals disappearing into the hands of friends and family is also a big driver of pedal building for me, not just building out my personal tone library. That, and I just like building stuff.

Reading about your experience made me nervous for a minute that I'd eventually build everything worth building and have nothing cool left to do, but then I see folks here making PCBs out of wood and melting down beercans to cast their own enclosures, and it seems like even if the work is gonna get weirder, there will always be something to do.
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There is a point of diminishing returns in any hobby. I actually thought about selling everything and just looking for vintage examples of the pedals on my board. A hard pill for me to swallow has been that I don't actually really like using pedals that much. I like using them here and there but 90% of my playing is guitar into amp. I didn't have the amp I really wanted for years so I chase the sound in my head with pedals.
 
Guardians of the analog said:
There is a point of diminishing returns in any hobby. I actually thought about selling everything and just looking for vintage examples of the pedals on my board. A hard pill for me to swallow has been that I don't actually really like using pedals that much. I like using them here and there but 90% of my playing is guitar into amp. I didn't have the amp I really wanted for years so I chase the sound in my head with pedals.
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Guitar into amp you say? You sir need a Deliverance. And guess what? I have PCBs left over!
 
giovanni said:
I’m probably going through a midlife crisis, but I would love to abandon my current career (as software engineer) and make a hard turn into music. How, you ask? I wish I knew! I’ll let you
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After college, I was a musician and recording engineer for 7 years before I pivoted to software.

Some days I miss it. Most days I don’t. I know, the grass is always greener, etc

Making ends meet was not assured. I have more time to work on my own music now than I did when I was in a professional studio all day, working on other people’s music.
 
My first pedal build was the "Large Beaver" (Big Muff clone) from Build Your Own Clone (BYOC), back in June, 2019, so I'm six years into the hobby! As soon as I built that pedal, I wanted all my pedals to be DIY. At the time I wasn't confident enough to tackle PCB-only builds, and limited myself to kit builds from BYOC and Aion.

If I remember correctly, my first PCB-only build was the Aion Quantum (Ibanez MT-10 Mostortion), which was a year later, in June, 2020. (They've since started offering a full kit for this circuit.)

If you look at my build reports, most of my builds are overwhelmingly overdrive/distortion. I play in "parent" bands, often doing shorter sets with other similar bands, so sometimes find myself using a random backline amp. So getting "my sound" necessarily requires pedals, as I can't always count on having a certain amp. So all these years I've been searching for a couple drives that can cover a lot of ground, work well both at home and in a band mix, and have enough flexibility to be viable with different amps and guitars. And of course sound good to my ears! I think I'm finally getting close to having found what I want... or maybe build-test-audition fatigue is setting in.

Along the way, I got interested in bypass schemes. I think I started with Madbean's "Softie" relay bypass, then did a few builds with PedalPCB's relay bypass designs. That sent me down a rabbit hole, where I created several bypass designs. First using a microcontroller, then Schmitt-trigger hex inverters, and most recently, I've gone to buffered electrical bypass (similar to the scheme used by most Boss pedals).

I've definitely slowed down buying pre-made PCBs, as I'm now trending towards creating my own PCBs. I'm not really designing actual circuits, mostly just integrating known-good circuits with my bypass scheme.

I feel I have a decent basic understanding of how these circuits work. I can follow most schematics, and have seen enough to say "that's a YATS" or "that's a Baxandall tone stack". I can identify basic functionality enough to make minor tweaks here and there. But I'm a long ways away from having a true depth of knowledge like some folks around here. I'd like to get there, because I have some ideas I'd like to explore, and actually create my own truly custom circuit.

I keep putting it off, but I really need to get into breadboarding circuits. I've so far only done this with really rudimentary circuits that can be tested in isolation. I also need to learn to use circuit analysis tools like LTSpice.

All this to say, I think I'm slowing down in terms of paint-by-numbers building of pedals, but increasingly spending more time on the engineering side of things (though "engineering" is really too generous of a word for what I'm doing).

I've also noticed - when I go on long stretches of time where I'm not constantly messing with pedals, and actually playing/practicing the guitar, my playing does improve. Maybe there's something to this whole "tone is in the fingers" thing!
 
jcpst said:
After college, I was a musician and recording engineer for 7 years before I pivoted to software.

Some days I miss it. Most days I don’t. I know, the grass is always greener, etc

Making ends meet was not assured. I have more time to work on my own music now than I did when I was in a professional studio all day, working on other people’s music.
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Boy howdy.

Yeah, my own path is not too dissimilar.

Except...yeah, after high school I spent the next near decade working on community college, doing odd jobs, and eventually playing bass with a local metal band that had a reasonably good following.

Touring, playing shows was great...but it took a toll. And while I was in the band we didn't even go outside of California.

Then, I drew a girl like one of my french sticks, decided to get all serious about finding a career, got into HVAC cause her dad was in the union. So I got in the union, the girl left, and I kept doing HVAC out of spite.

Now...here I am. Over a decade after all that. The money has allowed me a level of financial security, at the expense of a terrible sleep schedule and perpetual exhaustion. Though I did find Stickwife through all that. And she is wonderful.

But man...I miss playing live. I miss how I was a good 50 pounds lighter back then. I miss having a crowd go nuts and punching the stage from sheer exuberance during a good show.

But I don't miss my guitar players farts after a night of del taco and four loco. Chemical goddamned weapon.
 
For personal use, I think I'm pretty much done building stuff outside of the random utility or curiosity box. Basically just been building on commission the last few months, most of it not interesting enough to post reports on.

I did meet a local gearfiend that keeps putting wacky ideas in my head that I feel compelled to build, so I'll hopefully start showing those off soon. Trying to get him to do some demo tracks with it- he's got a fucked up Neil Young meets Isaac Brock playing bluegrass thing going on that shows off sides of gear that my caveman noise punk never could
 
Guardians of the analog said:
I don't wanna learn layouts, sit behind a computer, I don't wanna do enclosure design, order parts or solder components. I'm content with my rig. I have my tone.
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If your brain is wired such, the layout thing can be better than the building!

I love that you got to your place. I think I already got there, a JTM45 and not much more. A nice boost or grit and we're ready to go! Tone wise, I don't think I can get better and I don't want to (but I do want to fix my head and get the tone back).

The DIY landscape has so many awesome things going for it as a hobby. Orderly or creative types can build works of art, you can collect them all, you can roll your own, or just sit in awe of others journeys (the irony being that the more experienced don't share theirs as often, but c'est la vie).

I like pedals, I think they're neat. I love making tones with them, even if they're not my dream. Even better, I like doing finding what I think is worth keeping and creating layouts so others can enjoy them. Now, just the question of time to do this..
 
szukalski said:
If your brain is wired such, the layout thing can be better than the building!

I love that you got to your place. I think I already got there, a JTM45 and not much more. A nice boost or grit and we're ready to go! Tone wise, I don't think I can get better and I don't want to (but I do want to fix my head and get the tone back).

The DIY landscape has so many awesome things going for it as a hobby. Orderly or creative types can build works of art, you can collect them all, you can roll your own, or just sit in awe of others journeys (the irony being that the more experienced don't share theirs as often, but c'est la vie).

I like pedals, I think they're neat. I love making tones with them, even if they're not my dream. Even better, I like doing finding what I think is worth keeping and creating layouts so others can enjoy them. Now, just the question of time to do this..
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The rabbit hole definitely turns into a bigger labyrinth than one expects, it’s easy to lose focus get lost and even forget why I started or remember exactly which way I came from, don’t get me wrong it’s been a lot of fun, but after ending up back in the same place a few times I started missing “home” and wondering how much more is there I want to explore.
 
jcpst said:
After college, I was a musician and recording engineer for 7 years before I pivoted
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That was basically my plan. I realized music was my calling, so I was majoring in music performance and minoring in audio production with the plan to work in a studio until I got a record contract and got rich and famous.

Then one day I woke up and said "I need to change schools and change majors," so I did that.
 
I too went to school for recording engineering.

Back when day rates ranged from $300 to $500, it was solid money. I wasn’t booked every day, but it was enough to make a living. On the side was part of a couple reviews for Recording Magazine, when it was still a thing. All said, good times.

Then the economy took a hit, and home studios started rising in popularity.

With rates dropping to $100 a day and bookings cut in half, I had to get a real job.


jcpst said:
After college, I was a musician and recording engineer for 7 years before I pivoted to software.

Some days I miss it. Most days I don’t. I know, the grass is always greener, etc

Making ends meet was not assured. I have more time to work on my own music now than I did when I was in a professional studio all day, working on other people’s music.
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My pedal journey has kinda stalled this past month. My wife was on break from school, so I took the time to just hang out with her.

She started back up this week, so I know I’ll be diving back in soon.

Really gotta find the motivation to finish—or finally start—the Wampler course. Been wanting to mess around with breadboarding for a while now!
 
Lately I've slowed down a lot on my building, or have been primarily only building when I get a specific build request or commission from someone. I still feel a desire to build, and have lots of different ideas and things I'd like to put together, I just find myself with less energy to put towards building when I actually have free time.

If I've got time to myself, I'd rather just play guitar or work on doing some fun little home recording type stuff than building. I'm hoping to get a little more steam back once the school year ends (I'm a high school teacher by day, and summer break starts June 12th). Slowing down has also kind of forced me to confront my GAS head on. It's always fun to just like, buy more stuff and have shiny new things to fiddle with (and then put down after a day or two), but I recently came to the realization that I was just buying things and not actually putting them to use. Now if I have an inkling to get a new pedal or something like that it has to pass the "can it do something drastically different from what I'm able to do with what I already have?" test. 99% of the time the answer to that question is "No"
 
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