💖 Stay Alive ✨ Top Five of '25 💖

I made so few this year. The ones that stand out are the...

Drebbel Bass Preamp/EQ - works for every situation and can very quickly doctor my bass tone for any room. The boost switch isn't my bag. It's plenty loud already. But just about everything else has a time and place.

Kewpie Fuzz - pretty much stopped my obsession with making muff circuits. However I loaned it to someone pretty quick after building and never got it back. Easy come... easy go.

Deflector Reverb - one trick pony? I don't think so... I really like this when I'm playing in a big space getting some real room reverb. If I want a flavor change this does the trick and is tweakable enough to actually sound pretty subtle OR do the huge washy infinite space thing. Works well for ambient swells too.

I recently dusted off the iron and have lots of things in a partially built state. Hopefully 2026 is a bit more productive
 
I probably finished around 30-40 PCBs this year. As far as top 5 circuits? In no particular order, I will start with:

Chop Shop: Killer Overdrive. I only built it because everyone said it kicked ass. I haven't boxed mine up yet, but I knew it was a keeper the second I hit the first chord.

Dwarven Hammer: Another one I knew right away it was a keeper.

3-way splitter: Essential for running my rack effects in parallel.

Face Melter: This is the Steel Panther Pussy Melter. I don't care about steel panther, but I love melted pussy, and the pedal sounds good too!

Blackhat BTF Chorus (CE-2): I built several other chorus circuits this year but this one came out on top. Simple, straightforward lush chorus.
 
I haven't really kept track of what I built and when, so I compiled some notes so I could answer this. Looks like I built 37 pedals in 2023, 21 in 2024 and just 16 this year. That being said, I have played too little to really get a solid top 5 going on, but here are the standouts:

1.) Fuzzhead FX Stoner Bee: This one is definitely #1, I wrote a whole 3 song EP using just this. I can't say that it would be something everyone else would be blown away, but I really like it.

2.) & 3.) Kewpie + Mofeta: I technically finished the Kewpie on 2024, and I haven't played with them enough separately to say I'm blown away. But running the Kewpie into the Mofeta produces a really nice, thick fuzz that sounds like it's on the edge of blowing up.

4.) Going to put the Simple Relay SMD boards (by szukalski, based on Chuck's simple relay schematic I think) here. I've started using them more this year and they've been quite nice. The pedals sometimes are active on power up, but it's not a huge issue.

5.) Sasquatch II: Haven't had much time to play with this yet, but I quite like how it sounds with one germanium and one silicon transistor instead of the two germaniums the build doc says. Pleasantly surprised with it.

Honorary mentions go to the Two Tone Fuzz which I still need to audit more transistors for, and the Multiface + Octomix 2-in-1 pedal I made with an added LPF at the end.
 
Last year's
Lowtide - everytime I put this on, it just sings to me.
Uberdrive - my preferred clean boost
Kliche - decided I quite like the klon type, need to build another bass / unmodded at some point
Promethium - loving this with the high control at anything other than dimmed.

This year, I have built... ungula, chop shop, son of ben, duocast, abyss, desolate fuzz, sea horse, pitch witch, parentheses, skeptical buffer, cobalt, amentum, aft pre, kliche, antithesis fuzz, carcass, nein, frajeelay, creampie, muzzle, headphone amp, unicab, doxie pre, lowtide mini

I bought a bass and built frequency interchange, median, obsidius

From Aion I've built empheryean deluxe, heliodor, azure, maelstrom (as VMT).

And a Moonn dromtydning.

I'd say my 5 for this year would be;

Duocast - I reckon my most versatile dirt pedal, low gain, heavy fuzz, and with the 27v mode somewhere in between.
Nein fuzz - I have this set pretty high, I interchange it with the creampie on my bass and guitar boards.
Lowtide - still my favourite modulator for clean guitar
Creampie fuzz - never expected this to be so heavy for so few parts.
A toss up between empheryean deluxe and the maelstrom for bass preamps.

This thread always dangerous to my wishlist.
 
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I built a ton of pedals but didn't box too many up.

The few that really stood out were:
1. PPCB Tone Vendor
2. Chuck's Bass Klon
3. Mad Bean Charlatan
4. Lectric FX Altered State
5. Foxx Tone

My box of shame sits at about 30 pcbs (aka unboxed, completed pedals)
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