💖 Stay Alive ✨ Top Five of '25 💖

[Guardians of the analog]

I didn't build much this year, only a handful of things. Number one with a bullet is my Feral Cheryl, Dirty Shirley amp build.


The rest in order would be:
2-my narrow box 808 build from @szukalski

3-my phase 45 build from @blackhatboojum

4-my phase 90 build from @bean
5-my CH-1 build from @dan.schumaker

 

[VanWhy]

PedalPCB did release some killer boards this year. This is my top 5 PPCB of boards released in 2025 that I've built. (In no order)

5. Eight Ball Overdrive. I think Marshall did a nice job with their latest offering of emulation pedals. I really liked the Eight Ball and the Article 59. Did not like Nine Ball at all. Looking forward to the other boards when they are released.
4. NOTADOOMER. This one is a doom fuzz machine. Probably can get away with making it a one knobber but having the extra controls are handy.
3. Silica Fuzz. This one went under the radar for a lot of folks. Not just another fuzz face but very cool take from Robert. Sounds very very good for a FF.
2. Playground Fuzz. Really just another Tone Bender MKII. But, I got a bunch of solid PNP Ge transistors in and was able to get it sounding really good. Was not expecting much but was happy with the results.
1. Nein Fuzz. This one is very different. Very nice use of JFETs to get OD up to aggressive distortion. But still smooth.

I highly recommend all these one. I also like the Liquid Crystal Fuzz if I had to pick a 6th.

Top 5 worst boards are all the Mr. Black circuits. Just boring and unimaginative. Plus he sucks.

 

[drgonzo1969]

Top 5 worst boards are all the Mr. Black circuits. Just boring and unimaginative. Plus he sucks.

I hope you picked up all the Mr. Black pcbs during one of Roberts spite sales at least. I think he was selling them for fiddy cents a pop last time.

 

[Noodles]

Five that landed on my pedalboard:

Aion Quartz comp
Aion Skywave drive (need to make another - gave to kiddo)
PPCB Fuzz Foundry (this rips for the “new” band)
PPCB D3lay
PPCB Moonshot trem

The objective this year was to replace my commercial pedals with home built. I just have the Julia to replace with a Caesar. It’s half done…as is the DM3 that got a lot of votes.

 

[Cybercow]

Kewpie Fuzz; Creamery Compressor; Seahorse; NuTube Screamer & Friendly Fire Fuzz . . . .

 

[Rpschultz13]

I built 2 pedals this year and they both sucked.

I've built many dozens of pedals over the years, but about 10-20% of them just don't work. Troubleshooting takes so much time, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't want to mess with it and just move on to the next project.

 

[LukeFRC]

I think I made about 5 things so in order…

5. I tried to mash together the broughton HPF/LPF in a loop of the skeptical buffer. It worked but wasn’t great at all. There’s better ways to mess up your impedances.

4. Skeptical buffer. If you want to know what your bass/guitar sounds like with a 3M impedance and a few eq tweaks - this is the buffer for you!! Made it for someone else so didnt cost me anything to try.

3. PPCB frequency interchange - was it this year or last? A really really nice sounding start of your signal chain really good if you play bass.

2. Low tide mini. Made a year or two ago but with the wrong size power Jack. When fixing this year I tried to track down the distortion noise - fixed it sounds waaay better. Also bought a guitar and it’s great on guitar in ways it’s not on bass.

1. My own version of the prunes and custard. Top jacks in a m45 (1590a) enclosure - so good I made 10 and sold the rest which was an experience I don’t really want to repeat. Pedal sounded greeeeat though.

 

[Feral Feline]

Oooh tell me more bout the P&C version of yours!

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Oooh tell me more bout the P&C version of yours!

 

[EisengesisFX]

Count me as interested as well, @mckillacuddy.

 

[jcpst]

1. My own version of the prunes and custard. Top jacks in a m45 (1590a) enclosure - so good I made 10 and sold the rest which was an experience I don’t really want to repeat. Pedal sounded greeeeat though.

More details please.

 

[LukeFRC]

Oooh tell me more bout the P&C version of yours!

Pretty sure I shared these in the “YOUR workbench” thread. Challenge was can you make it in one of these tiny gorva enclosure s - yes is thr answer.
I made a batch of 6 early 2025 - and then the power socket went out of production and took a while to find a good supplier for one (didnt want to trust the cheap Tayda ones). Then a Canadian fella wanted to buy one while his mum was on holiday so he got mine and I made another 4 , I think I had some 3pdt switches made up by then- of course when you have them in testing it’s worth trying more than one …

 

[LukeFRC]

Mine has the green chase bliss style knobs!