Cranky old whiner about the good ol days of diy pedals

tolstokes

tolstokes

Member
I built pedals for 15 years as a hobbyist and dipped my toe into semi professional. That scared me off and I took a 10 year break. A friend asked me to assemble some kits for him so here I am. I built over 1000 pedals. I started out modding with the IndyguitaristCD(Wampler). Then I tried Perf, BYOC, GGG, Tonepad, Rullywow, GrindCustomsFx, Madbean, GuitarPCB, 1776fx, Aion, FuzzDog. I even soldered semi-professionally for Chamber of Sounds for 5 years.

I have modified a few tube amps and even assembled a VibroChamp clone! I did not enjoy it. All that wiring is not my favorite.

My neighbor asked me to assemble some Aion kits for him. I knew how quickly those go together so I was cool with it. Turns out one was an Aion kit. The other two were from guitar electronics dot eu. These were very frustrating. Especially the univibe clone. I was always scared off by the univibe because of the complexity. The enclosure was too small and not going to work. I ordered a predrilled Brutalist enclosure from Smallbear that worked perfectly. I decided to order some parts to build a reverb, trem, and echo while I was there. I was devastated to see the prices and lack of choice for parts! I PIF'd my parts stash long ago and boy does that sting. I had so many dual opamps I was stacking them for fun to corksniff the nuances. Now a single opamp is so expensive. On top of that, there is no guarantee of quality!

I tip my hat to you noobs and those who stuck with it. I have met many of the younger generation who give me hope for the future. I think it's their turn. Time to get the dinosaurs out. Unless you're ready to pass on knowledge and skills to the inheriters of this scorched shitball.

Back in Tucson, I begged the only amp tech in town to pass on his knowledge to me. He was not interested. Cranky old bastard. I'm a cranky old bastard too but I'd love to spend time with a young'un teaching them my soldering and wiring techniques. I wish I had more to give. I should see a need and fill a need somewhere...

Thanks for your patience with a grump.
 
How's your meme game?
You're gonna need it around here eventually, either to join in on the fun or as a method of self preservation. Red pill, blue pill...
In all(more) seriousness, welcome back to the fold of lead fingered opinionated bastards.
 
🍿just waiting for stickman..

I'd probably not consider attempting to professionally peddle pedals given the world is going to **** and you're now competing for components with people wanting to kill other people for kicks and giggles.

On the serious side, the death of global trade is on the horizon, and it seems everyone is out to shaft you with knockoffs. Which makes it a ball ache (and then with Mouser etc thinking your going to resell it to some dodgy dark part of the globe).

I have a number of high tech electronics projects that have been shelved for the interim.

Thus ends the sanitised torrent of bile and vitriol of a grumpy old man, displaced by AI, rejected by the AI hiring algorithms looking for young naive people and not 30+ years of experience of getting it right the first time.
 
jwin615 said:
How's your meme game?
You're gonna need it around here eventually, either to join in on the fun or as a method of self preservation. Red pill, blue pill...
In all(more) seriousness, welcome back to the fold of lead fingered opinionated bastards.
Click to expand...
My meme game is "totally weak. I couldn't possibly fight you"....
 
Welcome Tolstokes.

I'm a grumpy ol' #$%^&*, but still a nieub to this noise-circuit game (a long-time nieub).


I look forward to your tutelage and inspirations...
 
Welcome. As a cranky old geezer I've downsized my workspace to nothing and instead spend my Saturdays fixing other people's problems at one of the few remaining mom and pop music stores in the Chicago suburbs.

Sometimes I have time to toss together something new. It's rare but I enjoy it that much more too.
 
I've been wanting to vent my nostalgia for a while so here goes:
I remember when the only pots Tayda had were split shaft and they only carried one type of knob that would fit them. Back then I also ordered from somewhere called Futurelec and bought parts in person from Radio Shack and Fry's Electronics. Some of the stuff I bought back then is still in my parts bin. I miss Fry's a lot, that was where I bought my Hakko soldering iron.

Tayda kept getting better and better, but eventually I took a break for a while. They started offering pre-drilled enclosures and improved their parts selection and I made a couple orders again in modern times. But then shipping got expensive so now I'm just trying to use up what I have. Half of the stuff I've ever ordered from Mouser is EOL which is a weird feeling. Anyone ever heard of a LM4780? I still have one sealed lol. And some LM3886s too.

I originally got into this hobby because of the Noisy Cricket but then I went straight to building GainClone style stereos. I feel old now LOL.
 
Yeah! I spent a lot of time with radio shack as a last resort when I was missing something. In Tucson we had Elliot Electronics. They have some decent supply. I never got to check out Fry's Electronics. These are some builds on Radio Shack perf. Like 20 years ago!!
 

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Here's my first build. A true bypass loop. Check out the burnt wire. Rats nest. Lousy soldering. Oof.
 

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My 2nd build. LoFi Filter. Lousy wire management... File says 2006 but I thought it was 2003...
 

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My ears are on fire.

See, the thing about pedal building is that it's kinda like eating a bowl of ice cream.

You really fucking chow on that bowl of ice cream. It's delicious. And it's like, goddamn, this shit is tasty, ooohhhh fuck yeah, get in my mouth you delectable bitch.

But then, when you're done, you have ice cream in your belly. And the lactose wreaks havok on your intestines. And you're a little older and might have soiled your pants a little. And then some fucking doctor tells you to not eat so much ice cream and you have to shout at them 'FUCK YOU YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD', which makes you realize that the walls are not well insulated cause even though you're perfectly calm and pleasant when you approach the desk to make a follow up appointment, the folks behind the desk give you strange looks and seem eager to get you to leave.

Now...imagine eating a big bowl of ice cream for a living. Relying on that for your income. Perhaps in a semi-professional setting. Regardless of what folks in positions of authority tell you to do. Well, skipper, that makes you captain of the HMS Awesome in my book.

But remember...anybody can eat ice cream for a living. Except the diabetic. That would probably be an issue. But that's the thing: it's relatively easy to do. All you need is to, like, follow instructions and copy what's been done before. Sorta. Sure...you might eat your ice cream with a special kind of flair, but ice cream eaters are like comedians: they'll never unionize. Because they're all scabs. Shoot, some suckers will pay people to let them eat ice cream, which makes the game a little less capable of sustaining a living income for an individual. Let alone a family of four.

Plus, ya get all the people who get all starry-eyed, thinking about the glamorous ice-cream eating lifestyle, where no asshole boss is shouting at you about things that you have no control over and making it out to be your fault. And all that delicious ice cream.

But the reality is that...well...come on man. Did ya actually believe that you were gonna be able to compete in this cutthroat world of devouring ice cream? Nah man. This is America. You're supposed to be laboring into your winter years, hustling for every dollar, and working *for* someone that is implied to be better than you (because they have more money), who acquired that money by paying people like us far less than what our labor is actually worth. That ice cream eating dream is just the thing that they sell us as "maybe possible if ya just work hard enough at it" so we don't wise up and revolt.

It's possible, sure. Less so now, but success really depends on being a certain kind of person with a certain skill set at a certain point in their lives with a certain amount of free time and freedom from other pressing responsibilities.

Who the fuck is able to make a living eating ice cream, you might ask? I dunno. The words "only fans" come to mind.

But, I'm a proponent of dealing with the world as it is, rather than what we wish it was. And sometimes, you just gotta accept that you're gonna have to pay for the ice cream that you eat, and the eating will have to be its own reward.
 
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We moved from Tucson to SoCal. I used to think I was a "deal with the world as it is" while having idealistic dreams kind of person. I just can't figure LA out. It's insane. I meet some.of the nicest, down to earth folks. Then I get in a car or go to a park or the beach and can't believe my eyes.
 
People come in all kinds.

I'm from the SF Bay area myself. It's a strange place to have grown up and lived my whole life.

I try to keep in mind that...well...I have no idea what is going on in anybody else's life at any given point in time. No window into what struggles they've faced. No crystal ball that explains why there some folks are just...well...

Its something about the way our brains are wired. We see folks that carry on in ways utterly unlike the way that we carry on, and our brains are basically default-coded to think "huh. Better keep my eye on that one. Could be a threat."

And shoot, sometimes that's right. Most of the time them folks be harmless, but that *sometimes* digs into our brains and can easily lead one down a road where all who behave in similar manners are equally guilty.

It's like...folks that drive down the road with their windows wide open, blasting overpowered stereo systems so that everybody else has to listen to their music too. It's inconsiderate. It's rude. It's fucking annoying, but that's the only aspect of that individual that we get to see. Shoot, dude might be the sole caretaker for his elderly grandmother whom he loves and has a wonderful relationship with.

Most folks have redeeming qualities. Most folks aren't completely dumb either, they're just operating in their own context. And lots of folks are going to change over the course of their lives. I used to be the guy who blasted death metal in his car when he drove around with the windows open. I grew up and changed.

I honestly don't think we're really well suited to being able to understand all the different walks of life and experiences of all the different individuals that exist in this world. There's too many of us. Cities in particular have *lots* of little worlds that exist alongside others, sometimes purposefully cut off from one another.

I'm a construction worker. In terms of San Jose, Ca heirarchy...that puts me towards the low end of the middle on the totem pole. I make plenty in terms of take-home pay, but I'll still be treated like a second-class citizen by the temporarily embarrassed entrepreneur tech bros that inhabit this area.

Not all of them, mind you. But some folks are seemingly obsessed with creating and sustaining those heirarchies. Honestly, I think these little bubbles we put ourselves into just kinda alienate us from one another. When ya start saying "man, my bubble is so much better than those people's bubbles. Their bubble is full of trash people", well...historically speaking: genocide might be right around the corner.

So...yeah. I sometimes find myself tilting my head and going "huh". But I try to catch myself. Cause fuck it, I don't know anything about those people. Except that they're clearly reptiles in human skin from the alpha draconis system that will soon return to their homes in the hollow earth with the space Nazis. And if you disagree with me I will be outraged, blather about the firmament, and then speak at length about adrenochrome.
 
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