Expectation: High/Low…

I'm generally not so much disappointed with how a pedal build sounds as surprised if I really like it. I'll build a pedal in the hope that I'll like it, not with the expectation that I will. There are a few pedals where expectations are high but they are rarely met. I'm still waiting on a few parts for my Dr Robert pedal and I am really psyched about it - so if it's not amazing I will probably cry.

Pedals I have built and were surprised at how much I liked them would be maybe the Zen drive, Skreddy P19, Colorsound Supafuzz, BJF Honey Beest and Baby Blue OD... But in general my favourite ODs are a couple that Chuck helped me mod, and mod enough that they don't really sound like the original any more. In fact one of them became Chuck's Mojito. I have a modified Honey Beest which I like a lot (but don't use much) and a very modified Little Green Wonder which is wonderful.

The Friedman pedals I built amazed me by using tons of parts to sounds mediocre - My favourite ODs use about 1/4 of the parts.

So I have hundreds of pedals I don't use. Sometimes a friend will buy one and love it but for me it's something to do. Right now I'm actually spending a lot more time building amps and the cabinets to put them in - I have recently got a table saw which is fantastic!
 
SillyOctpuss said:
Now the ds1 is a pedal I've never been able to make work for me. I've played modern reissues and an old japanese one that a friend of mine thinks is the best distortion he's ever played and it's all a bit m'eh. I even built one on Aion's board and it just wasn't for me. In the end I gave it to my friend who loves his old japanese one and it sounds great... When he plays it.
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blackhatboojum said:
Word! Back in the 90’s, when I first started playing guitar, I thought the ds1 would make me sound like Kurt Cobain. It didn’t. 20 years later I revisited the ds1… still didn’t work for me.
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I think the secret to the DS-1 is in the amp. The pedal does not get along well unless the amp settings are right where it needs them to be. I like it as a x100 boost: tone at 11 o’clock, level max, distortion maxed. Add it on top of whatever else you have on.
 
Coda said:
I think the secret to the DS-1 is in the amp. The pedal does not get along well unless the amp settings are right where it needs them to be. I like it as a x100 boost: tone at 11 o’clock, level max, distortion maxed. Add it on top of whatever else you have on.
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In fairness I've never used one with a marshall but didn't gel with it at all into a fender deville or an ac30
 
danfrank said:
One more thing I'd like to add: The CD4050 works fine as a clock buffer in place of the CD4049. Or at least in the pedal projects I've made, like flangers, delays, etc.
One more thing I'll add too:
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Right, that is one case where the 4049 and 4050 are interchangeable because in that circuit, the absolute polarity of the clock signal doesn't matter. As long as both clocks are clean and opposite phase, it's good.

I thought I might have seen a datasheet for a buffered 4049 back in the day, but I sure as Hell can't find that datasheet now.
 
After the conversation in the other thread I scoured the Interwebzzz for a datasheet for the buffered 4049... well, you'd think there'd be at least one datasheet in the almighty Uniweb.

It may not be a pedal, but it's certainly germane to the thread — Definitely this chip has been my high-expectation that's fallen well below. 😹
 
I really thought that the Parenthesis would blow my top off… its ok? It makes anything go ‘CHUNNG’ and thats what i wanted, but I feel like the (stock) diode options aren’t doing much for me really. Part of that is that my regular bass/guitar rig is a Traynor TS140, which isnt a great ‘pedal platform’ amp, the high transients and harmonics are all squished. But it doesnt feel as versatile as a regular PPCB Rat, even when toned back; it feels like there’s three footswitches for one sound.

But I feel more like @HamishR when it comes to my general attitude towards most my builds, I expect to think its just going to be Ok or ‘good enough’ because I’m usually just happy if it fires up, but most of the time I’m super pleased with the results! I try to find a sound niche for each one even if they’re weird or goofy, so if someone asks for a particular sound in a session, i can make suggestions. I feel like if you dont have an ‘ideal tone’ you’re actively chasing, it kinda frees you to appreciate sounds and styles that you wouldn’t personally think of or choose. Its always fun seeing what other people come up with too
 
To me, the Life pedal is just a Green Ringer, a Rat and a SHO (none of which were designed by EQD) crammed into a box together. Unless you plan on using all three together, in that order, then what's the point? Seems like that pedal is more about marketing than music. The fact that people pay a premium for one is laughable. I'm sure there's a limerick in there somewhere.

The majority of the time, I breadboard a pedal before I build it. Cuts way down on the disappointment factor because I'm not all that invested when it's at the breadboard stage.
 
Chuck D. Bones said:
The majority of the time, I breadboard a pedal before I build it. Cuts way down on the disappointment factor because I'm not all that invested when it's at the breadboard stage.
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I really do need to take time and learn how to put an actual circuit onto a breadboard. I've really only ever used mine for utility purposes. I tend to use vero to prototype things because it's easy to work with and desoldering components I haven't socketed is a doddle.

I know using a breadboard would be quicker in the long run but I've just not invested enough time yet to get to that stage.
 
I built a Tonebender mk 3 quite a while back but was never quite happy with the external bias control I added back then, so I never actually finished it. Just today I plugged it into my circuit tester, and I’ve found that it’ll definitely need a good bit of tweaking— the tone knob is way too bright when CCW, fairly dull when fully CW, and has a honkey mid-resonance. I’m gonna see about other cap values to make the tone control more usable, especially since this is for bass. The gain knob also goes from FUZZY to FUZZIER, and lacks the more buzzy mid-gain MK3 tones that I’d usually expect, so I’ll have to poke around and see what’s going on there.
As far as the external bias control, I had just replaced the 10k resistor from the Q3 collector to -9v with a 10k pot in series with a 1k resistor. It’s a super subtle control and not what I wanted, so I’m planning to instead replace it with a variation on the Buzzaround balance control which will allow me to have the Voltage between the collector and emitter be anywhere between 0.8 and 8.2v, which should give me the range of tone I’m looking for, while keeping the expected ~4.5v at noon for a fairly stock 3-knob bender sound
 
Paradox916 said:
I had high hopes for the Tyrian (Revv G3) but it just wasn’t very lively..it felt to overly muffled and compressed, the eq didn’t seem to really come alive till after 2 o’clock... but as of recently I decided to crack it back open and revisit my work as this was one of my first builds just to see if I didn’t do something right... which is a strong possibility so I’m not counting it out quite yet.
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This was not my experience at all and this is one of my favorite pedals. The EQ is very responsive and it really comes alive if you can crank the volume up. Another tip is to lower the gain. It can get muffled with it up high. Compensate with volume and Mids.
 
Chuck D. Bones said:
To me, the Life pedal is just a Green Ringer, a Rat and a SHO (none of which were designed by EQD) crammed into a box together. Unless you plan on using all three together, in that order, then what's the point? Seems like that pedal is more about marketing than music. The fact that people pay a premium for one is laughable. I'm sure there's a limerick in there somewhere.
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I'm not going to rag on the Life Pedal because enough people have given me money (most of which ends up going back to pedalpcb) to build them a Parentheses and they've all been happy.

As for me, I am getting to be a bigger fan of doom/stoner music these days (still a newbie) but the Parentheses doesn't do it for me. I'm much more a fan of true fuzz circuits, and I have plans to try to build a Green Citrus or Holy Mountain for that Matamp sound. Maybe it will be the first "amp in a box" that I truly like. I may even breadboard it, but that seems like a lot of work... 🤪
 
ADAOCE said:
This was not my experience at all and this is one of my favorite pedals. The EQ is very responsive and it really comes alive if you can crank the volume up. Another tip is to lower the gain. It can get muffled with it up high. Compensate with volume and Mids.
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So I opened it up and found a few embarrassing mistakes one of which was not easily fixed ( I put a on/on switch instead of the on/off/on for some stupid reason... probably wasn’t paying attention and rushing.) but I managed to pull it off. It sounds a lot better now.... but I need to check a few more things in there, I go passed noon on the bass and it’s just too much. I’m also playing through an amp into a computer so maybe it’s just not jiving with my rig for some reason.
 
the Tyrian checks out, works good tried in up front of a couple amps, DI into my DSP tried all the tricks... I guess it sounds good but just feels soulless to me..(it’s better than most. )I really wanted to like this pedal And I tried.... I can only equate it to having sex with a hot chick that has no personality.... sure she had everything you think you want: big bottom, curvy mids, gets loud when you flick the switch and squeals and screams on command but in the end it’s just another box that’s not for me.🤣
 
quality_jones said:
I'm not going to rag on the Life Pedal because enough people have given me money (most of which ends up going back to pedalpcb) to build them a Parentheses and they've all been happy.

As for me, I am getting to be a bigger fan of doom/stoner music these days (still a newbie) but the Parentheses doesn't do it for me. I'm much more a fan of true fuzz circuits, and I have plans to try to build a Green Citrus or Holy Mountain for that Matamp sound. Maybe it will be the first "amp in a box" that I truly like. I may even breadboard it, but that seems like a lot of work... 🤪
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I actually like the Parentheses Fuzz. Granted, I chose the route of using a set of D9E NOS diodes, which does tend to smooth things out a bit with the clipping. Very Rat-like with those. Now, that said, I like it with the combination of buzz and octave for various solo bits so I usually flip the boost and octave on for that. For more chord playing, just the distortion. Where it shines is in stacking it with other things. Run a solid overdrive ahead of it and you get an absolute killer tone.

I'm fixing to build a handful of them to sell myself and, yeah, no doubt people will buy them. Seems to be a pretty popular on Reverb.
 
Paradox916 said:
the Tyrian checks out, works good tried in up front of a couple amps, DI into my DSP tried all the tricks... I guess it sounds good but just feels soulless to me..(it’s better than most. )I really wanted to like this pedal And I tried.... I can only equate it to having sex with a hot chick that has no personality.... sure she had everything you think you want: big bottom, curvy mids, gets loud when you flick the switch and squeals and screams on command but in the end it’s just another box that’s not for me.🤣
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You ever think that maybe the pedal finds that you don't meet expectations either? ;)
 
I like the parenthesis but I was under no illusions that it was anything other than three already-established circuits in one box. I quite like having a clean boost there for whenever I need it. Sure does save space.

it’s a good example of how you rarely become a successful pedal builder by making a quality or innovative product, you become successful by pumping 90% of your budget into marketing, get some YouTube ‘influencers’ to do a demo calling it the greatest thing ever, then cash in. Bonus points if you get a popular artist to endorse it, or make it a signature model.
 
Build the Informant 2 times. Tought it was « OK », but couldn’t see what the hype was all about. I think I’d rather play a modified Rat, as I have other options for low gain which is the sound I preferred in the pedal. Though I thought it sounded great paired with the Cataclysm Delay I had built at the same time. But with the rest of my setup, found it bland.

I really like the Caesar. Never was big on chorus, but this one fits my style just fine and it earned a spot on my board. Other faves are the Simulcast/Duocast and the Plecostomus.
 
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