You are definitely not alone, Mr Guardian. For me building stuff like these pedals is what keeps me, well, easier to live with is one way of putting it! Making things is what keeps me sane, frankly. We have a relatively small house so there's only so much furniture I can make. I run out of money and space building amps. And it's true that I may also be running out of space building pedals...
It's not only the making of something, it's also discovering sounds which you can use which improve your playing, or make a friend happy. In some ways it's weird how making something to make pleasing sounds makes us so happy. But I am so glad that it does.
Anyway, my first pedal was a Boss DM2. Back then they were superseded by the digital stuff so I sold the DM2 and got an Ibanez rack delay. Then a Boss half-rack delay, then an Ibanez PDM1 (which I still have), then something else... Ended up buying a Boss DM-2W last year because I love the sound, even if I rarely use it. If only their buffers didn't kill my sound I would use more Boss stuff because they can really sound very good.
. I'm running out of ideas on what to build. I built a lot of stuff and this current run was a spur of the moment epiphany I had while musing about old pedals. If you like the DM-2 I have some stuff coming up that you might think is kinda cool.
