How to Build Your First Guitar Pedal Part Three!

jjjimi84

jjjimi84

Well-known member
This is part three of the five part series on building your first guitar pedal. This is all about how I do my lettering and initial biasing of the fuzz. I also talk about what I forgot to do in part two. Did anybody catch it?

Check it out and let me know what you think. Next week is sounds and more bias fun, the following week is the final painting stage. After that I will be back to making demos of all of my favorite PedalPCB.com boards, I hope you all are ready, I am fired up.

 
Before I watch, I’m going to guess (trying to think back to the last video) that you forgot to…
De-flux with isopropyl?
 
jjjimi84 said:
Thank you all! My trouble shooting method is throw it on a shelf and stare at it for years. Then pull parts off it as needed until it is a picked over corpse and then throw it out.
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My troubleshooting method is to:
1) put it on a shelf and forget about it
2) look at it years later and immediately realize that one of the component values is 10/100x larger or smaller than it should be
3) put it back on the shelf to “fix in a few days” but not make a note of it
4) repeat steps 2, 3
 
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I was looking forward to seeing how you painted the knob labels. Thanks! I have a feeling if I attempt it, it won't come out as good, but I might give it a go.

Would acrylic paints (the kind made for canvases) work instead of model paint?
 
spi said:
I was looking forward to seeing how you painted the knob labels. Thanks! I have a feeling if I attempt it, it won't come out as good, but I might give it a go.

Would acrylic paints (the kind made for canvases) work instead of model paint?
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Yes it would, they can tend to be kind of thick and would need to be thinned down a bit.
 
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spi said:
I was looking forward to seeing how you painted the knob labels. Thanks! I have a feeling if I attempt it, it won't come out as good, but I might give it a go.

Would acrylic paints (the kind made for canvases) work instead of model paint?
Click to expand...
If you thin them properly, acrylic paint can work well, but they’re a bit more fragile so you definitely need a clear coat over it. Model paints are quite durable so a clear coat is mainly just an aesthetic choice and an extra precaution
 
This video is awesome Dan. Like others have mentioned, I was really looking forward to seeing your labelling technique. You mention you have crappy handwriting in the video. I disagree. I think you labelling is so consistent and distinctive - you have almost created your own font. It really makes the pedal design pop. I will definitely need to give this a try at some point.
 
JamieJ said:
This video is awesome Dan. Like others have mentioned, I was really looking forward to seeing your labelling technique. You mention you have crappy handwriting in the video. I disagree. I think you labelling is so consistent and distinctive - you have almost created your own font. It really makes the pedal design pop. I will definitely need to give this a try at some point.
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Thank you all very much! Never thought my bad handwriting and lack of talent would become the talent….

I just finished editing the final painting video and it is pretty cool…..
 
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