New to building pedals and having a blast!

TheHammer1982

TheHammer1982

Well-known member
Howdy! I’ve been playing guitar off and on for about 20 years (I’m 39) but never messed with effects much until a few years ago. I started off with a Crybaby from Hell then a Barber Gain Changer SR, Wampler Pinnacle Deluxe, Wampler Ratsbane, JHS 3-series delay and reverb, and a JHS Bender.

A little over a year ago I built my first pedal, a TS-808 clone from BYOC. I had a blast building it and it actually worked on the first try lol. Not long after my mom’s health started to decline and all of my free time was spent caring for her until she passed right before Thanksgiving last year.

I finally decided to try building another pedal a couple of months ago and went with a Klon clone from Aion FX. After that the addiction really started and I was hooked. Since then I have built:

• Cerulean
• Acetylene Overdrive
• Aphelion
• ADHD
• Rift
• Acrylic Overdrive
• VHS
• Duocast dual footswitch
• Theseus

The only one not currently working is the Acetylene Overdrive because I accidentally damaged the board and need to get another one.

At this point I trying to figure out what to build next lol.
 
I would dive in more with distortions and fuzzes. Building a big muff is almost a right of passage! That, and a rat.

If you’re more curious how these circuits work I would definitely check out breadboarding. The Test Kitchen forum has a lot of good info. You can think of breadboarding as “try it before you buy it” with any mods you want to do.
 
BuddytheReow said:
I would dive in more with distortions and fuzzes. Building a big muff is almost a right of passage! That, and a rat.

If you’re more curious how these circuits work I would definitely check out breadboarding. The Test Kitchen forum has a lot of good info. You can think of breadboarding as “try it before you buy it” with any mods you want to do.
Click to expand...
Funny you mention breadboarding as I just picked up a few the other day. I’ll definitely check out the Test Kitchen.
 
@Feral Feline three weeks later and I finally have a couple of pics for you lol. Work has been nuts.

52036349550_bf923817c4_b.jpg



52035884658_7c6a5dd728_b.jpg
 
@Diynot I’m genuinely surprised that someone recognized my avatar lol.

The real problem is that building pedals is just ONE of my obsessions. I also do metal fabrication and lately I’ve been practicing making things on my lathe (still need to get my hands on an old knee mill). I also rebuild engines, transmissions, differentials, ect. I’m currently about to get set up to start powder coating. I have a bunch of parts (including a 2001 Yamaha Raptor 660R frame) that I want to coat. The latest project is to build a 13hp mud motor for my 16’ jon boat. I live next to a river and lately it’s been a little too shallow to use my 25hp outboard. So yeah, I always have entirely too many irons in the fire lol.
 
THeHammer82 said:
@Diynot I’m genuinely surprised that someone recognized my avatar lol.

The real problem is that building pedals is just ONE of my obsessions. I also do metal fabrication and lately I’ve been practicing making things on my lathe (still need to get my hands on an old knee mill). I also rebuild engines, transmissions, differentials, ect. I’m currently about to get set up to start powder coating. I have a bunch of parts (including a 2001 Yamaha Raptor 660R frame) that I want to coat. The latest project is to build a 13hp mud motor for my 16’ jon boat. I live next to a river and lately it’s been a little too shallow to use my 25hp outboard. So yeah, I always have entirely too many irons in the fire lol.
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I hate to admit that I know the reference. MeatCanyon is some seriously messed up shit🤣. Metal fab eh? Going to start making your own enclosures? BTW, welcome to the forum. I know there a few folks on here that share your love of auto repair.
 
I would humbly recommend to build many modulations circuits (chorus flanger phaser), EQ, reverbs, delays (without PT2399), compressors, enveloppe filters (Spectron or Filter FX are amazing), octavers, and tools like splitter, blender : TH custom effects Pro-cessor for exemple (this will bring a chain of effects to a whole new level).
Try the Blueshift only when you feel you are ready for it, this one and Flintlock are among the most pleasing effects I've ever heard. Don't build them too soon, their beauty can be disturbing : it's almost too much for average mortal citizens like us...

Regarding OD and Fuzz : I think Rat, Big Muff op-amp are good advice, I would add some catalinbread clone like Pedalpcb Tweed Man (an OD able to brilliantly act as a preamp). These shouldn't be redundant with what you already built, and might combine quite smoothly with each others.
You might also consider something with a real tube inside, for a deep lively old school sound. I only tried the Bass Amuser. It's really good, for both bass and guitar, in my experience.

I guess, at some point, you'll have to build your own big tube amplifier... After bass and bass effects have been fully explored, of course (Darkglass clones, etc.) .
 
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Diynot said:
I hate to admit that I know the reference. MeatCanyon is some seriously messed up shit🤣. Metal fab eh? Going to start making your own enclosures? BTW, welcome to the forum. I know there a few folks on here that share your love of auto repair.
Click to expand...
MeatCanyon must be smoking the stuff they had in Vietnam 😂

I thought about building my own enclosures but honestly it’s not worth the time. This is the kind of stuff I normally mess with.
52036724375_7c9b210e5a_b.jpg
 
No worries THeHammer82, there's no time-limit or whatever on these builds, we work on them when we can, just like our cars.


Q3 & Q5 look like they're not soldered in yet, which is good. There are pros and cons to soldering in the transistors as opposed to socketing them. Some people here split the happy midway by socketing the transistors and once they've established the build works they'll solder in just one of the legs into the socket, that way it can't fall out if it's a loose socket. I've never had problems with socketing transistors and if socketed then you get to swap out and try different transistors.

So your Q6 (J113) is your problem area, and hopefully Q1 & Q2 hidden by the pots are okay.
If you look at the datasheet of the J113, the centre leg is that JFET's Source. Looking at the back of your board (solder side), that means the Gate will be on your left and the Drain on the right, if indeed you've installed the transistor correctly and not subbed the J113 for something else (whatever might be subbed would likely have the same pinout though, such as MPF102).



Couple options:
1) Though no pics of the component side, I'm going to make a wild guess that the SMD pads are still okay?
You could try tacking in a SMD JFET (remove the THD JFET). Test the SMDf pads for continuity with their associated neighbouring components, if they connect then SMD may be an option.

2) Jumper the Source (middle leg) to R35 right below Q6 (I don't have this board so I can't tell you which side of R35 to jumper to, see which side connects to C23 with your DMM). Looks like the Gate is okay, if it's not you can jumper that leg directly to the Vol Pad 2. Lastly, the Drain ... If there's no connection there you can jumper to R33, R20 is even closer... Anything VCC.


If jumpering doesn't work, I'd suggest removing the J113 out of Q6, and try a fresh one, as the transistor itself may be damaged.


Crap, it looks like Q6 on my schematic is Q7 on the layout...
Anyway, you could tack the jumper from any VCC-fed point to the Drain (left side in the pic below).


I think you may be able to salvage your build!

Acetylene.jpg
 
justin said:
I would humbly recommend to build many modulations circuits (chorus flanger phaser), EQ, reverbs, delays (without PT2399), compressors, enveloppe filters (Spectron or Filter FX are amazing), octavers, and tools like splitter, blender : TH custom effects Pro-cessor for exemple (this will bring a chain of effects to a whole new level).
Try the Blueshift only when you feel you are ready for it, this one and Flintlock are among the most pleasing effects I've ever heard. Don't build them too soon, their beauty can be disturbing : it's almost too much for average mortal citizens like us...

Regarding OD and Fuzz : I think Rat, Big Muff op-amp are good advice, I would add some catalinbread clone like Pedalpcb Tweed Man (an OD able to brilliantly act as a preamp). These shouldn't be redundant with what you already built, and might combine quite smoothly with each others.
You might also consider something with a real tube inside, for a deep lively old school sound. I only tried the Bass Amuser. It's really good, for both bass and guitar, in my experience.

I guess, at some point, you'll have to build your own big tube amplifier... After bass and bass effects have been fully explored, of course (Darkglass clones, etc.) .
Click to expand...
Thanks for the recommendations! I love being able to experience all of these different tones.

I have a B52 AT212 100w tube amp that started giving me problems. I re-capped it and upgraded the cathode bias resistor. I believe the last thing it needs are a quad of 6L6 power tubes but I haven’t been able to find any that aren’t being sold for ~$75 each. After the B52 started giving me problems I bought an Orange Rocker 15 combo and swapped the voice of the world speaker for a G10 Greenback. Even though I have those two amps I still want to build one lol.
 
Turns out the SMD pads are good. I’ll get some J113 SMDs the next time I place an order.

I built an Angry Andy on my breadboard and it actually worked the first time lol. It’s the largest circuit I’ve tried on the breadboard so far.
 
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