Post your first build

[DailyDovetails]

I was reading in a build report and there were some first builds posted there. I thought it might be fun to have a thread where we can post our first builds and what we learned from them.

My first build which I haven’t posted before was a distortion 250. I didn’t measure any of the parts before putting them in nor really have a good idea what was what. All the parts are from Amazon. It somehow miraculously worked right off.

This pedal is from before I could print knobs, multi color or text(well). The logo on this pedal is just a void that is then filled with acrylic paint. In general I hold a higher standard for my enclosures now.

The inside apart from a few suspicious joints and burned wires honestly isn’t that different from what I do now. I did struggle to get good solder joints on the jacks tho. I strip the chrome plating from them now with a small file and hold the freshly tinned tip so it makes a ton of contact and do OK on them now.




So there is my first build. If you are brave enough to post yours try to include something you learned or do differently now.

If this was already done before I don’t think it had been posted into for a while as I couldn’t easily find it.

 

[Blooze]

My first was a Bearhug Compressor. Way ambitious, but worked first try out. Learned about how not to route wiring in a 1590A.

 

[jimilee]

BYOC opticomp in 2012.

 

[Erik S]

PPCB Muroidea kit from stomp box parts.

11 months ago!

 

[jessenator]

Most of the original pics are lost to time, but my first working build was a Madbean Sunking rev3 etch back in 2012

one of the two-fers I etched (the other must be in the box already):

mistakes were made... but I kept on going:

Look how level that is…

Eventually it got some JB Weld on that middle hole, and a paint job.

In March 2022 (nearly a decade later) came back to me, and I salvaged it ...a bit (beat ol' josho by almost a year and a half with my naming )

The original was still red, but it just said "klon' in that free 'russian' font we've all downloaded from dafont. Original lettering was sharpie transferred to masking tape and cut with an exacto, and looked like dog crap. No effin' clue why I made it worse, but that's on-brand, too. When I got it back, I adjusted the jack positioning to be 'normal' because half-arsed was my brand in 2012. Also changed the jack type and added an actual bypass LED outside the enclosure... yeah, I had it wired but inside the friggin thing where no one would see it…

I had big plans, once... and then reality set it. Just above was my bench at the time. What did I learn? HFS, sometimes I don't think I've learned anything. If anything, this first build is something I need in front of me more often, because it'll remind me to be humble and not go off all half-cocked or burn out too quickly. That Sunking was the first and last build I actually completed in 2012, and all the way up until I got back into this a couple years ago. Those other enclosures? Nah. Some had populated boards, sure, but all that stuff you see I gave away to my friend Neil, because he could actually finish things.

 

[DailyDovetails]

Most of the original pics are lost to time, but my first working build was a Madbean Sunking rev3 etch back in 2012

one of the two-fers I etched (the other must be in the box already):

mistakes were made... but I kept on going:

Look how level that is…

Eventually it got some JB Weld on that middle hole, and a paint job.

In March 2022 (nearly a decade later) came back to me, and I salvaged it ...a bit (beat ol' josho by almost a year and a half with my naming )

The original was still red, but it just said "klon' in that free 'russian' font we've all downloaded from dafont. Original lettering was sharpie transferred to masking tape and cut with an exacto, and looked like dog crap. No effin' clue why I made it worse, but that's on-brand, too. When I got it back, I adjusted the jack positioning to be 'normal' because half-arsed was my brand in 2012. Also changed the jack type and added an actual bypass LED outside the enclosure... yeah, I had it wired but inside the friggin thing where no one would see it…

I had big plans, once... and then reality set it. Just above was my bench at the time. What did I learn? HFS, sometimes I don't think I've learned anything. If anything, this first build is something I need in front of me more often, because it'll remind me to be humble and not go off all half-cocked or burn out too quickly. That Sunking was the first and last build I actually completed in 2012, and all the way up until I got back into this a couple years ago. Those other enclosures? Nah. Some had populated boards, sure, but all that stuff you see I gave away to my friend Neil, because he could actually finish things.

Mine is actually my second. The first one I did back around 2005. It was a Perfboard Octavia build in a RadioShack enclosure. I never actually got it working. It was from back when I was actually bad at soldering instead of intermittent bad at soldering like I am now. I hope to one day find it in a box somewhere I bet it could get it to work now.

 

[Vicious C]

BYOC Rat, 2018

 

[Harry Klippton]

Here's my first build which was in 2012. It's a BYOC Leeds Fuzz. I built it and was like huh? I built 3 more pedals after that and stopped til 2018 when I picked it back up again

Oops I just noticed one melted wire on the footswitch

 

[chris.knudson]

This was my first build in July of 2003. It's a Bazz Fuss circuit that I found while Googling.

Long story short, in August of 2022, I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my hip. While I was recovering, I ran out of Netflix shows to watch and found myself sucked down the YouTube rabbit hole. Before I knew it, I was learning electronics and programming Arduino projects, but I wanted to build something that I could put into a box, so I thought "why not a guitar pedal?". The only problem was that I had never soldered anything in my life (unless you count sweating copper plumbing pipes). Anyway, I got the itch during an Amazon Prime Day sale to pull the trigger on a soldering station, and this was my first attempt.

Unfortunately, it never made it into an enclosure. The lesson I learned with this build was that a normal foot switch won't fit into a 1590G enclosure. My next 4 builds were Landtone and Stew Mac kits, but unfortunately the next lesson I learned was to never give your pedals to the guitarists in your band to "try out" because you may never get them back.

 

[DailyDovetails]

This was my first build in July of 2003. It's a Bazz Fuss circuit that I found while Googling.

Long story short, in August of 2022, I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my hip. While I was recovering, I ran out of Netflix shows to watch and found myself sucked down the YouTube rabbit hole. Before I knew it, I was learning electronics and programming Arduino projects, but I wanted to build something that I could put into a box, so I thought "why not a guitar pedal?". The only problem was that I had never soldered anything in my life (unless you count sweating copper plumbing pipes). Anyway, I got the itch during an Amazon Prime Day sale to pull the trigger on a soldering station, and this was my first attempt.

Unfortunately, it never made it into an enclosure. The lesson I learned with this build was that a normal foot switch won't fit into a 1590G enclosure. My next 4 builds were Landtone and Stew Mac kits, but unfortunately the next lesson I learned was to never give your pedals to the guitarists in your band to "try out" because you may never get them back.

That one looks like what I recall my long lost Octavia from around that time looking like. Mine was in an enclosure like this.

 

[Joben Magooch]

I actually just dug out my first build the other day just to test it for nostalgia’s sake and took some pics with the intention of posting the same idea!

The VERY first I ever built was a 250/Dist + kit from BYOC. I knew next to nothing about pedals and picked it cuz it was the simplest and cheapest available at the time. I played it through a solid state Crate amp and thought it sounded just terrible. I don’t have any pictures but I mod-podge’d a photo of a mushroom cloud for the “graphic”.

After that I decided to build my own Timmy. Still not knowing much about pedals, I knew it was getting a lot of buzz and some guys I knew/looked up to played them and I was a big fan. I found Tagboard effects and Tayda at this time and ordered my parts and dove right in. Picked a 1590B because it looked “pedal size” to me. In hindsight obviously a 4-knob vero in a 1590B WITH a battery included was probably not the ideal first build, but….

I tried to put the toggle switch between the knobs but there was no way I could make it fit at the time. I took out the battery and installed the toggle switch on the side below the footswitch, at which point I realized I didn’t care for any of the clipping options and 100% always used it in the center setting. Live and learn.

The off board wiring is absolutely catastrophic. There are butt-jointed splices between wire haphazardly covered in electrical tape that’s started to deteriorate and leave black adhesive residue all over. Some of the caps had to be bent a bit to allow the lid to close (or… more accurately… closing the lid bent some caps). Wires melted, caps melted, gross solder joints, one single color of wire… It’s a total rat’s nest BUT it was my #1 overdrive for YEARS (in fact, you may see the faint remnants of where my only “graphic” was “#1 Overdrive” written in sharpie) AND believe it or not still works to this day and honestly sounds quite nice, save for a scratchy potentiometer…

I think I used an NE5532 for the op amp FWIW.

 

[Passinwind]

I was reading in a build report and there were some first builds posted there. I thought it might be fun to have a thread where we can post our first builds and what we learned from them.

I wasn't taking pictures in 1977, but my first one was a ring modulator from Craig Anderton's book. I mostly learned not to bother with building any more ring modulators...

My first Pedal PCB build should wrap up within the next week or so, I'll definitely post it here. Just waiting on the enclosure to come in, I think it probably shipped today.

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

I mostly learned not to bother with building any more ring modulators...

You’re missing out!

 

[chris.knudson]

Oops I just noticed one melted wire on the footswitch

Yeah, been there, done that. It happens...

 

[Passinwind]

You’re missing out!

I can live with that!

 

[vigilante398]

I've come a long way. December 2013, a Matsumin Valvecaster on vero (or more accurately made of spaghetti containing a small piece of vero). Assembled in the bedroom of my apartment during my first semester of university.

 

[Hirti]

Musikding "Das Plus" which I bought in late 2006, built around 2007. It's not in working condition anymore (some might say it never was ) because I gutted it some time later. That was a "fun" build. I struggled with this thing for so long because I decided "hey, my signal chain is going to be input on the left output on the right" for some reason. But without actually changing so the jacks are on the "right" side. It took me so long to figure out why my pedal is giving me no sound.

 

[Locrian99]

Man my first build

Well the very first thing I did was buy some parts on Amazon and breadboard a fuzz face from the beavis board website and also from
Small bear. I kind of referred to both but used the beavis layout.

Then I bought this awesome landtone fuzz pedal kit from Amazon. Man. Pix are at the bottom. I had no idea what I was doing. The instructions were terrible. There was a crap ton of offboard wiring. I shorted out and got some white smoke (got confused on the instructions). Went back looked it all over realized where I screwed up, fixed it and somehow it still worked.

What did I learn. That positive and negative voltage connected to each other directly causes issues. But it did give me the confidence to keep going. I ventured into mainly doing strip board builds for a few months after that.

 

[swelchy]

My first builds were fairly undocumented and were probably around 2010'ish? A bunch of BYOC kits....
Analog Delay ( wish I still had this one), Phaser, Tremolo, Tri boost, Compressor, Chorus.. They were all pretty nice pedals.

 

[Guardians of the analog]

This was probably around 2013, a GGG fuzz rite. I built a modkit pedal before this , I'll have to find it, that was my first pedal build.