Wall of Shame: pedal abominations

Harry Klippton

Well-known member
In the spirit of fun, post your horrendous builds in this thread. I'm a big proponent of learning by making mistakes, not just learning from them. Go on and pony up, too. Don't make me repost your own work in this thread! šŸ˜‚

This was the first non kit build I ever did. It's a generic silicon fuzz face. No build doc, no drill template, no nothing- just all mistakes! The only consideration for the enclosure I made was for the pot placement and was frustrated to find no place to put the PCB when I was done. This is where I ended up. This pedal also has some heinous hand painted stuff on the other side but I couldn't readily find a pic of it.

I did several builds like this before I found sites like Madbean and started making halfway decent pedals. Let's see the skeletons in your closet!

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One of my first, but probably not my absolute worst. Itā€™s a buzz box (2 Bazz Fuss in series) that I modded to put a foot switch between the individual bazz fuss circuits along with a gain control on the first stage (red knob) that was an after thought, and a diode switch. The mix of solid core and stranded wire was a special touch.
 
I've shown this one before, but it's my first pedal ever. Same as @Harry Klippton - no drill guide and really only considered pot placement, which is why I went with the giant enclosure. I also put the power on the input side to remind me that it's the input side :)

I also went with full size pots because I didn't trust the little 16mm ones for some reason.

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@peccary i think I had the same issue for awhile stemming from the fact that up that point all I had worked on was guitar electronics and if I saw a tiny pot under the hood it meant ā€œcheapā€. Gotta have them honkin CTS
 
My first 7 years or so of this hobby, I only built circuits on perfboard. I thought I was too good to buy PCB's or even vero layouts. It led to lots and lots of hours poured into failed projects and constant repair on the ones that did work. Among sketchy soldered component lead connections, lack of a ground plane, wiring noise issues, my biggest problem was connecting wires to the perfboard.

A couple years ago I swallowed my pride and started buying Aion and PedalPCB boards. Now here I am with like 30 successful builds.
 
Iā€™ve only built 10 pedals so far. This was my first and probably my worst wiring job. Just had to use a 1590A :rolleyes: but hereā€™s a CMoy amp from 15 years ago or so and was my first project.
 

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0E10B92A-0190-4D78-B0D8-FF5B4B5E7253.jpeg AB03A19F-A06E-4FF8-8DE4-1A2B1229AD6B.jpeg Iā€™ve talked about this one in other threads before. This was my 2nd official pedal build. The little angel chorus. Crappy wiring, burnt out solder pads, and some 3M foam tape holding the pcb in place. I tried 10 different pt2399s before I found one that wouldnā€™t latch up constantly and on top of thatā€¦ it sounds like shit.
 
View attachment 19380View attachment 19381Iā€™ve talked about this one in other threads before. This was my 2nd official pedal build. The little angel chorus. Crappy wiring, burnt out solder pads, and some 3M foam tape holding the pcb in place. I tried 10 different pt2399s before I found one that wouldnā€™t latch up constantly and on top of thatā€¦ it sounds like shit.
And a White Washer to ice the cake!
 
As promised for your viewing pleasure. I swore I would never open this box (held together by tape because I lost the screws) again and wellā€¦ I didnā€™t have to.

As you can see my sloppy construction is on display for all to see in glorious blue transparent plastic. This is a Devi Ever Hyperion (great circuit) thatā€™s been in a couple different boxes. For that matter it isnā€™t the first pedal that was in this box, so naturally that faceplate is covering some extra holes.

The first in a series of many, many facepalms was the fact that I put the switch and controls on the bottom plate to avoid the manufacturers label in the middle of the other side. This of coarse led to the long wires, but also cause me a problem with the placement of one of the jacks and the stomp switch. The are way to close together, and it took some experimenting to find a combo that actually works.

I gutted it last year and decided Iā€™d finally make it look nice. Much foul language and many facepalms later this is what I ended up with. Itā€™s better, by far, than before butā€¦ wellā€¦.

I even board mounted the pots (facepalm of shame).
 

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If they are loud I see nothing to be ashamed of ;) I think we've all seen gunshots of, sometimes pretty expensive, pedals that are no better.

So keeping with the spirit of the thread I'll share mine once I can snap a pic of it.
The worst I've come across was BJFE. I traced the Honey Beest and posted the gutshots. Bent, inconsistent components. Rats nest of light gauge wires. I was shocked it even worked. Apparently they're all like that.

That said, I was able to resell it for like $200 after I was done. Often in the guitar world, mojo and name recognition matter much more than build quality.
 
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