Why do YOU build pedals?

Why do you build pedals?

  • I want to sound just like what I hear on the record

    Votes: 10 10.2%

  • I need to find my own, unique sound

    Votes: 26 26.5%

  • Hell, I just like to build

    Votes: 73 74.5%

  • Eh, I'm done building for now. I'm just here to troll on people and sell $5 diodes

    Votes: 7 7.1%

  • I want every single Muff/Rat/TS variant there is. Gotta catch em all like Pokemon!

    Votes: 6 6.1%

  • I need a pedal for this one particular part in a song I am writing

    Votes: 7 7.1%

  • People keep "borrowing" my pedals so I need some for me

    Votes: 3 3.1%

  • Booze Money

    Votes: 7 7.1%

  • I can't explain, but it's a form of therapy for me

    Votes: 65 66.3%

  • I need to support Robert through all this tariff BS

    Votes: 13 13.3%
  • Total voters
    98
BuddytheReow said:
Why do you build?
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Not really for any of the reasons in your poll, so much. The vast majority of my pedal builds are my own designs and as long as I keep finding refinements I'll probably keep doing a few of those a year. Beyond that, I'm naturally curious and seeing how Robert and/or the original designers did things is kind of cool. But I really really don't take direction well, so nothing I build is likely to be an actual clone anyhow! 😄
 
falco_femoralis said:
At first I started because I could try out different sounds for much, much less money than purchasing the retail pedals. But as I got into it I learned the hobby is multi faceted, all parts of which are interesting, and it's very affordable. It's probably my favorite hobby.
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I think this plays a part for me too. I always love discounts and good value, and building pedals yourself is amazing value compared to buying retail pedals. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it comes down to a reasonable margin and decent wages for the builder, but 400€ for a Pink Blue Fuzz just seems ridiculous when I can build one for ~60€ or less.

Different pedals also inspire me to play, which in turn leads to new songs, which is great fun. Of course that's like... 5-10% of the effort to actually put a song out, which is not great, but it is what it is.

And lastly, it is therapeutic to know you at least "got something done" and didn't just "waste time". I know it's not a good mindset to have, it would be better if I could accept I can just spend my time doing nothing if I feel like it, but while I'm working on that, this is a nice thing that helps me that also produces tangible results.
 
Funny enough it all started for me because I got on the Wampler mailing list to try and get first in line for a Germanium Tumnus Deluxe. Brian Wampler released his guitar pedal course like 3 days after I had joined the mailing list and it was on a launch discount. It sounded intriguing to me so I bit and the rest is history.

That was almost a year ago to the day and just yesterday I counted up my builds, I’ve boxed up 39 pedals and have 4 circuit boards completed that aren’t yet in enclosures.

I love it. Building is very zen to me and it’s so satisfying when a new board fires up and you get to explore a new sound. I sit at a computer writing code all day for work, sometimes building something tangible in the real world is really satisfying.

I’ve also played more guitar in the past year than any year since high school and that has been a ton of fun. Building + playing are my favorite hobbies for sure.

Oh also I did score a Germanium Tumnus Deluxe that may or may not be in Robert’s possession currently 😉
 
Got back to soldering when I discoverered DIY forums for eurorack stuff about 13 years ago. First "pedal" build was a "rat" as a module
to distort my TR-909 bass drum. Two years ago I got more into effects and ended up buying a used electric guitar. I particularly like that
pedal schematics are way less complex then most eurorack modules, in particular percussive instruments.
 
i blame the internet. I was playing in rockabilly bands maybe 20 years ago (?) and was getting frustrated because I found it difficult to get the sound I wanted. Where I live we didn't have ready access to old tweed amps or old BF amps etc, plus I really wanted my Gretsch to twang. I tried various amps which started getting expensive. Then I saw a place online that sold amp kits. I wasn't thinking of building my dream amp right away but on my Line 6 Pod my favourite setting was "small tweed"so thought a 5E3 Deluxe could be fun. I knew I could solder from changing pickups in guitars etc so thought "how hard can it be?"

Well that has led to building many, many amps over the years. Which in turn got a bit expensive so I turned to pedals because they are more affordable. However building so many amps and being an anal kind of person I got quite good at building them, and my guitar nerd buddies took an interest and started buying my amps. Which meant that I could build more amps. My interest in getting my particular kind of sound led me to building my amps and pedals in a way which lent them a sound which suited me. I particularly like clarity, a vocal kind of midrange, a strong but tight low end and an overall well defined sound which doesn't fart or lose composure. Of course I like the odd fuzz or mayhem sound, but over all I have a sound that I like. And it seems that a lot of players around me like that sound too.

Or it could be that I just love making stuff. It's one of the two.
 
When I was in high school, I had a cousin who was an electrical engineer. He helped me build a talk box using instructions from a Craig Anderton article in Guitar Player magazine. I had always hoped I’d get into pedal building someday but several decades went by until my wife gifted me a BYOC DOD 250 kit. I built that, then a BYOC mini reverb, then a tremolo pedal kit that I let sit for several years (mostly due to frustration with poor magnification and dim lighting). I got a pair of 5x reading glasses, set up a well lit work area, built the BYOC trem pedal, and things began to improve for me as far as builds getting easier. Then stewmac pedal kits, then Aionfx, then pedalpcb. I’ve built hundreds of pedalpcb builds. I’m currently building about 7 pedals a week. Love being in my special work area. It’s my worry free zone, and where I can focus my mind on the build and not life’s concerns. It’s great to have a place to get away. I’ve also built stewmac and Mojotone amp kits (tweed Deluxe, Princeton reverb, JTM-45), and love that as well. I’m thankful for the hobby. When Tayda stopped offering predrilled enclosures, I hit a rough spot and thought I was done because I thought drilling skills were beyond me. I almost stopped building at that point. Someone gifted me a drill press and now I’m doing very well drilling my own enclosures. It does take some practice, but I learned you get better at drilling over time.
 
To echo some of these sentiments, I build mostly just because I love building things; the process is great fun for me. Thinking up ideas for aesthetic, imagining what the build will look and sound like (and trying to balance/reconcile those aspects) is a great way to exercise your creative facilities, even if some of the actual labor of turning that idea into reality is a bit tedious. I also like to put a little bit of my own spin on things, even if it ends up being a "there are many like it, but this one is mine" kind of scenario. Assembling the circuit itself is great meditation, and every well-soldered joint is a reflection of the builder's discipline and devotion. I have also started to revisit and revamp some of my older builds as I've matured and become more skilled at this craft; learning and improving is a lifelong journey and it's really satisfying to see how far I've come. Actually playing the damn things is kind of secondary (mostly because recently I have had nearly zero time for anything and I hope I will have more time for various hobbies soon) but there's also great fun in hearing the subtle sonic differences even between similar pedals, because sometimes its not about the sound, it's about what will inspire you - and you never know what that will be!
 
Love this thread.

I started playing guitar in high school. I obviously had a crappy high school band for which I wrote most of the music while the bass player wrote lyrics and sang. We did have fun. We also didn’t have money for gear, all our stuff was crap and back in the 90s the cheap stuff was really crappy, unlike today when you can find really decent gear for really cheap.

So after I managed to get an internet connection I got interested in learning about guitar pedal circuits. I downloaded a bunch of schematics back then but I had no idea how to read them and I had no one to teach me how to solder and no place to buy components anyways… ah the 90s in Italy… So that initial interest kinda waned.

A couple years later, in college, I ended up studying EE because I was still interested in learning. After 5 years of college, I still didn’t know how to solder (my degree didn’t have an applied lab nor a design class…) but at least I could read a schematic! I still didn’t have access to any of the resources I needed tho.

A few more years passed. Long story short, I moved to the US for a girl who then became my wife. At that point I met a guy who had experience with soldering and building pedals. That gave me the bug again. I bought parts from Mammoth and my friend helped me build my first pedal: a GPCB Rat clone. Sounded killer and I still have it. I built a few more pedals after that using Tonepad boards mostly. Then I ended up taking another long break.

Shortly into the pandemic I decided to get back into the hobby. I found PedalPCB by searching for boards with PCB mounted pots because I really hated offboard wiring (I still do although not as much). That was a game changer for me, together with the fact that Robert’s board are so well designed and easy to assemble. I built more PPCB boards than any other manufacturer at this point.

A few years ago I took a much more stressful job which leaves me little time to build, so my build pace has slowed down to a crawl, but I am still slowly making progress on a few builds. I have also been focusing more on playing guitar and studying music (taking lessons again and learning things like orchestration), which I’m very happy about. I have considered a music career many times in my life and I may just do that at some point in a couple years if this dumb job actually pays off!
 
In 1989 I stole a copy of Craig Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians from a music book distributor I briefly worked for, build the ring modulator on perfboard, eventually got it to work, and was pretty much hooked. The notion that an artist can make technical things without engineering expertise has been a main guiding light.
And now, my youngest has better guitar chops, more punkitude, and a cooler musical appetite than I ever had, so I'm building pedals for, and somewhat living vicariously through, them.
 
pricklyrobot said:
I mostly just like designing and etching enclosures.

Soldering and building the actual effect is bordering on ‘tedious afterthought’ at this point;)
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Man, same. I like the graphic design process, I like tinkering with circuits in LTSpice, any of the more creative aspects of the hobby really, but I generally procrastinate doing the actual builds. I do kind of get into the zone though once I actually start soldering. Maximum focus, time flies by, that therapeutic type of shit. But convincing myself to "just do it" is still tough :D
 
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