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Wasn't too sure where to put this but I'm sure a friendly mod can move it if necessary

Was just wondering if anyone has tried making their own guitar effects pedals..? Have seen plenty of kits around and was wondering how they sound and how easy they are to put together..?

I'm also thinking about building my own amp at some point too but I'm pretty sure that's going to be above my skill grade at the moment lol

Hi Harv,
I made some effects years ago.
I had a book by Craig Anderton that was full of easy to make effects.
I made a fuzz, flanger, delay, phaser and booster.
I believe I saw one of his books listed at Stuart McDonald.
If I had the time, I'd build a tube amp.
Cheers,
Dan

By the way, I'm still looking forward to seeing your kit when it arrives.

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Have decided to be lazy and not bother with making my own pedals, am getting a Digitech RP255 instead. You can get one over here for £115 including delivery and it's got plenty of good reviews. I've also decided to get myself a Marshall MS-4 mini stack because it looks like fun and sounds pretty good too going by what I've seen on YouTube.

I haven't played the guitar in years and when I was messing around with my acoustic I always used to play with my fingers so am going to take this opportunity to teach myself how to play with a pick comfortably.

Hopefully the kit will be arriving tomorrow or Thursday and I'll post pics in the other thread.

Ditto, we probably had the same book .. I didn't finish many of the projects b/c of trouble finding some of the parts back then (no internet!), but the few I did finish, distortion in particular (the one with the rhythm/lead selector switch), sounded amazing.

Building a tube amp is on my list as well ... be careful tho as you can get seriously zapped even while they're unplugged. I actually got an incredibly big shock trying to fix a little point & shoot camera that took two "AA" batteries (which were not installed at the time) - apparently the flash has some kind of energy hoarding device that keeps a charge when the batteries are out, and you would not believe how powerful it was. I would not want to think what tubes might do after that.....

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If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey

Aw christ on a bike, probably not a good idea for me then - I'm a disaster area waiting to happen lololol.

Just got back from Wood Green with some tools I needed but Rufus, my big ginger pussy cat, has fallen asleep on the box, bless his cotton socks lol. Don't have the heart to wake him!

it's called a capacitor, and they are actually very dangerous. Some amps have large enough capacitor's that the discharge can stop your heart. They should always be discharged before you do any work on them.

Use a high value and high wattage resistor to discharge a cap. A 12v bulb works well too, and you can see when it is discharged (no more light). Pedals seldom have dangerous voltages inside, but amps do.

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Like dzsmith I to use the book he mentioned to build some effects. I used project cases I got at Radio shack. They were plastic but they did the job. Thats a great book if you can get it. Check ebay! I actually learned how to etch my own circuit boards while building these effects. I also know that someone sells effect kits. I have seen these ads in guitar player and premier guitar magazines for BYOC. link below
http://www.buildyourownclone.com/

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Another day, another dollar.

Yep, loads of fun as long as you're handy with a soldering iron and don't mind spending quality time with a multimeter if it doesn't work right away. The most recent effect I've built was a Univibe. I got a good price on a PC Board for the circuit, bought all the components, built a power supply, and fabricated the light shield. I still need to make a nice enclosure for it and have an empty wah pedal that will be used for the speed control. Here are a couple of pictures I took just after finishing soldering. If you're interested, I can take some more of it complete with wires and pots. My current project is being designed from scratch as a new type of tone control for use in conjunction with very low impedance pickups.






Sidenote/Plug: If you get into design work or need a PC board without using etching chemicals. My company can mill them for you, without any minimum quantities for very fair rates.