Pedal building and mods are the way

toastyrat

Hi all

I thought i would just let ya'll know that in my opinion you NEED to mod your pedals and build some of your own. Here are the reasons:

- Crap components.
It's no secret that if you buy a pedal now days you are gonna get stock cheap components because unless it's boutique they are being mass produced and companies are always watching the bottom line and if they can save a few rands/dollars on a unit it works out to be a lot of money.

-It is cheaper to build.
I built a clone tube screamer and paid about half the price of an original. My friend a/b'd it in his studio with the original and mine kicked it's backside!

-It's really fun
i started with a blues driver mod form http://www.monteallums.com which was really easy and i loved it so much i started building my own and i'm gonna build as many pedals as i can now!

So come on get soldering and make your tone better...

Manfred-Klose

Cool bannanas!!!

Did you manage to find the 3DPT switches?

Heath

mantech in JHB has the the switches and so does yebo electronics www.fort777.co.za , building your own pedals is most times real easy can be done cheaply i'll post some links up or websites where you can get good decent diagrams

glug

I found this site http://www.schematics.ca/. It has Schematic diagrams for amps like, Vox ac 30, peavy, hiwatt and a lot of others. as well as diagrams for boss ds1 and other distortion, overdrive effect pedals.

Manfred-Klose

Beware some of the schematics is fake!!!! Only use the trusted sites.

Heath

Manfred's Right alot of sites out there leave out important parts of the circuit , so you build them and they don't work ..... drives a person to DRINK

glug

i'm gonna try the cry baby out. less components and easy schematic. Will first build it onto a bread board and if that works then get the pcb made. If it doesnt then hell with these schematics

kornfreak007

Hi
I got the schematics but how am i going to make the pc
board or do i just give the schematics to the guy who makes the pc boards?

Manfred-Klose

If you know about designing circuits, you could design it autoCad or some other program.

Check this link for making PC boards:
http://www.guitarforum.co.za/guitar-gear/another-diy-pedal/

Or you could get a book like this one:
http://www.fort777.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1025

I'll try and get some photo's of a easy to Pc board with drilled holes in it, so that you just can solder the components and sratch out the circuit.

Other wise you can take to some company that does PC board circuit designing, but it could get expensive, and would be cheaper to jsut buy the pedal.

ralley

You can build on Vero/strip board and then you don't need to etch a PCB. Vero is available at Yebo electronics. I used Vero for my first few builds and it worked well.

If you want to etch your own PCBs it can be done pretty cheaply and easily. The method I now use is: Print a reverse of the design onto gloss photo paper using a laser printer. Iron the print onto a piece of prepared blank circuit board. Remove the paper and clean up - the design is left behind. Etch using a 2:1 mix of hydrochloric acid (aka Muriatic Acid, Spirits of Salts) and Hydrogen Peroxide. You can get the acid at a hardware store (Pool acid or concrete cleaner), the peroxide at the Chemist. Clean the board, drill (I use 1mm drill bits, hard to find, pricey and they break VERY easily, should actually use 0.8mm) and populate.

You can google for some good step by step instructions on all of these.

BTW someone mentioned getting switches at Yebo, last I saw they only carried DPDT and not 3PDT. I bought all of their DPDT's and they never seemed to restock (just checked, they have 196 now!). Avoid them anyway - of the 8 or so I bought all but 1 have now failed, and this is just in very light home use. Rather order 3PDTs from overseas.

Rob.

Gearhead

Eh.. at the risk of repeating myself, StewMac have the 3PDT.

Why would one start off building a crybaby when the most important part of it (the case + pot) is super hard to make oneself?

toastyrat

Just thought i'd update on some sites for DIY pedal parts:

Yebo - www.fort777.co.za
Really good because local and inevitably cheaper than usa, obviously shipping much cheaper (about R25 if not too big) takes just over a week.
Problem, they don't have everything eg. germanium transistors, 3pdt push pull switches. If you find a good local electronics store, the prices will probably be better than yebo, but i love the convenience of postage.

www.communica.co.za
Also quite cool, hav enclosures as well.

www.effectsconnection.com
My fav usa site, have most components, but unfortunately not all.

www.pedalpartsplus.com
very good prices, have a lot of parts, but very expensive shipping to S.A.

I have ordered from all of these and they seem to be trustworthy.

If anyone knows others that they have used please let us know...

toastyrat

These are the sites i use for building info, designs and other diy stuff...

www.generalguitargadgets.com - Great site, build a tube screamer kit from here.

www.buildyourownclone.com - Good designs and build instructions.

You can find a whole bunch more on the home page of www.smallbearelec.com