My first week learning how to breadboard!
A week ago Monday my order of stuff from Aliexpress arrived, and now I'm neck deep in playing with circuits!
I've modded a few pedals in the past, and did a bunch of reading and Youtube watching before taking the plunge, so there was some knowledge already put down. I was really surprised how it all coalesced with the breadboard and parts in front of me. Even schematics started to make intuitive sense. Although, I still hate trying to mentally remember Collector and Emitter translating from the screen in front of me to the parts on the board lol. And alternating uf/nf/pf scales between different schematics can frig right off.
First was an Electra circuit following the Josh Scott Short Circuit tutorials. Really amazing set of videos to start with to get a handle on transistor based overdrive and fuzz and just generally getting started. Learning how to bias a transistor, and how that effected the sound, along with other ways of altering the distorted sound it provided seems like a great start to working on these things. It was interesting starting with a working overdrive circuit and then gradually adding components to alter the sound.
After that I built a Fuzzrite, again after a Fuzz-a-tron kit was built on an episode of Short Circuit. Started doing some experimenting myself with the basic circuit. Really neat how the blend pot on these effects the sound. With a higher resistance pot much more of the opposing transistor is blended out of the circuit. With a lower value pot, more of the opposing transistor is blended through.
My third build was a Reeves Zo. Lots more play with this one, biasing the two transistors with trim pots and seeing how changing components between the Emitter and ground altered the fuzzes texture.
Yesterday I built a Harmonic Percolator. Thus far my most annoying circuit. Picks up a lot of RF, and today I'm going to figure out how to put some simple low-passing into it to cut out some of the unpleasantness. Trying to keep collector and emitter straight with an NPN and PNP on the same board almost drove me crazy.
So far this has been a ball. Frustrating, sure. Confusing at times, but loads of fun. I built the Fuzzrite 3 times before I got it to work, couldn't see what I had wrong either of the first two times. I need to order some more stuff next month. Going to order in some op amps, might try and track down some germanium transistors to play with as well.
Today I'm going to try and get a Green Russian Big Muff working. It'll be the most parts I've worked with yet, but I think I feel comfortable enough with transistors now that I'll be able to build one out.
Overall fun little spring hobby to pick up. Cheers everyone!