u/Twinningses

The oldest is the Gibson Explorer I bought back in 2000. Then from 2004- 2023 I played acoustic almost exclusively... and things have ballooned since getting back into electric.

I've modified most of these guitars to one degree or another to get the "best" possible sound out of each model.

• Gibson Explorer 76 reissue- swapped out the pots to 500k to get more punch out of the pickups, and added a capacitor bleed at the output jack to drain just a hair of the nasty highs. Rounded the fretboard.
• Fender Am Pro 2 Strat - hated the Vmod2 pickups after a few years with it. Swapped to Ultra Vintage Noiseless 4 pickups that have way better string to string balance and no 60 cycle hum. Decked the bridge.
• Epiphone E335 Inspired - no mods
• Reverend Spy - fretboard rounding, cavity shielding
• Reverend Charger 290 - swapped to Seymour Duncan Noiseless pickups (Neck noiseless and JJN noiseless bridge), fretboard rounding
• Reverend Descent 10th Anniversary - fretboard rounding
• Reverend Mercalli 4 - swapped pots, fretboard rounding

So why is the Charger my favourite of the lineup? (Well, only after the mods). The stock p90s were great but high output and thus ultra noisy. The SD noiseless are identical in tone but zero noise (I've done a before/after test on my profile for the doubters). All reverends have somewhat shit fret ends for their price, but after rounding, the neck is more comfortable than the rest of my lineup. The bass contour is incredibly useful in high gain situations. All in all, it's sturdy as hell, punches like crazy, and is rock solid. It plays like a tele on steroids.

Wanted to share a journey I've been on with my gear hoarding. After loading up on more and more pedals over the last fews years and lusting over every youtube release, I started building pedals to start getting a better idea of how the circuits work.

What I've found with each new build is that my urge to buy a new pedal has decreased immensely. Why buy a crazy priced Zendrive off Reverb when I can build it for $20 in parts and house it in a way that I want?

It's also been a good way to explore modding pedals to get them to behave in a way the originals didn't. Swap component values, etc or add in features, like a Symmetry knob and diode clipping options on a harmonic percolator.

In the last 6 months since I started building, I haven't bought any new company releases. Sure, now I'm spending money on components, but it's way less cash, a lot more purposeful buying, and the building slows down the purchases. It's also relaxing.

These are a few of the builds I've done, starting from the earliest on the right going to left. I got the floral inspiration from the Alexander Pedals Forget-Me-Not, and so I'm running with a flower theme for every build now, somewhat related to the original pedal's name:

• Sakura Drive (Cherry Blossoms) = Zen Drive
• Arabica Brew (Coffee Blooms) = Harmonic Percolator
• 900 Wishes (Dandelion) = ~900 Fuzz
• Celestial Drive (Celestial Lily) = Greer Lightspeed

Anyways for those of you on this subreddit struggling to control your purchases, I highly suggest picking up this hobby, and the fine folks at r/diypedals are a great resource to get you started.

Hi Folks, building the PedalPCB Desolate Fuzz and having issues with the volume output.

When I plug my guitar in, I get very faint output, but the circuit seems to work as it should in terms of controls for gain, volume, switches, etc.

I build an audio probe to work backwards to see where the fault might be. Starting from the Output jack, all good. Volume pot gives great signal on lugs 2 and 3.

When I hit R18 (68K), I get no sound on either side of the resistor. I tried reflowing, didn't work. I verified I indeed installed a 68k. Then, I just replaced R18 just to see if the part went bad. No luck.

Now, that's the first part of the chain working backwards where I lose signal. However, if I put the audio probe on the Onset pot, I do get some signal, but at a very muffled level. I find it interesting I'm getting signal from there despite not getting any from R18 which is further downstream.

What am I missing in my diagnostics process here? Any help greatly appreciated.

Josh shows and demos the pedal at 39:30 here. Given that Drive isn't on the Empress website or their social media I'm thinking this is a premature release of info.