r/diypedals

The hell? That's not even a guitar pedal... This behemoth is the Quantum Defrackulator from @parasitstudio. This is a drone synth with 4 oscillators, each with their own independent controls. You can turn this into a 3 or 4 step sequencer as well with the LFO engaged. Look, just turn the knobs at random and you'll have so much fun feeling like you're on the Nostromo or something.

Ein erster Versuch mir meine eigenen Pedals zu bauen und mein erster Beitrag auf Reddit. Den Schaltplan habe ich geringfügig abgeändert um die Komponenten zu verwenden die ich da hatte.

Das kommt später noch in ein schöneres Gehäuse, deswegen gibt es noch kein Kabelmanagement und es fehlen noch die LED und Schrumpfschläuche an + und -.

Die Komponenten sind auf einer Kupferstreifenplatine.

Built the eyelet board from scratch, used vulcanize fiber which we use for pickups and buy the eyelets from online. Sourcing GE transistors in Turkey was honestly the hardest part, but I finally got lucky and found a few good ones. I think it’s turned out great.

I posted about this a couple days ago and have made some progress fixing it up. (Many thanks to u/islandcatman for their previous help).

TLDR: there's an intermittent issue where there's no effected signal, but if I turn it on/off a couple times and/or probe the Reticon output, then it functions totally fine. When it is in it's non-functioning state, if I probe the Reticon input I have signal, but when I probe the output I get static. I'm wondering if this is what happens when a BBD chip starts going bad, or if it just means that some other component connected to the BBD chip has an intermittent problem? And if the Reticon chip is okay, but something else around it is bad, do I risk damaging it by continuing to use/test it with power connected

More info:

I got this in a non-functioning state, converted from AC to DC, and then I'd get a couple seconds of effect before I'd get a "windy/staticy" noise (more like brown noise than white noise) and then the effect would cut out and I'd just have a clean signal. Bypass signal is always okay.

I tested voltages on the Reticon 5105, clock chip, and other op amps/transistors, and everything seems reasonable, except I had a lowish voltage on the Reticon output. I was thinking maybe it was a bias thing, so I tried adjusting the trims, which were all seized up, but I eventually, carefully, I got them unstuck. Moving the Reticon bias trim back and forth some brough the voltage up on the Reticon output, but where the trim was set initially seemed right judging by ear. Could whatever build up that was making the trims stick also have been making the bias connection faulty? Should I hit all those trims with some deoxit or something?

When it is working properly I get modulated signal on the output and can trace that modulated signal through the rest of the circuit with my probe.

Also weird and worth mentioning: it seems to work more reliably when I'm testing it with a sine wave and probe than when I actually have it connected to a guitar and amp. I assume it's just a coincidence, but could there be something about differences in voltages/impedances that's "jump starting" it or killing it?

Thanks!

Bought a Dirt Monger Instruments Distortion H tribute pcb a while back. I truly enjoyed testing this before I boxed it, knew it was going to be a super sweet forever home pedal. Built a custom enclosure using Montana spray paint, purple, orange, and black crackle. Tried to do something a little different than the average crackle. I like it.

Dirt Monger Instruments makes super sweet pedals, def check them out!

These were in a box of old components I got from basically an estate of a professor/radio enthusiast after he passed and am just now going through all of them. I’m fairly new to building pedals, but aren’t these generally sought after? Everything in the box was old as hell with yellowed plastic and RadioShack packaging, likely at least 30 years old.

Since I’m new, I’d also like to ask what circuits you’d build with these specifically, if they are what I think they are. I am well experienced in elec tech stuff like soldering and testing so building is no issue. My electronics theory is lacking however so I’m not at the circuit design stage yet, still learning there.

A NERV themed germanium/silicon hybrid fuzz face with NOS Soviet parts and Acid etched enclosure, we gettin out of Tokyo-3 with this one.

Rest in peace my sink, she got hit by ferric chloride.

I made a post a few days ago about trying to breadboard a Brutalist Jr. from GCI and ran into some issues regarding the TL072 Op amps and the wiring involved. I have very little experience with using Op amps and this has been a fun learning experience and my first using virtual grounds. First image is from Tinkercad and is a copy of what my breadboard currently looks like. Second image is the Opamp schematic and the third is the larger schematic.

My two questions are: is this section built correctly so I can move on to the main section

Is row 22/pin 1 of the opAmp where my virtual ground will be?

Thanks for all the previous and current help.

Lego bricks. We have all played with them and we probably all know the feeling of stepping on one. The pain.

Not this one. This one will not hurt your feet. Maybe your eardrums…

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!

Can someone draw out the actual connections within the pedalpcb 3pdt order switching breakout board? I don’t have the breakout board but just want to wire my 3pdt toggle switch manually. However I cannot find how I would actually wire my two effects inputs,outputs and guitar in and out to the toggle switch. Thanks!

https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/3pdt-order-switch/

Ok... so... Take a stock Rat. Rip out the IC and replace with a Davisson diode compression discrete op-amp. Only build the op-amp with Soviet Germanium PNP transistors. Give it a 3-way clipper switch to boot.

Next rip out the tone control and replace with an active 2-band EQ.

Now bring it over into an active panner-blend circuit to blend back in clean tone. But boost the clean tone using a transistor boost and give it a tilt tone control centered at 600hz.

This is El Gato, the primo distortion for bass players. I needed a big enclosure for all that rablash of circuitry, so it went in this hexagonal (reinforced) tin.

The cat head was a cupcake decoration leftover from halloween, and my daughter gave me the gem decorations. The combination just felt kind of Mariachi to me, so I put all the controls in Spanish. Hopefully I translated that OK.

Anyway, a stupidly long demo is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Pvt3EnJYQ

Hey Y’all, this is my first post on here in a while. Unfortunately I haven’t really had time or resources to make any awesome pedals for a while. But I wanted to do something related to pedals for my senior project. So we (me and partner) made a loop switcher using 4-1 multiplexors and an arduino to control the muxes. You can chain whatever pedals are plugged into any of the loops in any order, and can bypass loops entirely if desired. You can also store presets for instant recall of pedal order. We also designed an EQ circuit and put it on a PCB; The circuit controls the level of treble, mids, and bass frequencies, while also giving an overall gain control (-6db to + 3db) and wet/dry mixing per pedal loop. We ended up winning the “best senior project” award in our department for this as well. LMK if you guys want to see a vid of it in action.

I came upon weirdest bug ever.

I made a switch using that schematic. It worked fine but when I connected a big muff to it the LED dimmed and started blinking. Its responding to a guitar signal nie. I mean, it looks cool, but can someone explain it to me?

Thought y’all might enjoy my latest build: the “No War”.

I love the sound of the Death By Audio Fuzz War but couldn’t afford it. So I build a budget clone myself.

It’s a Death By Audio Fuzz War MKII from pedal pcb with top mounted jacks, fit into a standard 125B enclosure.

Bypass works, LED's light up and blink as expected, Sometimes a real bassy strum can get a fuzzy noise, but other than that it's silent. I've checked everything I know to check. Diodes are correct orientation, same with the transistors. Wires are going where they need to as well.

I havent had a pedal not work since my first couple and I've built a few since. not sure what's goin on here. Any tips would be apricated.

https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb359/ < diagram here