So I Want to Making Guitar Pedals

[Slunk Dragon]

I've been a guitar player for 10+ years, now. Been a pedal lover for 90% of that time, and I feel I've gotten to the point where buying a mountain of pedals just won't be enough. I'd love to start delving into designing and making my own, but I have zero electrical knowledge, and I'm not sure where to turn to.

Do any of you guys here have advice on what I should look into? Going back to college isn't out of the question, either, but I would like to know what GOOD ways to go about this are. Thank you guys for any advice in advance.

 

[Bearitone]

Bump.

Also wanting to delve into pedal and preamp building and have no idea where to start.

 

[stratjacket]

Perhaps start with building some clones? I've never tried it, but seems like that would get you started and perhaps you can develop some ideas from there.

http://buildyourownclone.com

 

[Petar Bogdanov]

Can you solder? Build a transistor fuzz.

Electronics is best seen as an art, using a few basic fundamentals such as Ohm's law and a bag of tricks for the rest. Check out The Art Of Electronics by Paul Horowitz.

Do NOT go into this thinking to start yet another pedal company. It's a fully saturated market full of experienced players at this point.

 

[vansinn]

You need to understand electronics.
Start with locating info on:
Electricity, that is, voltage and current. Make sure to understand Ohm's law.
Then simple passive circuits based on resistors: The voltage divider. ladder networks..
Then read up on reactive components and impedance, that is, how resistance changes with frequency when using capacitors and inductors.

Once you understand voltage, current, resistance, capacitors and inductors, and as such impedance, you can move on to understand the diode, then the transistor, and then the operational amplifier, also called an opamp.

My above suggestions are simply the basics. There's a lot to dig into, but it isn't rocket science, so just get started.

As others commented, you should learn basic skills like soldering and building boxes for housing your future projects. And building a copy-cat of some known pedal is always both fun and a learning experience.

At some point, you'll be scratching your head, either because it doesn't work, because, geez, it works!
You'll now need some basic measurement gear to find out why it didn't work, or, equally fun, why it actually did work

There are loads of resources and books on basic electronics, as well as how to use measuring gear - and which of this to buy.
Very sorry I do not have a list of specific resources.

 

[Drew]

Yeah, the BYOC clones are a good place to start - I built one of their TS808 clones, and it sounds awesome. And actually works, which I was shocked by when I first powered it on.

 

[Shask]

I say start with BYOC also. After you get a feel for the steps of making a pedal, then start doing some more research on how the circuits in the pedals you built work. Tons of free knowledge out there.

 

[Bearitone]

Perhaps start with building some clones? I've never tried it, but seems like that would get you started and perhaps you can develop some ideas from there.

http://buildyourownclone.com

I actually did a BYOC rat clone.
Didn't learn anything. All I did was populate a board
Which is cool and I sharpened my soldering skills but, I really didn't learn what it takes to make a pedal sound a certain way. You know what I mean?

I also had to take a circuits class as part of my mechanical engineering degree (still in progress) and again that was cool. I learned how to breadboard a simple circuit, use a multimeter, and solved lots of circuit based problems in homework and exams but, I think the only thing I learned that i could somewhat apply to pedals was how to use opamps to increase gain

 

[stratjacket]

I actually did a BYOC rat clone.
Didn't learn anything. All I did was populate a board
Which is cool and I sharpened my soldering skills but, I really didn't learn what it takes to make a pedal sound a certain way. You know what I mean?

I also had to take a circuits class as part of my mechanical engineering degree (still in progress) and again that was cool. I learned how to breadboard a simple circuit, use a multimeter, and solved lots of circuit based problems in homework and exams but, I think the only thing I learned that i could somewhat apply to pedals was how to use opamps to increase gain

Yeah, I know what you mean. I was thinking about things like trying out different components and seeing what it did to the sound, like trial and error stuff.

I have never built pedals or anything. I was an Electronics Technician in the Navy back in the early 90's and we learned to troubleshoot down to the component level and replace transistors, IC chips and things like that. But designing a circuit would be a a lot different I would think. If you have some experience already understanding circuit diagrams, then you can probably find some diagrams out there and see the flow and just think of ways to change it up to get different sounds. I would imagine there will be a lot of trial and error before knowing component or circuit X makes the sound warmer while component Y makes it growl.

anyway, best of luck, sounds like it'd be fun.

 

[Alberto7]

Sounds fun. A friend of mine just started a project building a small distortion pedal, (not sure which model or diagrams he's using though) and I've begun thinking of maybe joining him just to pass time and sharpen our hands-on skills with circuits.

If you wanna get into design though, that's a different ballpark.

Depends on how much of a commitment you want it to be. If you're actually willing to invest time and effort into this, then some sort of college degree would be ideal. It's always better to back any technical knowledge with theoretical knowledge for more of an engineering approach. Both go hand in hand with each other.

If I've learned something from my mechanical engineering courses in electronics and my mechatronics courses, it's that electricity is weird as hell and behaves in extremely non-intuitive ways when you're just getting yourself acquainted with it. Seemingly tiny changes in components and/or in wiring can have gigantic consequences in the output of a circuit. So if you're really interested in design, an academic approach might be the way to go. Of course, if you don't want to pay for a degree, there are many resources online and in print where you can find all of the required theoretical knowledge, but that'll mean you'll have to rely on your own drive and self-discipline to set up a study schedule and design a course sequence for yourself whole, of course, sticking to it.

If you're only interested in building pedals and modifying them just a bit to suit your tastes, then I think a more hands-on approach might be sufficient. There are enough resources out there to educate yourself in the different types of existing pedal circuits and how you could possibly tweak them to produce different effects.

 

[onefingersweep]

Start with building kits. As already suggested BYOC makes good sounding kits. Once you master this you can start building from schematics and try to make your own layouts. Once you master this then you can start designing your own circuits and build prototypes. Once you master this you can start designing PCB's for your circuits.

 

[wakjob]

I was just thinking that there isn't enough pedals or pedal builders in the world.

But, if you must...



Try to find a copy of Brian Wampler's
"How To Modify Guitar Pedals" book.

Then get into online pedal repair & modding forums.

http://www.muzique.com/lab/main.htm <-- good one to start with.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

This is a great site too. Lot's of projects:

http://www.runoffgroove.com/

In terms of where to start on supplies:

I would recommend going on Amazon or wherever and buying a "resistor kit" and a "capacitor kit" (box with little baggies of 10+ resistors/caps in values all across the board) so you have a base of parts to play and tweak with.

Get yourself a breadboard or two so you can put the circuits together and test them out and tweak as you need to before you go soldering it all together permanently.

For example, here's what my dev board looks like (dual rec clone and a 5 band EQ on it right now):

START WITH SOMETHING SIMPLE. A basic overdrive or fuzz can be a good place to start, as they can be quite simple. Again, runoffgroove has some great projects.

 

[9Lives]

I build LOTS of pedals. Fav is compressors. Hit me up gduffey83@gmail.com