Effects Pedals

It’s true, a few years ago I was bitten by the effects pedal building bug, and now I’m a full on stompboxoholic. I’ve been influenced by several sites in this addiction, but one of THE most informative is Aron’s DIYstompboxes Forum. The resources, and people on there is just amazing. He also sells 3PDT stomp bypass switches for a good price. Other good sources for stomp box parts are Pedal Parts Plus and Small Bear Electronics.

Most of the pedals I’ve built were/are for personal use. I do have a few designs of my own that I sell through this website, and hope to be adding more soon. Those designs are…

Modified Fab Echo
I take a pedal originally designed for slapback echo, expand the mix and feedback controls, add a delay time knob, and lots of interesting additions like Light sensor controls and an LFO for strange swirling maddness. Check out the Fab Echo page for lots more info and examples.

Mutators
Mutators are, at their heart, a voice changer. I wire them up stompbox style and add lots of different controls for noisy chaos. Check out the Mutators page for lots more info and examples.

Here’s some of the “one off” pedals I’ve built. Some have already been sold, some I built for friends, and I actually have even kept a few for myself =).

Junkifyer
This was one of my very first pedals. I called it the “Junkifyer” and it’s based off of a circuit by Tim E. called the “LoFoMoFo”. Basically what it does is sends a guitar signal through a noisy transistor with a high pass filter. What that does is make your guitar sound like it’s being played through an old radio. I have a work a like design of my own that’s similar to this, but I added another transistor stage, and did the “Broken speaker” distortion differently. If I build them it will be under the same name.

 
Trogdorian Fuzz
I built this Fuzz pedal with my favorite “Wing-a-ling” Dragon it for my friend “K”. Troggie is a circuit called the “One Knob Fat Fuzz”, the one large knob is just a volume control. “K” was wanting a fuzz pedal to run his bass through that would allow him to blend in some of the bass’ un-modified signal to retain the lows. In my amatuer thinking I thought that I could just run a pot from the input to the output to blend more input in, no such luck. After some research I found Moosapotamus’ “Bass Paralooper” that is an active blend pedal, so I setup Troggie as specified in the schematic, and built the Paralooper (see below).

PWM
This pedal is Tim E.’s “PWM”. It routes the guitars signal through an oscillator, giving your guitars tone a synthy quality. It also has and LFO that will modulate the Osc. frequency in time with the LFO’s rate. I wired a switching jack to the frequency knob that will allow an expression pedal to control the frequency. Controls from left to right are= Volume, Frequency, LFO Depth, LFO rate. It has a bright blue LED to show bypassed state. This pedal is now with Shawn from Child Bite.

DRW
DRW is my version of a circuit known as the “Doctor Who”. This makes all kind of crazy ring mod sounds, and even some pitch down stuff. The only downside to it is that it’s a little noisey at times (oscillator bleed through) there are some ways to get around it, but I wasn’t to concerend about it on this one as I just wanted to try the circuit out. I installed it in an old battery tester, added knob, and light sensor controls for the frequency, added a switch to go between two caps for ring mod, and tremolo like speeds ,and added a feedback knob with an on/off switch. This is now with Igor Amokian. I’m looking at making a version of this using a similar, but different setup, and a buffer to get rid of the osc. noise. It will be called the Q-36.

Gus Boost
This is the “Gus Boost” beginner project from Aron’s DIY Stompboxes forum. Pretty decent clean boost with fuzz at the far end of the knob. I’ve dismantled this for parts.

Red Llama
This is the Red Llama. The circuit is a clone of the infamous (more then famous) Way Huge Red Llama. It gives fat tube sounding distortion. I disassembled this for a while to use some of it’s parts, but I decided to put this back together in a new enclosure to sell.

This is how the Red Llama looks now. This pedal has sold.

Bass PawaLoopuur
This was built for ”K” (see Trogdorian Fuzz above) completely done off of Moosapotamus’ page. Does exactly what it says, clean boost with the ability to blend a pedal into the clean sound so that the bass doesn’t get lost. It’s designed to look like the T-shirt of a certain speech impediment having, arm lacking character.

Barbie Delay
This delay has strange origins. It actually started it’s life as an echo circuit out of a toy barbie guitar. I gutted the guitar, cut out the part that controlled the echo, added delay time, feedback, plus a few other controls/bends, and then stock it in a nice box with a bypass stomp switch. If you are interested in making your own strange delay pedal check out Pete from Casper Electronics guide on how to make one out of a Barbie Karaoke Machine

Auto Crash with mods
This is John Hollis’ “Crash Sync” pedal. It’s an oscillator based distortion, pretty thick and noisy. I added the envelope control from Moosapotamus’ “Auto Crash”, and also did a few modifications circuit bender style. I found a two points that change the timbre of the oscialltion. One makes it a more mid-rangey wah type sound, and the other causes the Osc. to be prominent then the guitar’s signal. I also added a momentary stomp switch that removes the guitar’s signal completely for some laser gun fun.

Random Number Generator with Mods
This is Midfi Electronics “Random Number Generator”. It’s a radical fuzz that adds oscillation notes that randomly arpeggiate off of the fundamental note played. Crazy noise maker pedal. I added a few mods recommended from the DIYstompboxes forum.

Ugly Face with Mods
Tim E’s Ugly Face is another oscialltion based pedal. I added the envelope controls, and the blend mod as well. I also gave it a course and fine control for the osc.

Heart Throb Tremolo
Hearthrob Tremolo by MarkM. I had an old Kay Tremolo that I foolishly sold, and now that I’m trying to build a pedal board I knew that I would need a good tremolo. With simple controls this one really gets the job done. Speed works as described, and there is also a switch that will decrease/increase the speed in half. The really cool feature is the “Dwell” knob. This allows you to dial in exactly how deep you want the tremolo to be. From sublte waver to full on choppy thumps. Iadded the mod to make the LED pulse with time of the tremolo. I’m considering re-boxing this because it’s a little crammed in there.

Fool Drive 2
Built this from a project a found online. First time using an etched PCB. Thanks to John Lyons for making them. Check out his site for awesome wood pedals enclosures. I’ve added several mods to this pedal. The switches on the back control a bass boost, gain boost, clipping switch (asymetrical diodes and LEDS), and a switch to change the diodes to symetrical.

Pedals without photos (yet):

5th Gear Overdrive
Pretty decent transistor based overdrive. I dismantled it after building my “Fool Drive”.

Psychtar
The Psychtar is a Sitar simulator+Octave fuzz. It’s another of Tim E. circuits. Really cool pedal. I gave this to my friend “P” before I could take a photo of it. Hope to get one soon.

Idiot Wah
Another of Tim E.’s designs. It’s an inductorless wah circuit. I was mounting it in an old computer driving pedal, but scraped that idea and will most likely be putting in a small enclosure to function as a “Cocked” wah.

Peppermill
Awesome project from the guys at . Pics soon. This is a great very light overdrive. The exact sound I was looking for when I first started building pedals. Pefect for Rockabilly, roots, and surf.

BYOC ESV Tone Bender
Pics soon. My first “Kit” pedal. This “Build your own clone” kit is a work-a-like of the original MKII Tone Bender fuzz pedal. The awesome thing is it came with NOS OC44 Germanium transistors! I added a switch that takes out the booster stage making it more like a Fuzz Face, and I brought the bias trim pot out on the case. I need to replace it with a 100k pot because it never seems to bias like I would like it to.

BYOC Confidence Booster
Pics soon. Came free with my ESV Tone Bender kit from BYOC. I made it into a true boost pedals by mounting it in an enclosure, adding a bypass switch, and outboarding the boost trim pot.