Interested in first pedal build

[Offcenter2005]

I would like to try to build a boost pedal for a first build. I have no idea how to start other than buying a kit. Any information or guidance would be very appreciated.

[Matthew Sanford]

If you don't solder yet, best info I've gotten is tinning the tip before soldering is to maximize heat transfer to the lead and pad. So much frustration before learning that with slow/no melts for me, also makes it so the lead/pad will melt the solder as well as the iron can.

Oh, and don't give up!

[Transistor-Transistor]

Well for a boost, building an EHX LPB-1 is a great simple place to start! Assuming you can read a schematic heres one

Now you can (and maybe should) buy a kit for this. Thats probably a good place to start. Kits come with all the parts and a PCB which makes soldering much easier. If you don't want to buy a kit another thing to do that I recommend is getting used to how audio / pedal circuitry works on a solderless breadboard just to figure things out.
Once you figured things out and you want to dive straight into the deep end you can do point-to-point wiring on a perf board (this is how I got started).

[Focalized]

One thing I would not do is try to mod a Boss or similar pedal, if that might be on your mind too. My first was a Boss and even though I could solder it was messy. Went on to BYOC pedal kits.

Learn all the basic tools and get quality ones if you haven't already.

[antonis]

No welcome, guys..?? 

[Clint Eastwood]

Welcome!

Starting with a kit is a good idea. Maybe start with a treble booster? only has 1 transistor, very good as an introduction to electronics. And tons of information about it online.

[m4268588]

deleted

[Phend]

Check out General Guiar Gadgets.  Very good, they have kits, EHX booster and many more.

[Offcenter2005]

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm going to start with a kit a familiarize myself with a few before trying anything more advanced. Probably post the results after. Might not be pretty but I think I could be a fast learner. Thanks again and appreciate the guidance.

[Matthew Sanford]

I love the confidence! And these fine folk teach freely!

Edit: build an audio probe, a TS jack with sleeve maybe a clip for ground, and wire(probe) with a cap (1u maybe, or 100n) between it and the jack. For no signal on output it's great to track it to find culprits!

[Mark Hammer]

For any absolute beginner, I'm going to second the motion to begin with modding a simple commercial pedal (just NOT something that uses surface-mount parts!!).

My reasoning is this.  There is a strong likelihood that any first complete build is either not going to work (i.e., produce sound of any kind), or is going to "work" but yield undesired things like hum, weird oscillations, too little output, etc., etc..  When you begin with a commercial pedal, you at least know that it powers up properly, works, provides working bypass, and all the other good things you hope that your actual first build will provide.  Mods can be done one at a time in very specific ways, and since you know what the unmodded sound is like, such an approach can be very instructive, in the if-I-do-this-I-get-that sense.  And if your attempt at a mod buggers anything up, you'll know what you did to produce that buggering.  Even if you build from a kit, you likely won't have any test of functionality until you're done.  And if it doesn't fire up flawlessly when you reach that point, you're stuck with trying to figure out just WHY, which may be hard to do as a novice.

Now, normally I recommend to beginners to score an MXR Distortion+, DOD 250, or clone thereof, as their platform for modding.  It's a simple design, with ample points of useful intervention, and a great learning tool.  Unfortunately, as more and more pedals become surface-mount, rather than thru-hole, and as more younguns think anything almost as old as they are is somehow "vintage" (rather than merely "old/used"), it gets harder to find suitable 2nd-hand pedals for modding.

Thankfully, there are plenty of less familiar clones of classics around.  Bart Provoost's effectsdatabase does a nice job of showing "kinships" among pedals (i.e., this pedal is a licensed/unlicensed clone of that one).  This allows a person to know that they can rely on the circuit diagram they have of a known pedal to guide them in modding one from an otherwise unfamiliar brand.

https://www.effectsdatabase.com/

[ElectricDruid]

I'm going to disagree with Mark. Because:

1) I don't do that very often, so it makes a change
2) The day and the month start with the same letter, and that doesn't happen all the time.
3) I can

I think the idea of starting with a simple kit is good. Kits are still pretty much guaranteed to have through-hole parts, and something like a booster or a basic overdrive is not so complicated you can't do it as your first one. Anyway, if it doesn't work, we'll help you fix it, right? Plus building the audio probe Matthew mentioned counts as extra soldering practice!

But hey, if you can find a DOD for cheap to mod, that's a fine way to go too. I just doubt that's as possible as it once was. You can probably buy a kit to build one for less^*


* I should probably do some actual research to find out if this is true before spouting off...

[Mark Hammer]

I will agree with Tom on one thing: that it may be hard to find a suitable 2nd hand unit to mod.  The pedal some kid may be selling as "vintage" may well be surface mount. At least with a kit, you know that it will be all thru-hole. If you get it up and running, THEN it can be time for mods.

And as much as I admire the various PCB-makers who bring the long-lost back to life, stick with a full kit of a beginner level of difficulty.  It may well cost a little more to have someone else provide a machined enclosure, stompswitch, and such, but the fewer steps are left up to the builder (ah jeez, did I accidentally order the surface-mount version of those chips?!  Are the caps I bought too big for the spacing on the PCB?) the greater the likelihood of success.  And you'd be surprised how much (mis-) spacing of holes on an enclosure can complicate a build.