Can you order your builds from easiest to hardest?

[puddinstone]

I've done some searches and been reading alot and I feel like have a pretty good idea on what's easy (fuzz and boosts...) but I just wanted to see how you guys would rate your builds.

Specific circuits if possible.  thanks.

[tiges_ tendres]

I hate to be mister pedantic, but easy to hard is kind of a weird classification for me.

If it means amount of parts, size of board, that's one thing.
I could solder 200 resistors pn one board all day!

I find the more difficult projects are ones where parts NEED to be matched.  Jfet phasers, for example.  But thats because I dont have a multimeter!  I'm sure it's easy when you have one of those.

Modulation tends to be more complicated for me, matching parts, trimpots being acurately set.

[newbie builder]

Easy projects are those with a PCB and few pots. Doesn't matter how complicated the PCB is- that's easy. The more pots the more work. On perf the amount of resistors, capacitors etc. matters much more. Perfing some basic overdrives and boosts is fine, but more complicated stuff is really a PITA. That makes the Folk Fuzz 3,5% my hardest build (perf board with unverified layout that I had to correct and more parts than other builds on perf) and the easiest an IC buffer (no knobs, switch, just led and jacks)

[KerryF]

My opinion on from hardest to easiest (in most cases):
Chorus- Reverb- Delay- Overdrive- Distortion- Fuzz- Boost.  I know I forgot Flanger and Phaser and such, but I havent checked them out, throughly.

[Stephen]

Its all HOW you approach the project...
They are all hard

They are all easy


The hard thing is diagnosis and personal design.

The easy thing is follow the schemes!!

Have fun with it it will be challenging.....

[christobean]

The hard thing is diagnosis and personal design.

i dont think building anything can be classified as hard, but getting anything to work can be hard.  the build with the least amount of parts and pots could turn out to be your worst nightmare troubleshooting.  that is what i think is the hardest: troubleshooting and dealing with dumb mistakes.

[newbie builder]

Yeah but since troubleshooting is the nightmare a smaller parts count project will have less parts to go wrong- that's why they are easier to build AND get working IMHO.

[bwanasonic]

It also depends on how you plan to build your first circuit (i.e. perf, DIY PCB, kit, etc.). Part count is not always a reliable measure either, as the Fuzz Face and Rangemaster are low part count builds, but can be troublesome for first-time builders, especially those without a DMM, and especially for those who decide to adopt a PNP/ neg. ground version. Two builds I would classify as relatively easy (of ones I have personally built) are the ROG Fetzer Valve, and the Bazz Fuss. For me the project with the best simplicty/ utility ratio, is the AMZ Mosfet boost, but a number of other *simple* boosters might work just as well for you.

Kerry M

[george]

I built a fuzzface that I absolutely could NOT get to work

...until I figured out one of the leads on the battery snap was actually broken inside the insulation

Before then I had successfully built a small clone chorus (from a tonepad PCB) and a PAIA Stack-in-a-Box (with LOTS of off-board wiring)

As a rule though the ones that I bulit from ready made PCBs that I bought were easier, because it was like "paint by numbers".  All I had to do was check component values and orientations, solder neatly, follow any build directions and the effect worked usually first time.  Hooray for GGG and Tonepad!

I built a dynacomp clone on perfboard that worked but sounded so crappy I couldn't understand why other people thought it was worth building.  Then I checked some voltages (after seeing a post with voltages in the forum) and realised that one of the envelope followers wasn't working properly.  Once I fixed that, I understood.  Hooray for the Forum!

So from my experience:

- you need to be able to understand the circuit you are building (esp if perfing)
- you need to check all your components 3 times wrt correct value, orientation, pinout etc
- you need to learn to solder well, and recognise bad soldering (eg cold joints, solder bridges, etc, a magnifying glass comes in handy here)
- you need a multimeter to check voltages, expected resistances etc
- you need an audio probe
- you need to be prepared to investigate ALL the possible causes of failure

Finally hooray for RG and the "What to do if it doesn't work" sticky!

[GibsonGM]

I gotta go with George's rules up there...sounds like the voice of experience 

My most difficult was my 1st fuzz face - sheer inexperience made it seem like it had 10x the parts that are really there!  But as G. said, I learned to understand the circuit, and after a while I found out that it sounded like crap because it was improperly biased - learned thru breadboarding & experimenting w/component values.  I rebuilt one using 60's Q's I got out of an old clock radio, and that mother screams, with a bias pot for temp. drift.  I use it at gigs.  Playing with input & output caps taught a lot about tone control and just what freq. input affects distortion and how.

Moving from that, I modded my 1977 Crybaby wah to make it 'sparklier'.   I then built the Easy Vibe, which was way out of my league in terms of understanding what each section does.  Luckily, tho, it scared me so much that I double/triple checked everything.  It didn't work at first, forcing me to learn all about what each opamp section really does (audio probe, etc). The only error was a solder bridge to ground in 1 place, had it up & running 10 mins. after completing it.  Most of my mistakes happen when I get overconfident 

Phuncgnosis was not a very hard build, took some tweeking of the filter cap values to get it where I wanted it. That's one fun circuit!

I just finished a BMP clone, and after all the learning from the earlier projects, I went right ahead and put in the original tone stack and the Big Swollen Pickle tone caps, switchable.  Sounds awesome!  The shrill of my old Melody Maker is gone in the incredible bass boost that thing puts out! 

So, there's no real "more hard", after you get up to speed & start to understand what each part of an effect is doing.  Understanding how all the components function, Ohm's Law & basic electronics, learning to troubleshoot and reading this forum for a couple of months make each one easier (When it Doesn't Work FAQ!!). 

[MartyMart]

... Not really , the hard ones are always the ones that "dont work" right off and need serious
de-bugging !
That can be a simple circuit or a complex circuit !
George has it 'down"
I have a P90 that I just can;t get to work at all, posted recently all the info/voltages and got
zero replies ...

MM

[RaceDriver205]

Easiest effect: Lofi from GGG
Hardest effects: Anything with hard to get parts, the String Ringer, the Active Ring Mod, the Microsynth (all of which I have yet to make work)

[shadowmaster]

... Not really , the hard ones are always the ones that "dont work" right off and need serious
de-bugging !
That can be a simple circuit or a complex circuit !
George has it 'down"
I have a P90 that I just can;t get to work at all, posted recently all the info/voltages and got
zero replies ...

MM

I agree. I once built a Phase45 and Rebote Delay 2 around the same time and I had a little difficulty in building both of them but man...! when I was building the Green Ringer, which is way more simple in terms of circuit design than those two effects mentioned above, I really had a hard time getting it to work until I got tired looking for what could the problem be. I had my non-functioning(no sound coming out of its output) Green Ringer vegetating for months and decided to cannibalize some of its parts particularly its jacks, switch and enclosure. For some reason I tried testing my Green Ringer(then guts only) again before deciding to recycle more of it's components this time, but lo and behold! It did spit an octave sound. I suspect that I had probably shorted a connection off-board.

[petemoore]

I built a fuzzface that I absolutely could NOT get to work
  Hard is: when the information you need to 'continue' is contained on the other side of a wall, which you don't have tools and techniques to get over or through.
  EZ is...when you know it's easy because you've limited the 'luck' factor...every resistor was measured Just prior to it's installation, the transistor pinout to circuit is clear and has been read and checked twice, and you know all the 'stuff' you need to know, when you need to know it [or don't mind doing reference work To know it], you had some coffee and the circuit fired up the first time.
  The difficulty of debugging a gain stage is the same whether it is the 5th in a series of them [like in a Jfet amp sim], or whether it is the 1rst stage in a 1 stage booster [Fetzer Valve], in some cases the stages are identical...of course if a DC stage coupling cap is missing...that could add an extra wall to your multi-stage debugging that a single stage needs also, it's just a little easier to spot 1 cap missing when there are a total of 2 caps instead of 10.
  "Extra' instructions...like matching Jfets, presents new walls between you and the information you need to understand to get on the other side...the one where you're using the Matching Fixture to do the job.
  Biasing Ge transistors is another 'wall', not too hard to get over, whenever a bias issue needs resolved, you'll know how to hop right over that wall after doing it a 'few' times.
  So to purport my viewpoint, there is no easy or hard to it, easy is only had when you've attained the information, processed and stored it where you can find it...my memory isn't what it used to be and my computer skills aren't legendary...
  "hard' to one person that hasn't a clue WTF is what, is easy to another person who understands what each part can do, why it does different things depending on how/where it is applied to a circuit, and has wired up a buncha active circuits...aquiring all the necessary skills and 'noggin fodder' to do a gain stage without looking at a whole lot of 'complicated' print [I'm using complicated like 'hard'...it's really a bunch of elemental stuff bundled together to look complicated.
  BTW a good bit of this stuff still looks complicated or 'hard' to me.
  Then there's digital...

[Mark Hammer]

It is true that sometimes the simplest circuit (on paper) can be one of the hardest to get working.  Sometimes this is because the problem is something so obvious that we don't even see it.

That aside, projects become harder to get working:

• the more off-board wiring there is (especially if it needs to be shielded)
• the more switches and pots there are
• the more socketed components there are
• the more FETs and japanese transistors there are (so many pinout confusions!)
• the more trimpots need to be set
• the more cramped the board is (hard to spot solder bridges)
• the more ground connections there are to be made (e.g., making sure the jacks and pots are grounded)
• the tighter the squeeze into the chassis (where assuring that things are NOT getting grounded becomes an issue)
• the more parts there are whose state is uncertain (is that the right chip? did I manage to avoid frying that CMOS chip?  did I bugger up that transistor when I cannibalized it from that other board? etc.)

And as others have mentioned, understanding the circuit makes things so much easier.

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

http://www.tonepad.com/projects.asp?projectType=fx&orderBy=difficulty

You can sort the projects list by difficulty, category and project name by clicking on the column header.

Fp

[jmusser]

So far, it's been the MXR Bluebox for the hardest and Noise 567 for easiest. All of mine are on perf board, so it's gets ugly for me when I have to wire up a lot of chip sockets, because the wires get so close together, and don't want to stay on the chip pen before you solder them. Wire wrap sokets help with that, but the standard PC sockets are a real challenge.

[oldrocker]

I sympathize with Shadowmaster.  I've built some pretty hairy effects in terms of perf but the Green Ringer just about did me in.  Like Shadow I moth balled it for a month.  I took the jacks, battery clips for other projects and almost gave up on it.  (And that would've been a first for me.)  When I got back to it I actually found a circuit problem and didn't know it worked because I had the trannys in backwards.
In a way I like it when a project is hard.  There's more satisfaction when it finally works although I get impatient sometimes.  That's why I perf every project.  It forces me to think more and I learn more from the builds.  R.G. recently helped me with my DOD 280 build which I thought would've been a quote "Easy build".  It ended up being one of the hardest I've done so far.  But I learned how to test a Vactrol LED/LDR to see if it's actually working.  So IMHO the harder a build the more you learn so there is a payback there.  No matter how complicated a circuit is (number of parts) or simple a circuit seems if it works the first time or with a little debug it's easy if you have a heck of a time getting it to work it's hard.