Effects building workshop help ideas

[guitarelectronics]

I'm in the process of planning a guitar effects building workshop and would like opinions as to the most popular effects to offer. I want to decide on about six different designs to take students through breadboarding on their home built trainers, experiment with simple mods, then follow with pcb fabrication, and finally completing a project in a box.

I like boosters, like the stratoblaster or the lpb for their simplicity and usefulness, as well as LM386 based amps. So what I want is to find a few other effects to round out a beginner workshop. Simple through intermediate designs, useful and varried projects are what I'm looking for opinions for.

Thanks!!

[jkokura]

How about starting with a booster to start, a simple compressor next like the Orange Squeezer, a simple op amp overdrive next (tubescreamer?), maybe a more complex modulation pedal like a tremolo, followed with a PT2399 delay, and then a more complex dual pedal like an Overdrive with built in boost.

[guitarelectronics]

Thanks for the suggestions. The Orange squeezer might be a good one to move to after we go through a booster and a ruby type amp. And the TS is so ripe for simple mods, that might work out well too. In order to simplify the circuits, What's your (anyone with the experience) opinion on a TS808 vs the simpler ones like the runoffgroove tube reamer? I want to keep parts count down for beginners when they breadboard.

The Red Llama is another one I've had good luck with - very simple so we get most of them to work without a lot of troubleshooting, and pretty dramatic sound.

I notice another thread right now about someone teaching a workshop. Good luck to you. I've found teaching electronics construction to be much more interesting than building projects myself.

Any more input about favorite, simple pedals will be appreciated!
thanks

[jkokura]

I've built lots of Tube Screamers, I've tried the Tube Reamer, and I've built the Red Llama. You could say the Llama and Reamer are simpler, I'm not saying they aren't, but the Tube screamer sounds better (IMHO) and I'd rather have one of those. The complexity isn't that much more, and I don't think the parts count of a TS is anything too over the top for someone who's built a booster, ruby amp, and an orange squeezer. The EA Tremolo is another low parts count, easy to build pedal, and it's a bit different than all the pedals you've got lined up right now.

Jacob

[Quackzed]

maybee a rectified octave up effect... to give em a good solid idea of diode threshold / type function and rectification...
something visually simple like say the simple octave up, which also uses a little transformer as a bonus. maybee use some sockets and different types of diodes to have a 'lab' of sorts to see the effect of different diode thresholds...

also id do an opamp diode to ground distortion like the dist + or the ds-1, useful to understand biasing an opamp to vref or 1/2 supply as well as setting gain in an opamp. and clipping techniques..

the idea being to familiarize them with basic amplification stages and the different ways to clip, as well as some 'bonus' thing that you can do with a signal after amplifying... filtering rectifying clipping etc...

-make some cheat sheets with resistor color codes and cap codes to smooth over some of the technical stuff..

should be fun. bravo!

[Magnus]

Hello,
I think building a simple IC-Buffer as the first project is a good opinion to start with
because everyone needs it when more pedals are true-bypassed
and it has only six components to solder - this can be breadborded very well
and a first try on reading schematics can be learned very easy too with this circuit 

Just an idea...


Greetings
Magnus

[Philippe]

How cool...it'd be terrific if a number of recreational departments, adult education/extension programs offered a class like yours.

From the standpoint of increasing complexity with modding options, maybe something along the lines of...

AMZ Mini-Booster-->Fuzz Face-->Orange Squeezer-->Tubescreamer-->perhaps some modulation/time effects.

BTW, do you have a soldering proficiency prerequisite for class members?

[Soulfinger]

I notice another thread right now about someone teaching a workshop. Good luck to you. I've found teaching electronics construction to be much more interesting than building projects myself.

Good luck to you as well.  My workshop is starting as a one-off.  But as I've been talking with some of the guys that are going to participate, it's looking like it may turn into sort of a club.  We've moved the location from the gallery space (which will only be available to us temporarily ... despite the fact that I live in the building ) to a friend's art studio space, so we can now potentially have a regular meeting space. 

Anyway, this thread is offering some great ideas for follow up projects.  I hope your workshop(s) go well!

[oldrocker]

For super easy low parts count and mods try Howie's Metal Simplex.  Swapping LED colors and transistors on a breadboard would be a good starting point.