How long does it take you to make a pedal from scratch?

[stevie1556]

A few days for me, only because I take my boxes to a place to be milled, pick them up the next day and powder coat them, then drop the boxes back down at the place to be laser etched. While being laser etched, I'll build up the circuit, then when I pick the box up I do all the wiring.

When I get my own laser etcher (hopefully next month) and a milling machine in the summer, it will be a lot quicker and easier for me. I can get 4 boxes in my oven every 20 mins when I powder coat them, so if my boxes are the same colour then it's nice and quick.

[deadastronaut]

from concept / idea to finished pedal prototype=MONTHS ....

months of :

breadboarding...and swearing...

tweaking....lots of coffee, ...

testing......lots of beer n whiskey....then more celebratory whiskey when its finished.

even if its a tried n tested design, i like to breadboard it first...its the longest way round as i'm pretty anal about it , but i end up with what i like, and not a doorstop/dust collector. ..it also allows you to mod it and then incorporate those
mods into the 'finished' pcb.

i guess if i were to build a crude fuzz, it would take longer to drill and etch the box than build the actual circuit..  but yes in a day certainly, probably 2 even,  ..depends on the size of the project really..

[pinkjimiphoton]

takes me a good day to do the average fuzz, from fabricating the vero to boxing and tuning.

takes a half a day usually just to work the damn layout up.... before the build process.

but i am anal and slow.

not INTO anal slow. or fast. lol

[MrStab]

i'm a bit obsessive, i actually postpone coffee and smoking when i make pedals. nothing else makes me do that.

depending on the complexity, i usually finish all the circuitry in a day (unless there's some debugging or tweaking to be had) and i'll get it boxed up the next day. my enclosures don't have any artwork for the time being, and i'm too ham-fisted to make things look exceptional with any amount of effort, so i just go straight to measuring (ahem) and drilling.

by "a day", i'd say on average a circuit takes me 3-4 hours, then a varying amount of tweaking. i do try not to rush, though - the components may look a bit untidy, but i make damn sure they're all sturdy and isolated enough. my handwriting and guitar playing are messy after all these years, but they do the job. lol

as others have mentioned, planning takes some considerable time, too. but that's always fun for me, except with things like measuring. i like to have a rough idea of what mods i might perform and what the stock values are meant to do, but above all i think it's really important to read up on others' experiences of the circuit in question. i'm starting to always be sceptical of schematics or layouts, too, and think of how i can make this or that better or adapt stuff to my or friends' needs.

all-in-all i'd say the whole process averages 2-3 days for me, if i plan to actually box up and use the pedal.

[MrStab]

not INTO anal slow. or fast. lol

ah, so medium? lol

[pinkjimiphoton]

as long as i'm not on the recieving end of it, i'm ok with it... lol

[gutsofgold]

Too long to make a career out it

[Jdansti]

as long as i'm not on the recieving end of it, i'm ok with it... lol

Involuntary pucker.   

[Canucker]

This thread makes me feel better about myself. I thought I was slow but I guess I'm not all that slow by comparison. The thing that takes me the longest is getting my printer to work to get designs to etch my pcb's from. Getting motivated to do some steps is often a problem...the biggy is wiring a switch into something and putting it in a box...I have countless functioning effects that are without switches. Sometimes debugging takes me for eeeeeeeeeevvver but I really only got into this on a more serious level last year...I did five projects before last year (or was that the year before?)... I started building a small clone last spring and only got it operational (as the emperor would say) last week. It was working before that but with a dramatic volume drop which made me think an ic or transistor was damaged...I dug up the project after long abandoning it and just gobbed on more solder....I couldn't see a spot that looked like it was lacking but I just wanted to make sure by freshening it up....and like magic it sprang to life and now its the fave thing that I've built (also the highest parts count).
I hate off board wiring cus it feels like it takes for ever...it was when I was using heat shrink on every pot lug and jack...I think I'm over doing that though. For a while I was surface mounting my switches so the pcb but it ends up consuming a lot of space in an enclosure because of the way it sits (though I'm sure I could have worked designs a bit different to save space).

[duck_arse]

Mark Hammer
If the circuit is simple enough, AND I have all the parts sitting around ready, AND I don't do anything stupid, .....

wait a minute, nobody said I had to add stupid time. I take it upon myself, ESPECIALLY with case work, to make every possible error so others won't have to. and then I do it all twice, just to be sure I got it wrong the first time.

italianguy63
I've started buying cheap divided plastic containers at harbor freight-- then I put the components for each particular build in the compartments.  So depending on what I am working on, I grab that container.....  And, I keep extensive notes .....

I end up with no parts for what I'm building now, they all picked out in boxes for "other projects". and if I have to read any notes I might have written, that's another couple of days gone. you seen my writing?

I thought all fuzzes were crude.


[edit:] measure?

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Prototyping: HATE it!

Etching, Building , and wiring the PCB: LOVE it!!!

Enclosure work: LOATHE IT!!! 

I find that the enclosure work is usually 60-70% of my total time. And I am not as OCD about the look as most! 

Some people have access to the tools to make it easy (screen printing, laser engraving, etc.) so I guess the enclosure work is quite enjoyable but, I do not. So, it is all grunt work for me! 

[Mark Hammer]

If the circuit is simple enough, AND I have all the parts sitting around ready, AND I don't do anything stupid, AND I've worked out all the mods I want to do, I can put something together on a Saturday afternoon.

But here is what "ready" implies:
1) The box is powder-coated, or otherwise painted and drilled
2) I have a tested PCB layout or the circuit is a simple two-transistor thing that I can very easily fit on a small piece of perf
3) I either have an etched PCB or have a nice fresh etchant bath and a clean piece of copper board of the right size
4) I don't have to fish around for the right wire or any tools
5) I don't have to fish around for the right components, or rummage through my bag of cannibalized resistors for soething that is both the right uncommon value AND has enough lead length left
6) I can do the legending and semi-bake the clearcoat over the legending without buggering anything up and needing to strip the surface and repaint

It is the dumb stuff that takes the time, not the actual making.

I guess that rules out the «Saturday afternoon» Hyperflange...

Well, funny you should mention that, because it nicely illustrates some of what takes up the time.  In this case, the board is stuffed, the chassis is drilled, painted, and legended, the power transformer is mounted, and most of the jacks are installed.  It's been like that for a while.  So why isn't it up and running?

Well, although all offboard components comfortably go where they're supposed to, I cut the wires for one of the toggles too short, such that when I mount the toggle to the chassis, the holes on the board for the standoffs don't line up with the holes in the chassis.  SOOOOO, I need to uninstall the toggle (which means stripping the heat shrink tubing off the solder lugs, and removing the hot glue from the board that I had applied as strain relief for the leads coming from the board), cut new wire for it, and re-install, on a board that has over 10 chassis-mounted controls and their wires coming off it, and about 8 jacks already installed.  So, I could either remove absolutely everything from the chassis, or try and do the toggle re-install with everything still in place.

All in all, a very cumbersome task, precipitated by one small measurement/judgment error.  Like I say, it's the dumb stuff that imposes the most delay on time-to-finish.

And to respond to someone's earlier comment, making one of anything, for the first time, takes a long time.  Making the second, third, and fourth, takes much less time.  By that point, all of the mistakes have been made, learned from, and neatly sidestepped.  Removing the dumb stuff from the equation cuts the time down dramatically.

As an aside, one of the things I do as part of my government analyst job is study how long it takes to hire someone (and yes, we know it takes a long time).  A few years ago, I decided to insert a list of "dumb stuff that gets in the way" in our managers survey, and just asked people to check off whether this happened to them or that happened.  I'm confident the list of dumb stuff is not comprehensive, but it was a nice sampling of the potential spectrum of dumb stuff.  The hypothesis was that it wouldn't really matter what they had checked off, but rather how many things they had checked off.  And sure enough, the time they told us it had taken to hire was a strikingly linear function of how many of the things on the list they had checked off.  And if one of those things happens, and extends the time, then the odds go up that something else will happen, and compound the situation. 

Of course, no one really plans for any of that to happen, the same way I never plan for a gust of wind to blow a piece of twig into the garage and on to the box I've just sprayed, or the thermostat on the toaster oven to be juuuuussssstttt a little bit off and roast the paint on the sides of the box to a crispy bubbly finish that Guy Fieri would be proud of, or the phone to ring and the resulting phone call to go on too long so that the board I'm etching in the garage gets overetched and has to be redone, or my last carbide bit to snap off before I'm finished drilling and none are available anywhere in the city, or....you get the picture.

[tubegeek]

So Mark:

I guess grafting a short wire link into the middle and shrink-tubing over the solder joints is off the table?

It might be the least of twenty evils, and also fall neatly under the KISS doctrine. But it would also be shameful, and wrong. So you'd have that stain on your conscience forever (or until you fixed it, I guess. But probably forever.) But at least you'd have a working pedal!

[Mark Hammer]

Oh it can work, Jeremy, but it is still a bloody awkward space to work in.  Add it to the list of "If only I'd thought of this before I did all of that".

[tubegeek]

it is still a bloody awkward space to work in.

Shoemaker's elves then?

[Jdansti]

it is still a bloody awkward space to work in.

Shoemaker's elves then?

Now that's just plain ridiculous!  This is more like it...

[davent]

it is still a bloody awkward space to work in.

Shoemaker's elves then?

Now that's just plain ridiculous!  This is more like it...

That's not far off... Got a usb endoscope to set up a drilling rig but am going to employ it to help me see what i'm doing in repairing the power button in an ipod.

Endoscope view.

[Mark Hammer]

So Mark:

I guess grafting a short wire link into the middle and shrink-tubing over the solder joints is off the table?

It might be the least of twenty evils, and also fall neatly under the KISS doctrine. But it would also be shameful, and wrong. So you'd have that stain on your conscience forever (or until you fixed it, I guess. But probably forever.) But at least you'd have a working pedal!

I took your advice and made the splice tonight.  The board is now successfully mounted on standoffs.  Most progress I've made in a year.

Woo-hoo, we're cooking with gas now!

[tubegeek]

I took your advice and made the splice tonight.  The board is now successfully mounted on standoffs.  Most progress I've made in a year.

Woo-hoo, we're cooking with gas now!

Shameful. Not only the shrink-tubing, which was bad enough, but taking advice from ME.

I hope you can enjoy your pedal with all that horrible baggage.

[deadastronaut]

@dave , nice setup, i think i need one of those now, my eyes are shot...

is that a usb endo?..