DIY stompboxes listed by difficult

[rikk]

Hi everybody!
I think that it could be a good idea to ask all experts in this forum a simple question that in my opinion can be very useful for me and for all of you that want to face the study of the fantastic world of stompboxes for guitars. 
The question is:
What is your personal stompboxes ranking sorted by difficult?

For "difficult" I mean from the easiest stompbox to be designed/crafted to the hardest one.
The difficulty is intended to be considered related to the basic version of each guitar effect.

Thank you in advice for your fantastic answers! 

[GibsonGM]

Hi Rikk, welcome!  It's a good question, but one that will also have a few interpretations.  There are several ways to build a stomp...do you mean wiring it up yourself on perfboard, doing it on vero, making your own PCB..that kind of thing.  That matters (a lot, IMO).

But many common stomps do have 'levels of difficulty' associated with them.  I'll list a few, but there are so MANY, ha ha...everyone will have some to add.

Beginner: make an audio probe. Beginner project here, transistor boost.  Things like the LPB-1.  Transistor buffer.  Move on to opamp boost, then easy distortion like Distortion plus. Basic FET / MOSFET circuits like the Tillman preamp or mosfet boost.  Moving toward more complex things like a fuzz face.  Most of this stuff is based on common gain stages with just a few added parts.

Mid level:  Tube screamer, simple tremolos -- biasing the fuzz face correctly   entry level delays like those based on the PT2399, and simple chorus effects, but most require a PCB rather than perf. Distortions with active filter circuitry in them.  Advanced fuzzes like Tone Bender, Fender Blender.  Basic envelope filter circuits. These are mostly gain stages, low frequency oscillators (LFOs), filtering, specialized chips (delay...), making sections work with each other...maybe some power supply work belongs here too.  Headphone amps, small chip/transistor amps...

Advanced:  Univibe/Easy Vibe , chorus, delays, complex envelope filters (Lovetone Meatball..) and beyond - things utilizing exotic chips, things requiring specialized knowledge to get running. More complex amps and power supplies...logic-based stuff, synth circuits...

Hope that at least gets it started for you, there is a TON you could write into each category 

A well-organized builder may well be able to put together a very complex circuit from a kit, with a PCB...where someone like me, who builds on perf mostly, would have a VERY hard time.  So, some of the 'listing' this way is pretty subjective.

[Phend]

Don't forget soldering,  sometimes that is difficult.  Which is another recent topic.
Plus the offshoot SMD and small enclosures.

[Fancy Lime]

Designing something simple is the most difficult. I mean, a minimalist circuit that sounds good, is often harder to design than a complicated one that sounds similar. So I say: any one-knob fuzz that sounds good, is hard. For me, at least.

Andy

[antonis]

Beginner: Transistor buffer.

Is it so, Sir..??

[GibsonGM]

Beginner: Transistor buffer.

Is it so, Sir..??

I think so. But not if you design it from principles   

[ElectricDruid]

Ok, obviously this is a big complicated question and there are going to be lots of exceptions to every rule, but I'll have a crack at it and throw out a few general guidelines and everyone else is welcome to tell me why I'm wrong! 

Starting from simplest:

1) Treble boosters
The original "one transistor" circuit. You can't get much simpler than this. Set up right, they can sound great, but it's a question of tweaking what you've *got* to get what you *want*, which is not always easy.

2) Basic 60's fuzz
There are some of these that use barely more parts than the treble boosters. Getting them to *sound good* is a different story, but they're certainly amongst the simplest effects out there. Again, any difficulty comes in the tweaking. Back in the old days, no-one bothered with that, and they left it to Jimi Hendrix or his peers to do the selection when the pedals hit the shops.

3) Traditional Wahs
The original wah designs are simple and the hardest thing about them is getting the mechanical construction sorted out. If you've got a decent wah enclosure, you're good to go. But this may not be the cheapest project.

3) Early Overdrives and Distortions
Moving on to the early distortions and overdrives, a lot of them are pretty simple. I'm thinking of the DOD250, MXR Distortion+, and Boss DS-1. There are plenty of others since based on these. The Tube Screamer TS-808 is a bit more complicated, but probably falls in this category.

4) Basic compressors
The classic Ross / MXR Dynacomp  or Orange Squeezer are all pretty simple. That doesn't mean that building them and getting working is necessarily simple, since with compressors, a lot of people find it hard to know when they're on! (I'm in that group). Especially if they're not working correctly. Plus getting hold of the FETs many old designs use is getting tricky. So these can be hard to debug and hard to source parts parts for, if easy to build.

5) Tremolos
A tremolo is kind of like a compressor, except with a LFO changing the volume instead of the input signal. Whicn means you have to add an LFO (even if you remove an envelope detector) and you have to avoid the dreaded LFO ticking. Which make these generally harder.

6a) Phasers
There are lots of kinds of phasers, and they run from "pretty simple" with only a few stages, up to "crazy complicated" with many stages, so I've fairly arbitrarily stuck them here in the middle. Your *particular* phaser design could go up or down from here without any difficulty. The choices run to vactrols/lights+LDRs, FETs, OTAs, VCAs and beyond, and all offer their own quirks. Again, you've got an LFO and the ticking problems that often introduces.

6b) Envelope filters / Autowahs
Again, these vary a lot in complexity, so I've stuck them somewhat randomly here in the middle. For certain even the simplest will be more complicated than the simplest boosts or fuzzes, but they might not be too much more difficult than a simple overdrive. Like a compressor or a tremolo, you have either an envelope detector circuit or an LFO and then a filter circuit of some type (OTA, vactrol, whatever) so there's conceptually at least those two separate elements, and typically some input buffer or output mixer/buffer stages too.

7) Delays
A decent basic delay isn't *that* hard, but you're getting into more parts. You've got input and output mixers, and pre- and post-delay filters, and then you've got the actual delay itself, either digital (PT2399, we're looking at you!) or analog (ooh! even more complicated!). None of it is *hard* but there's a lot of stuff to get right.

8) Chorus
Basically, this is the same circuit as (7) above, except with the addition of the LFO from (5) or (6a or b). So it's got more parts than both, often.

9) Flangers
This is the same circuit as a chorus basically, except with the addition of feedback, which means that any noise problems you had with ( just got exponentially worse!! Aside from that there's no particularly difficulty, but that'll keep you busy enough!

10+) Anything that includes pitch shifting!?!
Honestly by the time you're doing stuff that gets you to this point in the list, you don't need me to tell you what's hard or what's not. By now, you'll know that, because you'll have skills enough to read a schematic and evaluate it for yourself.

Now, please don't think that I'm so conceited to think that this is any kind of final word on this, and as I mentioned on the way in, I'm sure there are lots of circuits in each category that can push their position either up or down from where I've put them. It *is* very much only a starting point for discussion, so I'd like to hear your views. The OP wanted "What is your personal stompboxes ranking sorted by difficult?" so that's what I've tried to do!

HTH

[mozz]

High parts count. Patience, good eyes.
Lab Series L5 preamp by Aion FX. I can't recall how many parts but close to 80 resistors, 40 capacitors, 12 I.C's, 12 pots, etc. I built it and it worked, but I used to make pcb's for a living. A friend of mine has the empty board sitting there and he is afraid to start it.

[niektb]

It's also a matter of size. Trying to squeeze a circuit into a 1590A is much harder than in a 1590BB.

But still, you can throw any kind of digital circuit at me and I will not blink an eye but I never even remotely dared to design a complex analog circuit such as compressors... I think I'm a little different in this aspect than most on this forum 

[rocky98]

Hi Rikk, welcome!

My suggestion would be to start with something light but that is somehow of an above average complexity, so you will realize where you are, I would like to suggest you start with a tube screamer, it is not the very easy but also not very complex and the satisfaction after you make it work will be great

[matopotato]

Hi and wel ome to the forum!
For me there are several aspects.
Getting a kit with all included, enclosure, wire, contacts etc is an easier project compared with finding a schematic and breadboaeding and later vero, perf or even making your own pcb.
I think others already replied quite clear on effect categories.
The above perspective would consider first getting a full kit from a reasonably known pcb/kit maker, and with an active help forum. Or check out here for earlier posting on your prospect. Very exotic builds might leave you a bit more on your own although you might be surprised by all the help you get here.
Then you could add some tweaking like moving an internal pot to the enclosure. Perhaps more for learning than usefulness. (The designer probably already thought it through)

Then consider building from scratch. I did a Fuzz Face from 70's TV parts, which was fun but more challenging than I  thought at first.

My guide has been more of "I really would like xyz pedal" since it motivates me more than going in a stepped easy to hard approach. Within reason of course.
You will more likely than not build something that just does not work. Troubleshooting is an integrated aspect of all this imho.

I am nowdays more into building what I want to try. So breadboard first. If I  like it, then move on to vero board or get pcb and the rest of the stuff. Saves me from building stuff that I will not use later on.
Still in reality I  confess that most prijects do become pedals in the end.
Get some boxes for components, small cupboard and you will soon have a collection of useful stuff.

[soggybag]

Read this article and then build a booster. From there move on to Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, Big Muff.

http://www.super-freq.com/stompbox-studies-class-1/

[iainpunk]

Beginner: Transistor buffer.

Is it so, Sir..??

I think so. But not if you design it from principles 

both the most basic beginner circuit, and also the ''end boss'' of the pedal building(/designing) game

how the difficulty scale looks and where which pedal is on that scale depends if you are interested in only building pcb's by others, plan to build vero, perf board, or if you plan to start designing circuits yourself. so i wouldn't put circuits on this scale, but ambitions.

1. easy
i estimate that about 80% of people who build DIY pedals don't progress beyond putting together kits / boards they buy, and only bother to learn about the most basic of electronics. the difficulty of boards and kits is a compound of board size and spacing between components.

1.5 a bit less easy
building loose boards instead of kits, sourcing your own components and sometimes even slightly modifying the circuit to taste.

2. medium
of the remaining 20%, i estimate 10% build layouts others have designed, which can be found all over the web.
the circuit complexity, parts count and density determine the difficulty.

2.5 a bit harder
designing your own layouts based on existing circuits

3. hard
of the remaining 10%, i guess 8% design circuits on the ''cut and paste'' methodology. designs often consist of cascaded ''circuit blocks''.

3.5 quite hard
of the remaining 2% i think 1.5% can do more complex systems, like re-design of circuit blocks, radically changing the function of an existing block

4. POSTAL-mode
the last 0.5% can design their own, unique and new circuit blocks. people like Jack Orman and Tim Escobedo come to mind.

i hope more experienced people find this accurate, and less experienced people find in helpfull

cheers

[percyhornickel]

Beginner: Transistor buffer.

Is it so, Sir..??

I think so. But not if you design it from principles 

both the most basic beginner circuit, and also the ''end boss'' of the pedal building(/designing) game

how the difficulty scale looks and where which pedal is on that scale depends if you are interested in only building pcb's by others, plan to build vero, perf board, or if you plan to start designing circuits yourself. so i wouldn't put circuits on this scale, but ambitions.

1. easy
i estimate that about 80% of people who build DIY pedals don't progress beyond putting together kits / boards they buy, and only bother to learn about the most basic of electronics. the difficulty of boards and kits is a compound of board size and spacing between components.

1.5 a bit less easy
building loose boards instead of kits, sourcing your own components and sometimes even slightly modifying the circuit to taste.

2. medium
of the remaining 20%, i estimate 10% build layouts others have designed, which can be found all over the web.
the circuit complexity, parts count and density determine the difficulty.

2.5 a bit harder
designing your own layouts based on existing circuits

3. hard
of the remaining 10%, i guess 8% design circuits on the ''cut and paste'' methodology. designs often consist of cascaded ''circuit blocks''.

3.5 quite hard
of the remaining 2% i think 1.5% can do more complex systems, like re-design of circuit blocks, radically changing the function of an existing block

4. POSTAL-mode
the last 0.5% can design their own, unique and new circuit blocks. people like Jack Orman and Tim Escobedo come to mind.

i hope more experienced people find this accurate, and less experienced people find in helpfull

cheers

Great words, I am not an expert but for most my builds I first use Lt Spice to simulate mods, I do eatch most of my boards too...     ....and even my enclosures are all handmade from scratch aluminum plates..        ...that´s why I love them all, hard work, lot of reading and study. This worth all of the time invested.

[cab42]

Iain, on your scale, I would probably be a solid 2.75. Its a well thought out list, however, I started doing my own vero layouts almost from the start. Designing vero layouts can be done without much (any?) electronics knowledge. It is mostly a question of being sure that components are connected the same way on the board as on the schematic.

I really like doing vero layouts. Much more fun than Soduko. But I'm not religious. If someone has made a good layout, I will use that or modify it. Until now I have only made two circuits on a premade pcb. A CE-2 clone and a submini tube preamp.

[Phend]

I am seemingly getting to the next level from the fuzz and distortion to tremolo, now phase 45, and possibly next a Rebote 2.5 delay.
After that I will probably need a snorkel.

[iainpunk]

Iain, on your scale, I would probably be a solid 2.75. Its a well thought out list, however, I started doing my own vero layouts almost from the start. Designing vero layouts can be done without much (any?) electronics knowledge. It is mostly a question of being sure that components are connected the same way on the board as on the schematic.

the scale is not a progression you go through, most people who arent in the 80% fully skipped that step, and most who are in that 80% won't progress beyond that.

i started out at a solid 3, but i thought of myself as a 3.5, so the first bunch of pedals i designed and build were actually really awful, and when i realised i was a 3, i put a lot of effort in learning and actually reached 3.5, and am still aspiring to become a 4

edit: i started out at level 3 because i was an electronic engineering student first
cheers

[StephenGiles]

Oddly enough, a very simple Rat distortion can very easily turn into the very hard category - happened to me back in the 80s when I stayed up almost all night getting one I built to work. I eventually discovered pin 3 of the LM308 was bent and not going into its socket!