Anyone Feel That There Is Just Too Much!??

[christobean]

RUBY RUBY RUBY, and all teh other 386 based stuff that have came out of here, like teh aussie compressor, etc.

[rhys]

My top 5 favorite builds so far:
-tube screamer
-ross (with release mods and clean blend)
-ruby
-folk fuzz de luxe
-amz mosfet booster

[smnm]

Another vote for the Ruby - I built it just because I have a load of 386s, and an old radio extension speaker to put it in, but now it's probably my most used amp!

A lot of my motivation for doing this stuff is making original designs that take you somewhere else apart from  the usual clones - if you want some diffferent sounds check out Tim Escobedo's designs - the PWM is pretty easy and HUGE, the Uglyface is harder but very satisfying. Colin Raffell's Parallel Universe fuzz (v1) is another favourite - I built it with the Dragonfly vero layout and it's excellent!

[RaceDriver205]

Wasn't the question about 5 favourite effects tho, not about amps?

[alderbody]

There are soundclips of pedals everywhere on the web.

Listen carefully and make up your mind accordingly.

nobody can tell you what you like/need.

Narrow your options and then ask for ideas/experiences/mods/etc...

Good luck!

[Mark Hammer]

With the various low-cost pedals out there from Behringer and Danelectro, among many others, often being cheaper than what it would cost you in parts, your original question is perhaps best framed by asking "What is something worthwhile for me to build that will almost ALWAYS be useful and not be replaced by a ridiculous inexpensive product that suddenly appears on the market?"

That is not to say that anything you manage to select from the immense array of choices will NOT be worth your while, or sound good, or be modified to have features that no commercial product currently does.  But the fact remains that when FAB pedals can provide what appear to from all accounts quite decent sounds (and staggeringly good sounds when you consider they can often be bought for what most folks might spend on busfare to work, a cup of coffee, and lunch....for just one working day), there is little incentive to bust your chops for something that might not sound as good, or be anywhere near as reliable, for twice the price.

So, what might have enduring, or at least practical, value?  I often recommend building a loop selector as one of the first few projects, largely because it solves so many problems and is relatively easy to construct.  You will ALWAYS have a need to "manage" your pedals in groups, and this solves that problem.  Moreover, it seems like every month there is a thread here by someone who feels the compulsion to install true bypass in a pedal that doesn't truly merit it, and folks here will recommend a loop selector as a way of providing true bypass without destroying the other pedal/s.

A second recommendation is a decent power supply that can power what you anticipate acquiring/building.  I can not recommend highly enough the building of a power distribution box.  That is, a box that will adapt an existing wall-wart to provide power to multiple pedals (sometimes at different voltages or polarities) so that you don't have to have lots of wallwarts at once or have unwieldy daisy-chain cables on a pedalboard.

Finally, in the same way that it seems you can buy kids clothes with all kinds of crap on them for peanuts, but have to pay top dollar if you want to buy a shirt for a kid that is just a solid colour, build a clean booster.  These are always useful, and sometimes having more than one on hand is also useful.  Unlike so many effects, despite their lower parts count and simpler construction, clean boosters tend not to appear on the market in budget form.

[markm]

Finally, in the same way that it seems you can buy kids clothes with all kinds of crap on them for peanuts, but have to pay top dollar if you want to buy a shirt for a kid that is just a solid colour, build a clean booster.  These are always useful, and sometimes having more than one on hand is also useful.  Unlike so many effects, despite their lower parts count and simpler construction, clean boosters tend not to appear on the market in budget form.

This is a very strange "paradox", for lack of a better term, in today's effects market isn't it?
I wonder if it's just because of the popularity of boosters in general and the "mojo" associated with them?
Strange though.

[petemoore]

 Finally, in the same way that it seems you can buy kids clothes with all kinds of crap on them for peanuts, but have to pay top dollar if you want to buy a shirt for a kid that is just a solid colour, build a clean booster.  These are always useful, and sometimes having more than one on hand is also useful.  Unlike so many effects, despite their lower parts count and simpler construction, clean boosters tend not to appear on the market in budget form.

 Not strange, just seems so.
 Most of us know boosters are in our distorters, how useful boost alone can be at home or at the gig or.. be a hard sell...when you have the weeks lunch money and are at the store shopping for an 'effect', trying out a boost has a good chance of:
 Not sounding very 'effect-ey' compared to a distorter/booster, or phaser, not cranking the amp to an 'edge' where it does it's cool tricks, simply sounding alot like the amp used to try it out, just a bit higher volume...
 Boost seeming like a very subtle effect which a volume twist could do.
 Chances are slight that:
 Boost gets put in front of distorter you already have at the music store, driving it to a nice, higher gain distortion than was already being had.
 Boost hits an amp hard enough [and amp turned up enough] for it to 'do tricks'.
 Boost does enough during the 'store sampler session' to shine, probably often passed over because 'it doesn't do much'.
  Listing user requirements for optimum variability of use might be useful, something marketers like to avoid wording, boils down to: you need other equipment of type and settings X, Y,  and YX for this thing to do much, it's an easier sell to just put the booster in front of the distorter, have 3 knobs.
  In the commercial boost dept. there are great ones avaialable, on order, some nice 2 in 1 Boost/Dist products, also 'in guitar' kits.
 

[R.G.]

it seems you can buy kids clothes with all kinds of crap on them for peanuts, but have to pay top dollar if you want to buy a shirt for a kid that is just a solid colour,

MBA disease again, and an excellent analogy.

Simple good quality *anything* is not flashy, so it can't be pushed by advertising. I once read that advertising is purely for the middle-to-low-income people. These are the people who have some disposable income but have to apportion it, and want what they buy to appear better than they spent for it. The very poor buy only what they simply must have, and the wealthy buy whatever they want, and so are somewhat immune to being 'sold'. Things that can't be pushed by advertising hit a small, select clientele and so have a lower potential market size and to get a return on investment commmensurate with the high volume market, you have to get top dollar for the goods. And then there's that "good quality" thing, meaning you can't easily cheapen the goods.

Boosters are not as flashy, and don't have the perceived guitar-god image, so they don't sell to newly-minted 14 year old guitar wannabes like glow-in-the-dark, flame-spouting, guitar-god-endorsed, firebreathing distortion pedals.

The MBA mind set also apportions customers into customers you want and ones you don't want. That's what that word "demographic" means to an MBA. It's the set of people whose age, culture, ethnicity, experiences, and so on make them suckers for whatever you're pitching. Selling to these people needs the simplest, cheapest and most easily done advertising. Convincing someone outside the demographic to buy costs a lot more to do. And they're more likely to be critical customers, evaluating their purchases in the cold light of day, not a haze of semi-fulfilled expectations. Customers outside the demographic may actually cost more in returns and warranty work than they provide in purchases.

To the MBA, if people would just leave their money on the ground and back away slowly, no one - but the customer - would get hurt.

[Doug_H]

With the various low-cost pedals out there from Behringer and Danelectro, among many others, often being cheaper than what it would cost you in parts, your original question is perhaps best framed by asking "What is something worthwhile for me to build that will almost ALWAYS be useful and not be replaced by a ridiculous inexpensive product that suddenly appears on the market?"

Good point about being somewhat fickle about what you build. This is why I always encourage breadboarding and experimenting before you commit anything to solder. There's no sense building something run of the mill when you could buy it for $15.

However, I'll also point out that every one of my 3 Fab pedals, at different times, has rotated on my pedalboard and then inevitably rotated back off, for good. Leaving aside the plastic construction quality discussion and focusing on the sound- the Fab pedals are decent. They produce workaday sounds. They are a great buy, fantastic for the price. But they just don't work for me beyond a "Gee, that was cool for $15" sort of context.

I will say the Fab Distortion lasted longer than the other two, in a separate loop with a dedicated graphic EQ. But it takes less pedalboard space to use my own stuff than to "band aid" a $15 pedal into something I can use. I like running my amp clean and bright. The Fab Dist needed more rolloff, esp with something like a strat. The Fab pedals work great in a pushbutton world where it's "Okay, time for the van halen sound <click>", but not necessarily great in my world where I like working the guitar volume and pickup selector to change sounds. I don't ever change distortion pedals during a song. Not that I couldn't- I just don't... The pedal plays a supporting role to the guitar, and the pedal  choice reflects the mood of the song.

There's nothing particularly crazy about my amp setup or "gee-whizbang" about the pedals I've built for myself. It's just that for some reason the Fab stuff seems more "canned" in some ways. They seem more like toys than tools. But I don't regret buying them. There's nothing wrong with toys.

[Mark Hammer]

For someone who is just entering the DIY sphere, there is a rather substantial initial outlay in terms of tools, and the amassing of a parts inventory.  I guess my comments were to provide some direction towards first projects that are "keepers", and that would accommodate whatever direction ANY player's whimsy might take them in future.

Even when the person's budget can easily accommodate shelling out money for exotic chips and such, tastes change and something that sounds amazing in a soundclip can end up being much less inspiring a few weeks later.  Seasoned builders can take on a project, and whip it up in an evening, so when disappointment happens it's no great loss.  When a beginner spends several weeks of free time wrestling with first projects, and has to wait that duration to have some sort of viable product, the result can be a bit of a pleasant surprise for a brief instant, but very shortly thereafter the bloom quickly falls off the rose when the limitations emerge.

So, the projects I recommend are like the basic black shift, or blue blazer and grey flannel pants of pedals.  Something you know will always be useful, and suit a great many situations and contexts.  Obviously not as sexy as many hope for, but the gist is to find a reason to feel like self-made projects add real and lasting value. and like the money you had to shell out to get started was not a waste of a precious resource.

Doug notes that his excitement over the various $15 FAB pedals has often waned.  I suspect this is true of a lot of us, except that the more money and/or time you spend in acquiring/building a pedal, the longer it will seem to have a magnetic attraction.  When the pedal seems almost disposable by virtue of its ease of build or low purchase cost, it's easier to fall out of love with it.

[Doug_H]

So, the projects I recommend are like the basic black shift, or blue blazer and grey flannel pants of pedals.  Something you know will always be useful, and suit a great many situations and contexts. 

I agree, and didn't respond because my post was getting way too long already.;-) The loop selector is one of the most useful boxes I've built. A booster is a good idea too. Both are fairly simple and a good way to get started and end up with something you will really use.

[Ge_Whiz]

1. Keep early builds simple.
2. Build things that you cannot, or would not, buy from the shops - Green Ringer, Clean booster, Treble booster, Fuzz Face, Peppermill, Phuncgnosis, amp simulator...

[JonFrum]

Doug notes that his excitement over the various $15 FAB pedals has often waned.  I suspect this is true of a lot of us, except that the more money and/or time you spend in acquiring/building a pedal, the longer it will seem to have a magnetic attraction.  When the pedal seems almost disposable by virtue of its ease of build or low purchase cost, it's easier to fall out of love with it.

Now there's a good point. If we allow for the power of G.A.S., then the tendency to move on to the next shiny bauble is probably inversely proportional to cost. There's a corollary to this: the resale value issue. When guys say they don't want to buy a guitar because it doesn't have a good resale value. You don't even own one yet, and you're already thinking about selling it? How about buying a guitar to play it??? If you want to buy and sell, get an E-trade account.

I may buy one of those FAB pedals just to get used to playing with chorus. In time, I'll be able to build my own, with my own mods and tuned to my own needs. I can't build a chorus for $15, but they can't build MY chorus for $15 either. In any case, I'll get $15 of use out of the Dano before I'm through with it. And when I'm through, I'll be able to A/B it with my DIY pedal and show how much better mine is.   

[mongo]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned  the BIG MUFF in any of it's variants...

Andy

[solarplexus]

I tried to build many pedals, failed to build many.  I got some working and now I am planing to start back soldering.  I tried to build pedals that were, IMO, overpriced, rare, unavailable from a large company (boss, ibanez, etc), vintage, or that the cost price used or new was lower than the cost price for a DIY.  Other than that, I wouldn't waste my time building stuff that is available and that cost around the same as building my own and saving lots of time and frustration... but for example... a BSIABII ... can't find it anywhere... a great univibe under 70$ ... pretty rare to find too and if it did, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't include the photocouplers, etc.   

So...

Build something you can't get in stores, otherwise... buy it second hand.

[Mark Hammer]

Good points from one and all.

Probably one of the best first builds is to simply  pick up something second hand that can be easily adapted or modded to do other tricks.  That won't necessarily be a keeper, but on the other hand it will likely be something that sidesteps a lot of the typical steps involved in making something from absolute scratch, and shortens the list of troubleshooting spots.  Again, this is in keeping with the notion of getting from "good idea" to functionality...fast.

In that spirit, what are some good suggestions for existing pedals that:
1) you can often buy cheap second hand
2) have some space on the chassis for adding a switch or two or extra pot, and/or some space on the board for doing some mods
3) will do something interesting with a few easy changes
4) have low risk of failure

[markm]

Build something you can't get in stores, otherwise... buy it second hand.

I on the other hand, build whatever whether it's available or not.
It's just a hobby and I can honestly say, none of the effects I use to play music are store-bought. I built every one of 'em.  

[idlechatterbox]

QUOTE:
"There's no sense building something run of the mill when you could buy it for $15."

I think I see what you're saying, but it's easy to take that line of thinking too far. By that reasoning, one could say to someone with a $1000 PRS, "hey, what's the point of paying all that money so you can try to sound like Santana, when you can download a Santana song for .75 cents and really sound like Santana???"

The answer would be that there is some pleasure/thrill/frustration in creating the sound (or trying to!), rather than simply listening to it, even if one technically loses money in the process. I know some people here play live, and I suspect that few evaluate their decision in purely financial terms.


Not that I've taken a poll, but I also suspect that few get into DIYing just to save money. There's a certain cache at being able to point to a pedal and say you built it, or modded it, rather than you eBayed it. It's cool to lose money sometimes. 

If I understand the original question correctly, it was getting at the fact that there are so many choices, and it's hard to decide solely on rational terms. So I took the original poster to be asking, "whether on rational or irrational grounds, which are the 'must build' pedals" 

That's my interpretation anyway. I don't mean to put words in anyone's mouth. Have a great monday 

[Steben]

Since you build a P1 and working on a 36watter, I guess tube tone isn't that special for you. i would recommend leavin the BSIAB(II) and other amp-tone boxes on the future shelf.

I agree to what Mark said: don't refuse a commercially cheap yet respectful pedal. Unless it is a really simple build and you want the educational aspect of it. I guess the diode clippers are in this league: MXR+, OD250, blue clipper,...

Yet the opposite exists too indeed: simple builds - albeit with some tweaking but that's fun ;-) - that costs relative fortunes if you know what's inside.
This is the core starters business of DIY: it's fun, it's economic and it's even often very good. I'm talking about treble boosters, clean boosters and of course the fuzz faces. A couple of parts and you have history at your feet.

The next step is mojo: germanium boulevard, univibe corner, vintage wha's, octave land,...

And before you know it, you lost your playing technique.  

So here you go: make yourself a Fuzz Face first. If you don't, you'll be surprised how fast you will say: hey, why did I forget tha Fuzz Face?!?
At least, with a Fuzz Face, you still need you technique to make magic out of it. If you go for metal distortion, it's lost in 5 minutes.