Which types of pedals are better for DIY?

[nosajwp]

Which types of pedals are better suited for building yourself, and which types are better suited (easier, more cost effective, better results) for buying already built?  I'm trying to decide which types of pedals I should think about building myself, versus types of pedals that would be better and easier to just go out and buy.

[bancika]

most overdrive pedals, boosters and similar stuff are better for DIY

[MartyMart]

Well not better, so much as easier and more cost effective 

Dont get "fooled" into thinking that this is a way to make "cheap" pedals, believe me IT"S NOT !!
You could never make an overdrive, boxed with jacks and switch for £13 .. like a  Dano/Behringer
.... BUT you can make a classic fuzzFace/rangemaster for around £20-30 when a real vintage one may
be more like £300-400  !!!!  Now THAT"S worth doing .... right ??
Factor in all the tools you need, parts/enclosures/pots/jacks and your TIME !!
Delay's/ Modulation are quite expensive and much more difficult to do, not recommended until you're
very sure of your skills and have some spare cash !

Simple boosters / fuzz are indeed worth spending time on.

MM.

[Seljer]

so far, the only thing I've personally come to a conclusion on regarding this DIY stuff is that I'm never going to buy a distortion/overdrive/fuzz/booost pedal over $50, I can build something and tweak it to my content for less or just buy something like a Boss DS1/Boss SD1/Digitech Bad Monkey/one of the Danelectros and be happy with it

and modding out my wah, thats good too, but I had to buy a stock one before I could mod it so thats not really starting from scratch


I build these things simply because I can, its a hobby, its a challenge on the more complicated circuits
with many things its a case of: its vintage/rare so the prices are ^^^^^^ if you can even find one, so instead of saving up I dedicate some time to DIYing it
or I just want to be able to tweak things (I added modulation to my Rebote Delay , mini-memory man....but I still want to get around to buy a fancier digital delay. I have a parts somewhere around here to build a Tremulus Lune, a tremolo pedal with many more options any mass produced commercial pedal has)

[Meanderthal]

 The anolog ones.

For me- the ones that give you useful sounds that can't quite be bought. If that makes sense...

[d95err]

First of all you should ask yourself - what is it you want from your DIY stuff. Is it to get the "ultimate" guitar rig, to obtain a sound otherwise unobtainable, or just for the fun of getting something to work (most likely a combination of all three...). Choose something simple that you thing could make a nice contribution to your sound.

The more simple the circuit, the more "leverage" you can get from DIY. Meaning, with a simple circuit you can nearly always get a result that is much better than the typical cheap mass produced equivalent pedal. This is due to various reasons. Firstly, mass produced stuff must include lots of compromise. It must be built to suit everyone, and the result is it won't be perfect for anyone. With DIY you can build something that is perfect for YOU. Second, mass production means any choice between quality and cost favors cost. With DIY you can choose parts for their quality, not because they happen to be easier (cheaper) to assemble.

Boosters, fuzzes, overdrives etc are typically very simple and easy to modify and adjust. Very good for starting out in pedal DIY.

Another category of effects suitable for DIY are those that aren't really manufactured anymore (except perhaps as expensive Boutique pedals). This can be something as simple as a Treble Booster. These are not mass-produced anymore, because the masses don't really need them now that every cheap tube amp has multiple channels, at least one of which has more gain than you could ever need.

The kind of stuff that is really not that well suited to DIY is digital reverbs, complex programmable multi-effects etc. There are some who venture into DIY for these kind of things, but that's probably more for the fun of trying to get it to work, than trying to create something that is significantly better than mass produced stuff.

Go check out the list of projects at www.tonepad.com. All projects there have a difficulty rating which should give you an idea on what kind of projects could be good for starting out with.

[alextheian-alex]

I agree with the above posts.  If you are talking about simple and cheap (compared to a commercial equivalent) then boosters, buffers, splitters/routers,  simple clipping circuits, basic EQs, amplitude based effects like tremolos, etc.  Companies seem to have a standard range for their effects, so the difference between a simple booster and a much more complicated chorus pedal or the like may be only 10-20% different in price.

As was mentioned before, the most expensive parts will be the hardware: enclosure, jacks, switches, etc... and the battery (which is an ongoing expense).  The actual electronics are cheap as dirt, but for a complicated circuit, laying out a practical board that will fit in a small enclosure and not cause problems like oscillaion, etc is a bit harder to do at home... especially on the first try.

[petemoore]

  Boosters, Distorters make great sense if you're into DIY, every one I built I tweeked, whether they ended up back at stock values...some did...you have about 1,000+ choices for DIY booster, then you can try 'em and tweek from there...no way you're gonna be able to get that kind of tweek going without DIY of some sort [mods at least]. Sure there's exceptions, boosters with variable voicings etc. but to try a different active you'll most likely be...finding it easier to choose your boost by having a wide range of choices.
  Distorters...a bit more complicated, still, these have DIY advantages like boosters too.
  then it starts 'depending more'...
  what do you want in a box...plastic jacks or...
  Because you can probably choose a cheep bought phaser you like circuit wise many are the same as same...does it have the features you want, how does that weigh in against the complexity and etc. of building and most likely debugging one?
  That said...I used to buy and have medium priced to cheep pedals, many, 8 or so at a time, a different one every 3 months or so...now I have an Echo Park, the rest is DIY. There's no way in tarnation I'm competing with the EP with a DIY entry, you might wanna try, but for the 150 'entry fee' including warranty and the features, it's going to be hard to beat..and I'm not about to start on a digital quest..generally I'm in the ''digital delay only'/..the rest analog' crowd.
  Flanger Hoax...analog, best bought IMO.
  Stuff like that...look at the schematics and do parts counts, figure what you have/what you can get..I use some used parts in my builds, just avoid used electrolytics is all...a fairly large chunk is'nt the circuit board and parts thereof, but the jacks, switch, box and pots. I tend to sometimes re-use those...I have a huge pile of trashed circuit boards...distorters and boosters kicked out of their boxes because 'the other, preferred one' is assigned there.

[jonathan perez]

WAH

[petemoore]

  The one your'e in no real hurry to get right.

[col]

Ones with parts that are easily obtainable and don't require a degree in physics to understand!

The best part about DIY is that you can make vastly different sounding pedals just by changing a couple of components and realising that you don't need 'double chip computing power' to produce the sound of a FF, you just need around £2 worth of components, (<50p if it's a Si version) and around £15 for the box, jacks, switch and wires. You are also not stuck with the off the shelf sound, tweaking a simpe circuit like that is easy. I'm still amazed that a transistor, 4 resistors and 2 caps (<20p) can really make such a difference to the sound of my guitar.
I've found Boosters and fuzzes/distorters to be the easiest and most interesting as they all sound different, but that isn't the full story. Have a read through some of the other threads here for ideas.

[col]

Forgot to mention. have a look here;

http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/index.php

All the projects have a guide as to how difficult they are.

[alextheian-alex]

  Boosters, Distorters make great sense if you're into DIY, every one I built I tweeked, whether they ended up back at stock values...some did...you have about 1,000+ choices for DIY booster, then you can try 'em and tweek from there...no way you're gonna be able to get that kind of tweek going without DIY of some sort [mods at least]. Sure there's exceptions, boosters with variable voicings etc. but to try a different active you'll most likely be...finding it easier to choose your boost by having a wide range of choices.

Another reason that boosters are great is because the are just the basic building blocks of all other effects.  If someone is going to get into pedal building, then they need to start by understanding basic discreet and IC circuits.  And if they actually put the effort into it, from a simple booster you can learn about gain, input and output impedance, biasing, headroom and cliping, input capacitance, bandwidth, how to lay out a circuit etc etc etc.  Then they can build from there. 

[Mark Hammer]

Several criteria to consider:

1) Cheaper/Cost:  As has been noted, there are a LOT of pedals where there is simply no way to match the build quality, reliability, and performance of a commercial pedal with a DIY.  Some of the more expensive pedals...maybe.  Vintage Guitar magazine publishes a sampling of dealer prices (low/high) each month for a variety of types of gear.  This month, I saw a Maestro FSH-1 Sample and Hold unit listed.  Prices for a vintage unit ranged from $475-$750.  For $750, it is definitely worth trying to build your own, if that sort of effect interests you.  There is, however, a whole lot of ground between replicating a vintage pedal that someone wants $750 for, and replicating another vintage pedal whose copyright protection has elapsed and someone is cloning for $15, where you will have to decide whether the total expenditure is worth your while.

2) Speed of usability:  If you're starting out, there are some pedals where the elapsed time from plugging the soldering iron to having a working, trouble-free unit is mercifully brief and not punitive.  In other cases, the risk of encountering the sort of difficulty which is nothing to a seasoned vet but a real conundrum to a novice builder can seriously extend the time-to-usability.  So you need to ask yourself "How big of a hurry am I really in to use this thing?" If you feel you can afford to wait 8 months or longer to have it working, then time should not deter you.  If you were looking to have it working sooner than that, then maybe buying is the better deal.

3) Modability: It may be more cost-effective to buy than build if you like what the original has to offer and have no need to expand or alter its performance or capability.  And, as noted above, it gets a working pedal into your hot little hands faster so you can do what the purpose was that building is supposed to serve - play music.  At the same time, not every board or chassis takes a friendly attitude towards adding or changing components, or adding controls.  In that case, as long as the build is not too difficult or the parts too hard to get, it may be more worthwhile to make one's own pedal and allow for the possibility of post-launch mods or extra controls.

4) Learning: So, suppose you put together something like a Foxx Tone Machine.  Decent pedal.  They've re-issued the Foxx version, complete with fuzzy covering on the chassis, but it is well-known that the Danelectro French Toast IS an FTM, except with solid-state switching instead of a stompswitch, and a plastic chassis.  So, you don't need to spend a mint to get a vintage or re-issue, and can probably find a French Toast in a pawn shop or musicians' 2nd hand listing for $20-30.  Building your own would take about the same amount of money in parts if you were just starting out.  Maybe you screw something up and it costs you $40 in parts and takes 2 months to finally get off the ground.  But maybe, just maybe, that 2 months is chock full of the most learning you can remember since cramming for that biochemistry exam in 2nd year college.  Worth the money and wait?  You betcha.

5) Commitment:  Hard to paint this one clearly, but here goes.  Many DIY-ers suffer from G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome).  We want everything, but the range of what "everything" consists of just won't stop growing. There is another pedal and another and another and another.  Where does it end?  Sometimes, it ends when you can say "I built this.  I can make it do whatever I want.  I'm committed to it and am unlikely to need or be tempted by another for a long time."  And sometimes, making the choice to do something DIY sort of declares that this pedal will for now and the foreseeable future BE your fuzz, chorus, phaser, or whatever.  Even if the damn thing cost you a little more than buying, there is money saved in not constantly rotating your gear (sell this, buy that), and there is also something gained in having commitment to your rig and taking the time to figure out how it all works together.  Jimi Hendrix may have had Roger Mayer tinkering in the background, but he had a fairly fixed pedalboard yet provided a rainbow of sounds with it because he was committed to those pedals and knew them intimately.  DIY is sometimes a route to finding that sort of focus.  Not always, and not for everyone, but sometimes.

All of these are cogent reasons to want to build, rather than buy.  All of them involve some judgment on your part as to whether THIS time a DIY build is a reasonable thing to do or just a waste of your valuable playing time.

[Steben]

I agree with the boosters and the distortion based units. They are so worth it.  And especially for the tweak thing: you simply can have your pedal the way YOU want it to distort (within the limitation of electronics), and all for the price of "two enclosures".
Some other effects too. But beware of real specials: those that need componenents on their own that cost as much as a whole pedal (fasels, transformers, mojo germaniums...). For them, the economic arguments fall into pieces.

On the other hand, there are two unique things:

1) for the advanced beginners: modding commercial pedals! Buy one and tweak it, change it swap it, kill it, burn it, reinvent it. That was real fun for me once! And it has the economic feature too: some pedals (boss, ibanez) sometimes are even worth the buy in enclosure/switch only. You can stick in any circuit you want.

2) for the freaks: why not a univibe, dimension C or ... synthesizer? Sometimes the effort and cost diminishes in pure hobby fun. It all depends on time, knowledge and preferences. Usually the best guitarists don't spend time in this since they don't have the time...

[alextheian-alex]

On the other hand, there are two unique things:

1) for the advanced beginners: modding commercial pedals! Buy one and tweak it, change it swap it, kill it, burn it, reinvent it. That was real fun for me once! And it has the economic feature too: some pedals (boss, ibanez) sometimes are even worth the buy in enclosure/switch only. You can stick in any circuit you want.

That is true.  You can also learn a lot from that, and most of the dirty work is done for you.

My first commercial mod was a DS-1.  I noticed how noisy it was, and how fizzy the tone got on the extremities of the freq response... but looking at the schem, I figured it was a good design... just full of crappy parts, so I replaced the caps with good film/foil, and all the resistors with Dale metal films, and it was like a new pedal.  It was good as i was, but the clippiing was still a little hazy, so the second stage was to swap out the clipping diodes... even better, and the third stage was to replace the opamp with a better unit... even better still!  The final tweak was just to increase the gain a bit in the opamp to compensate for the higher clipping threshold of the new diodes, and to give it about a 3rd-half of an octave lower bass response.  i used that as a solo boost for a few years, and eventually eqpanded the freq response and tweaked the input buffer and gave it to a friend of mine who needed a bass distortion.

[Mark Hammer]

How many times have we seen postings here that described building something from scratch and incorporated the question "Is this how it's supposed to sound?".  One of the nice things about modding a working pedal is that you start out knowing EXACTLY how its supposed to sound, and can derive information about what each change does by comparing it against the starting point.  If that method is good enough for scientists, it's good enough for you.

So yeah, modding is a terrific compormise between *just* buying, and full-on DIY.  Just be aware that not all pedals "want" to be modded.

[Steben]

How many times have we seen postings here that described building something from scratch and incorporated the question "Is this how it's supposed to sound?".  One of the nice things about modding a working pedal is that you start out knowing EXACTLY how its supposed to sound, and can derive information about what each change does by comparing it against the starting point.  If that method is good enough for scientists, it's good enough for you.

So yeah, modding is a terrific compormise between *just* buying, and full-on DIY.  Just be aware that not all pedals "want" to be modded.

Yep, like the SMD behringer and danelectro's...

[mattpocket]

Suitable for DIY:

Any pedal that is extremely expensive. I.e. boutique, rare, vintage, etc... that would otherwise cost a lot to buy.

Any pedal that is only available within the world of DIY, i.e. weird crazy pedals, or pedals that are not in production.

Unsuitable for DIY:

Normal, day-to-day pedals.

----------------------

However there is an exception to this rule! All of us here have a bug. Some of us might have came here looking to build a pedal board for less than what it would cost to buy, but that soon changes. We build pedals because we love building pedals, not because it's cheap. If you dont want to spend money. STOP NOW! This hobby is way too addictive to not spend a heap of cash on.

Matt

[solarplexus]

Second that...

DIY is flowing through my veins and I need my solder fumes fix!  Ahhh ... I'm at work... CAN'T.... .. . . DIY .. ..  .. . .NOW .. . ..

Seriously... this hobby is fun, frustrating, fun, frustrating, frustrating, frustrating, interesting, fun and then when it works it's just like tone paradise...

But it's costly and the more you build, the more you want to build... so CHOOSE carefully the designs you want to build, otherwise you'll spend money for pedals you won't even use.  I did it.  Not anymore.  I only build what I KNOW I will need, either for recording, a friend ask me to build him a pedal, live performance, bedroom inspiration, etc.

I would rather build a Neovibe (still thinking about it, but will build the easyvibe first - waiting for parts in the mail) than 200 boosters...  On the other hand, you might never get to THAT booster if you don't build alot of 'em.  If you do find one pedal which you think it's THE pedal you need... start thinking about building other types of pedal to get your DIY fix or simply STOP.  The grass may look greener at the neighbors... but there's no place like home!  (Catch my drift  )

Matt