Building pedals, what's your weakness?

[chromesphere]

Thought i'd start a 'conversational' thread, for fun you know.

For me personally its circuit designing and when we start getting into the nuts and bolts of electronics.  "What stuff does in a circuit" i guess you'd say.  I came to the hobby with some electronics knowledge from school / tafe but i've honestly learnt much more from beginning this hobby.  It still remains the biggest gap to fill for me though.

See i know that my answer doesnt apply to everyone.  I've seen some electronics genius's on this board, unable to paint a box (no offense).  Everyones got their weakness.

Whats yours?  What do you wish you knew more about or wish you were better at doing? Anything to do with guitar pedals.  Designing, painting, powder coating, labelling, silkscreening, drilling, debugging, marketing, selling, etc.  Anything at all.

Leave your response and ill see if i can get the guitar pedal fairies to grant your wish.
Paul

[Canucker]

My weakness is my inability to accept the fact that I should buy proper enclosures but I really want to DIY everything...the stamping press they put in at my work has taken four months and is the size of a house (higher in fact)...I WANT ONE!!!!

[Jdansti]

My weakness is my inability to accept the fact that I should buy proper enclosures but I really want to DIY everything...

Can we assume that you're not DIYing your own ICs and other components?

At some point, we all have to purchase certain things that are manufactured by someone else. I do a lot of DIY home repair and remodeling. I've done woodwork, tile, pluming, and electrical. My wife wants granite countertops (solid pieces, not tile) and suggested that I should be able to do the job myself. At least she has a high opinion of my capabilities! 

[Jdansti]

I'm not great at the aesthetic side of pedal building, but the first area I need to improve is planning.  I take one step forward and two back. I often rediscover that two or more objects can't occupy the same space and time.

I'm building a multieffects board where the off board components are outside of the enclosure. I knew that I was going to use shielded cable outside of the enclosure, but I initially wired the five boards with regular wire for testing. Some of the boards have five pots and several switches. I wasted a lot of time rewiring those boards.

[LucifersTrip]

My weakness is my inability to accept the fact that I should buy proper enclosures

there is no such thing as a proper enclosure...only standard & common enclosures...and why would you want to be like everyone else?   do whatever you think is cool.


edit:
btw, my weakness is my laziness in getting out my oscilloscope and learning how to better interpret the waveforms.

[darron]

lack of time....

[artifus]

building pedals...

[Cliff Schecht]

My weakness is my inability to accept the fact that I should buy proper enclosures but I really want to DIY everything...

Can we assume that you're not DIYing your own ICs and other components?

I have used op amps that I designed and taped out (manufactured) in a little distortion actually. We get the dies back without a package though so I have to bond them by hand, makes something like this take hours to build. It didn't sound very good but it was worth a shot.

My weakness is definitely making things looked finished. I don't really care about putting things like paint and labels on anything I build. I kinda like my amps and pedals to look homemade, that way people know that I'm onstage using stuff I built.

[deadastronaut]

A: not getting round to actually building pedals 

B: chocolate biscuits

C: see above

[reverberation66]

definitely my biggest issue right now is how to do lettering/artwork on pedals.  I've tried everything from silkscreening to stencils, to handpainting, etc. I live in an apartment and don't have a good space to work on stuff that generates a lot of fumes...Big issues with clearcoating, it always ends up looking like crap when I do it. 

[radio]

1) Artwork
2) Finishing one before starting next
3) Modditis 

[radio]

Edit:

2) NOT finishing one before starting next

[midwayfair]

1) I feel the need to box almost everything I make, whether it's actually "done" or not.
2) On the few builds that I've extensively breadboarded, I have a bad habit of not actually soldering to the board what's on my breadboard, then fretting that it doesn't sound the same. Even worse, sometimes I'll just make a change on the fly without fully testing it.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

My #1 weakness is MODULATION EFFECTS!!   Especially classic Flangers.

Unfortunately, these often come with the highest price tags to build AND they are often the most complex  

[darron]

okay. a real answer from me now.

my weakness at the moment is staying on top of having enough enclosures predrilled and powder coated. it's a pain because you have to do everything in batches to make it worth while



and the trick is to turn your weaknesses into strengths. most people are musos here so you'll know that's true. if there's a bit of a song that's difficult then you practice it and practice it until it becomes the easiest sank ever.


i used to hate drilling. getting the registration correct was nerve wracking. so i made drilling jigs for every standard pedal. i hated etching so i setup a permanent etch tank. i couldn't label things easily so i bought a laser (okay.. not everybody is going to go out and do that). i couldn't always make neat wiring lengths so i made a layout for all the wires lengths to be perfect for every build. etc. etc.

and here's the video i show off for the way i do everything (at least date of posting this):

[Mike Burgundy]

Time (original, I know), room (workbench=office=rec room) and finishing the damn thing 

[Pollinator95]

#1 is perfboard, with everything else coming a close second.

[GGBB]

I'm only just finishing up my first build now, but I learned a lot about the whole process and found that the enclosure was the toughest part for me.  I made a ton of mistakes during the painting and labeling process - waterslide decals have become my nemesis!  Next to that is breadboarding - I hate breadboarding - those things are so finicky.  I am also quite slow - mainly due to considerable over-planning and over-researching at every stage.  What I'm good at seems to be layouts, and I like that part of it quite a bit.  When I finally finished the enclosure for my tremolo last week I was so stoked - what a rush to have success!  Just waiting for delivery on some pots to put it all together.

I am now addicted.  I have breadboarded a BC108 fuzz already and am just playing with options for it (sounds awesome so far), and have started planning a Dr. Quack as well as two major pedal rebox/mod projects.  Hopefully these project will go far smoother than the first one.

[bluebunny]

building pedals...

LOL!  Yeah, me too...   

A: not getting round to actually building pedals 

B: chocolate biscuits

C: see above

Sausages...  Where are the sausages?

[R O Tiree]

Artwork... I can't even draw stick-men!