Guitar Effects Pedal Fabrication

2017-06-17

The process of building various DIY guitar effects pedals which was my introduction to building with electronics. Some pedals are used everytime I play guitar.

After a few years of playing electric guitar, I wanted to explore new sound possibilities and started to look at effects pedals. I wondered how they worked and stumbled on to websites that were focused on building your own effects pedals. It was the first time seeing a real world example of how electric signals are processed (aka signal processing). I was surprised at how relatively simple some of the effects could be, in terms of parts and how much it changes the signal. The fuzz or distortion effects are one of the simplest signal processing for guitar effects (just under 25 elements).

Since it didn't seem too difficult, I decided to jump in and try it for myself. I would at least learn a fun new skill and it often came out much cheaper to build it myself than buy a commercial effects pedal.

Problem:

I knew just the basic theoretical concepts of electric components, but had no real world experience with it.

Experiences:

• Learned how to read an electronical component schematic applying to a real world situation and interept required materials.
• Had experiences sourcing and ordering parts.
• Learning to read values or directionality for various components, including resistors, capacitors, diodes, potentiometers, transistors.
• Using a multimeter to check suspect parts
• Got a lot of practice soldering (and desoldering) components, including thoughhole components, integrated circuits, wires, switches.
• Learned the importance of properly using electrical shielding tape.
• Set up tooling to drill holes in small metal enclosures.
• Practiced coming up with and painting designs.
• Tested functionality using breadboards before finishing

Lessons Learned (the hard way):

• If parts are cheap, might as well buy a couple extra in case you lose or destroy some.
• A soldering iron is hot, it will destroy parts.
• Through trouble shooting with a multimeter, recognize when you've destroyed a component and now have to order another one and wait another week.
• Organize parts and keeping track of which parts go where is important, or else you have to spend a lot of time reading each component value before soldering it on.
• The manufacturing process is important, especially consider the order of parts and consider how much space is available. Or else you'll be desoldering and resolding over and over.
• It is much easier to check twice, solder once. Otherwise, you will have to hunt down on the circuit board which components are wrong.
• Use the helping hands tool, it is amazing.

Outcome:

I've made about 10 effects pedals now, four of which I use regularly. The pedal effects are compression, distortion, chorus, and reverb/delay. The biggest project to date was the reverb/delay pedal which was about a 100 component project. They are effective and since handmade by me, each have their own unique sound characteristics that separate them from the rest of the commercial effects pedals available. I'm happy with how they turned out.