Crazy Chicken Guitar Pedals

Welcome!

Here’s my website about guitar pedals, mostly DIY guitar pedals/making your own guitar pedals, but we’ll also see where this adventure takes us.

I’ve made this site because I enjoy making my own guitar pedals and want to share my hobby with other people, give them some advice, and encourage them to take up the hobby of making their own guitar pedals as well.

I also find that having a website like this helps me learn more about making guitar pedals and electronics in general. You pick up a lot of random knowledge with this hobby, but sometimes forget to ask “why.” Let’s find out together.

Guitar Pedal Builds

Pedal Building Blocks

General Guitar Pedals

Guitar Pedal Components

Electrical Theory

Recent DIY Guitar Pedal Posts

Lumpy’s Tone Shop Lemon Drop On Stripboard November 7, 2024Here’s a fun pedal build project: Lumpy’s Tone Shop Lemon Drop. This pedal actually comes in a variety of names though. I wasn’t familiar with Lumpy’s Tone Shop, but found the stripboard layout on Tagboard Effects. In looking into this …Read More »
Ibanez Tube Screamer (TS808) On Stripboard October 28, 2024The Ibanez Tube Screamer is one of the most famous and sought after overdrive pedals around. The original TS808 and Boss’ OD-1 are classics that everyone wants to recreate. Well, here it is, the wiring schematic and stripboard layout for …Read More »
Catalinbread Karma Suture On Stripboard October 15, 2024Here’s a fun and great sounding DIY guitar pedal build: the Karma Suture by Catalinbread. It looks like like this pedal is no longer in production, so if you want one, you’ll have to build it. To be specific from …Read More »
What Are Decoupling Capacitors? October 2, 2024While not as prominent in guitar pedals as coupling capacitors, decoupling capacitors are used in electronics and guitar pedals to help direct currents as needed. This is usually to smooth out DC electrical signals or prevent noise from AC signals. …Read More »
A Brief History Of Fuzz Pedals September 24, 2024I love fuzz pedals. I love making fuzz pedals and I love playing guitar through fuzz pedals. Although different overdrives or distortions won’t sound the same, I find the variance in sound between these types of dirty pedal is much …Read More »
The Difference Between NPN And PNP Transistors September 20, 2024Transistors come in a lot of different types, but in this article, I’m only going to be talking about bipolar junction transistors (BJTs). Specifically, I’m going to be talking about NPN transistors and how they’re different from PNP transistors. A …Read More »
How Does A Drive, Gain, Or Distortion Knob Work? September 17, 2024I’ve touched on this subject a lot, but I want to approach it differently now. Namely, from the perspective of the potentiometer that is controlling the gain in an overdrive, distortion, or fuzz pedal. When talking about this before, I’ve …Read More »
What Are Coupling Capacitors? September 13, 2024In guitar pedals and electronics in general, coupling capacitors are important to keep different parts of a circuit separate and to prevent DC power and other noise from moving from one sub-circuit to another. All in all, it’s quite simple, …Read More »
The Difference Between Silicon And Germanium Transistors September 11, 2024In the world of guitar pedals (and electronics in general), transistors are made from one of two materials: silicon and germanium. There’s a difference between these two materials and how they affect what a guitar pedal does, and it’s important …Read More »
What Do Guitar Pedals Do? September 10, 2024It didn’t occur to me to write this article, but I noticed that people were coming to this site asking “what do guitar pedals do” and ending up on my how do guitar pedals work article, which doesn’t really answer …Read More »