Crazy Chicken Guitar Pedals

Welcome!

Here’s my website about guitar pedals, mostly DIY guitar pedals/making and building 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

Roger Mayer Octavia On Stripboard January 31, 2025If you’re looking for the original octave fuzz sound, the Roger Mayer Octavia is for you. This is (I assume) the original octave fuzz; that is to say, I assume Roger Mayer was the first to make this effect. As …Read More »
Building A Simple Distortion Pedal Based On The Electra Distortion January 26, 2025https://youtu.be/V3Ok9MYTm5E Note: This article is meant to accompany the video above. It’s not a transcript of the video, but more a way to more easily see the diagrams I’m using in the video so that you can build an Electra …Read More »
ProCo Rat On Stripboard January 22, 2025 Here it is! The ProCo Rat. The ProCo Rat is just one of those pedals, distortion or otherwise, that has endured decades and maintained its popularity. Like the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff for fuzz or the Ibanez Tube Screamer overdrive, the …Read More »
What Is Gain Stacking And How Do You Do It? January 16, 2025If you’ve been playing around with pedals like overdrive, distortion, or fuzz (especially overdrive), you’ve probably tried combining the two to see what happens. If you’re just fooling around without thinking about it, it may not sound very good, but …Read More »
How To Get Started Building Guitar Effects Pedals January 8, 2025I’ve been putting off writing this article because it’s kind of a big question. If you’ve spent any time poking around my site, you’ll know a lot of it is set up to try and help newbies to the marvelous …Read More »
Electro-Harmonix Big Muff On Stripboard January 3, 2025https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ni48979_ws&feature=youtu.be Well, this was a fun pedal to build. It was a big build, but well worth it to make such a famous pedal. And one that sounds so good too. We’re all likely familiar with the Big Muff sound …Read More »
EartherQuaker Devices Speaker Cranker On Stripboard January 2, 2025 The Speaker Cranker by EarthQuaker Devices is an easy to make single knob guitar pedal. EarthQuaker Devices are calling this an overdrive but, judging by the schematic and the sound, I’d be more likely to call this pedal a distortion …Read More »
Catalinbread Naga Viper On Stripboard December 17, 2024The Naga Viper by Catalinbread is a treble booster pedal modelled on the somewhat legendary Dallas Rangemaster treble booster popularised by so many guitarists (especially out of England) in the 1960’s and ’70’s. These were the days before overdrive and …Read More »
How To Make A Distortion Pedal December 12, 2024I’ll cut to the chase very quickly: you’re probably here because you want to learn how to make guitar pedals at home, so you searched for something along the lines of “how to make a distortion pedal,” and found this …Read More »
2024: A Year In DIY Guitar Pedals December 10, 2024We still have a few more weeks left in the year, and in that time I’ll probably make another guitar pedal, but I also haven’t been writing a lot here. I feel like I should post but I don’t have …Read More »