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

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 »
What Is Gain (And How It’s Different From Volume) September 5, 2024This is going to be a fun article to write (not really), because the concept of gain is actually kind of elusive to define if you’re trying to be general. I’ve always understood the concept of gain as it pertains …Read More »
Greer Amps Green Giant On Stripboard August 28, 2024Here’s a kind of weird guitar pedal, but a fun build nonetheless and also a pretty simple guitar pedal build too. I had never heard of the Green Giant by Greer Amps before and I kind of just stumbled upon …Read More »
Transistor Saturation, Active, And Cutoff Region August 23, 2024It’s time to get a little more in depth on transistors. If you haven’t read it yet, check out my guide to transistors for some background on how transistors work in guitar pedals and in general. This article builds on …Read More »
How Do Guitar Pedal (And Guitar) Volume Knobs Work? August 21, 2024Hopefully this article is going to be short and sweet, as the concept of volume knobs in guitar pedals (and guitars for that matter) is quite simple. This explanation should hold for volume control on analogue devices, however, I’m not …Read More »
EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold On Stripboard August 18, 2024The Acapulco Gold by EarthQuaker Devices is a pretty well know single knob distortion pedal. According to EarthQuaker Devices themselves, they’ve modelled this pedal off of a Sunn Model T amplifier turned up to the max. Similar to the Lovelpedal …Read More »
A Versus B Potentiometers (And When To Use Them) August 16, 2024One potentiometer isn’t the same as another, if they were, why would some be marked with an A and others be marked with a B (and why would others have a different letter on them)? Like so many things to …Read More »
The Difference Between SPDT, DPDT, And 3PDT Switches And How To Use Them August 13, 2024Let’s talk switches. I was looking through the stats for this website, and one of my most popular articles is on how to wire a 3PDT, so I’ve decided to write more switch related content. My article on the 3PDT/how …Read More »
How Do Guitar Pedals Work? August 6, 2024If you’re a guitarist, you’ve probably used (or at least come across) a number of pedals. But effects pedals aren’t just used for guitars. They’re often used with other instruments. Guitar pedals are often built to work well with guitars, but …Read More »
Lovepedal Champ On Stripboard August 2, 2024It’s been awhile since I’ve built anything,so it was nice to get back into my workshop and build this awesome little pedal: the Champ by Lovepedal. There’s quite a few pedals I want to build (or build again to give …Read More »