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 the name would suggest, an octave fuzz adds an octave to the sound signal while […]
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 Distortion yourself on a bread board. You’re welcome to read the article without watching the […]
ProCo Rat On Stripboard
January 22, 2025Here 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 ProCo Rat seems to be one of those enduring distortion pedals people still love, despite […]
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 done with some consideration and calculation, stacking pedals can have a lot of benefits and […]
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 hobby of DIY guitar pedals. It can be hard to know where and how to […]
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 and, if you’re not, just check out music by Pink Floyd, White Stripes, Carlos Santana, […]
EartherQuaker Devices Speaker Cranker On Stripboard
January 2, 2025The 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 (and there is a difference between distortion, overdrive, and fuzz). That being said, I’ve just […]
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 distortion pedals; sure they had fuzz pedals (here’s a history of fuzz pedals if you’re […]
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 website. Welcome! The good/easy part of answering that question is, sure, read on and I’ll give […]
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 the the patience to write something more technical, so an end of year wrap up […]
