2024: A Year In DIY Guitar Pedals

We 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 article is probably in order. And maybe I won’t make another guitar pedal in the next three weeks (or at least get the write up done). The silly season is fast approaching after all…

I started this website towards the end of January, 2024, so it’s been almost a year, and what a year it’s been. I created to help people learn more about building guitar pedals, continue my love of the hobby, while also continuing and strengthening my other interests around website design and SEO. And I think I’ve pulled it off, mostly.

Let’s take a look at what a year on this site looks like.

The DIY Guitar Pedals I’ve Built

If you head on over to my DIY guitar pedal stripboard layouts, you’ll see I’ve made 12 guitar pedals this year (update, I lied, I made 13…). When starting this website, I had no interest in creating my own stripboard layouts and have instead opted to get layouts from other sources on the internet. You may see this as “cheating,” but I’m not trying to hide it. My interest is building guitar pedals, other people’s interests are around making layouts. I take the time to test the layout, include a wiring schematic that matches the layout, and give my opinion on the build. Everyone wins.

Because of this, I’m “only” averaging about one pedal a month. I can knock out a new pedal pretty quickly, but then there’s also boxing it, doing the layout, the schematic, and the write up, so I’m pretty happy with the output. Lately, as I’ve been writing less about theory, particularly less about guitar pedal components, my output has increased. I’ll probably swap again as the weather cools mid-year and I want to spend less time in the garage (I’m in the southern hemisphere so our seasons are reversed from most of the world).

I’m mostly happy, but a little disappointed in my proportion of easy guitar pedal builds compared to other ones. There are nine builds I marked as easy, leaving four for people with a bit more experience. I wanted to concentrate on the easy stuff because this site is mostly for education; let’s get some people in the door.

So, what were some highlights or favourites of the pedals I’ve built?

• Ibanez Tube Screamer – I’ve wanted one of these for so long and now I have it. The stripboard layout is slightly crowded, and it has tons of components, so it’s easy to make a mistake. But it’s a worthwhile build.
• Vox Tone Bender – because it sounds fantastic. It’s easy to build if you can get the parts, and it’s just one of those classic fuzz sounds. I want to do some more classic fuzzes with hard to get transistors in the future.
• Greer Amps Green Giant – another relatively easy build. I don’t use distortion much, but I like this one because it mixes clean and dirty signals.

I did a few easy one knob guitar pedal builds this year and, while they generally sound great, I don’t have much use for them beyond using them to better understand classic circuits and a little bit of fun. I don’t see myself putting them in my rig permanently, but that’s me.

I still encourage beginners to make them for practice though.

What Have I Learnt This Year?

2024 definitely has been a year of learning when it comes to building my own guitar pedals. I knew a lot going into this website, but, as much as this website is about helping people learn about electronics and building pedals, it’s also been about solidifying some of my own knowledge.

The biggest topic I’ve learned about is transistors in general. I have a number of articles about them now and feel like I’m able to put various bits of knowledge together to understand what they do and how they behave in pedals.

You’ll notice, however, that this site is really lacking any information on operational amplifiers, or op-amps. I understand the theory around op-amps, what they do, etc., but I can’t get to the point where I can explain them adequately. It’s a topic I look forward to learning more about. Maybe 2025?

I also learned that my internal wiring for pedals generally sucks. My stripboard soldering is pretty good, but my boxing could be cleaner. I probably will never have the patience for this though.

What’s In Store For 2025?

Probably more of the same honestly!

As mentioned, I haven’t written about theory or components in quite a while, but this is a hobby project, and I’m going to work how I want to work (sorry, not sorry).

I’ve managed to publish more than 50 articles here in less than a year, and over that time more than 6,000 people visit the site, with many of those people visiting multiple times. While theory and how stuff works is getting people onto the site, I want this site to also become a place for general guitar pedal discussion, especially around DIY guitar pedals. So, a few ongoing topics I’m thinking about for 2025 include:

• Staying motivated and continuing with projects, even when you’re frustrated.
• Modifying existing pedals, popular circuits, and creating your own circuits.
• Guitar pedal history.
• General thoughts on being a builder.
• More video, but that takes time and I have to wait until I have the house to myself…

All that being said, and if you’ve gotten this far, hopefully you’ll respond, what do you want to see? I know well enough that building an audience for these sorts of things takes time and, with such a niche topic, I’m really happy with the unique 6000+ visitors to the site, but alas, I’m yet to get anybody commenting on any of my articles.

That’s the game though, innit? 

Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall here, but then I see in the analytics of the site that there’s more than a few users who come on and read a bunch of articles. Then they come back again and again! 

So yeah, if you’ve made it this far in this article, what do you want to see next year? Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve learned as much as I did.