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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 the get go: this is the silicon version of the pedal; I went with the silicon […]
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 mostly gone through how clipping diodes work in guitar pedals and how they cause clipping […]
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 to guitar pedals (and general guitar oriented analogue electronics). However, as I did some research […]
Greer Amps Green Giant On Stripboard
August 28, 2024https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-muKTaGdx9E Here’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 the layout on Tagboard Effects and thought it sounded interesting. Other than what’s on […]
EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold On Stripboard
August 18, 2024https://youtu.be/ZgzqZcc0xWg The 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 Champ, the single knob on this pedal means the amount of drive is adjusted […]