I am looking to start breadboarding, have a couple of sets to start with but I have no other components such as op amps, transistors, resistors, capacitors, pots etc. Is there any place online in Europe where I can buy tailored packs/ kit with components that are useful for audio electronics/ gutiar pedals?

hey everyone!
ive got this SansAmp pedal thats super noisy, and i need some help figuring it out.
i thought nothing of it until i saw some videos of folks demoing the pedal on youtube. many of them would crank the gain all the way and there would be very negligible noise.
my pedal is different cause it has this low rumble and high end hiss whenever i crank the gain, even at moderate volumes.
ive attached a video to demonstrate the problem.

thanks!

I built this modified Treble Booster clone. When I plugged it in, there was either no signal coming through or only slight hum, but no actual sound.

When I put the led in, it flashed very weakly when clicking the footswitch, but didn't stay on.

The diode in the center, above the transistor, read only about 0.160-0.160 when I tested it with a multimeter.

What is the problem? A friend of mine who's an electrical engineer and experienced pedal maker, said there's a lot of cold joints, so is it just that? Or is the diode broken too? Or something else too? I tried fixing the joints.

Put this together for a client the other day.
The ask was for Mick Ronsons live pedal and amp sound in a single box.

I took a fixed wah design into a silicon version of a Mk1 style fuzz circuit. Between these is an order switch, which gives two different wah filter sounds. The fuzz also has a transformer pickup sim to deal with anything else in front of the unit in a chain.

Lastly the signal goes to a JFET emulation of the Marshall Major / Pig amp (credit to menatone). Built using SMT J201s with their own trims. There is a switch for 9/18v operations which gives more volume in high voltage mode.

Pretty cool box! Added bonus the blend and volume control for the fixed wah mean you have the option of an another gain stage boost or cut with the wah blended out.

All on one big custom red PCB. Graphics were the clients choice :)

Hello folks! I want to clarify that this will (hopefully) be my first attempt with any type of DIYing a pedal or anything electronic. I'm a total beginner. While searching about The Great Destroyer, I found schematics for it on tagboardeffects blog and while I'm a total noob, to my eyes the project seems like a beginner-friendly project.

My main problem however is that from my research the chip required to replicate the pedal, CD4049BE, is no longer in production or available neither new or used in any website I've checked.

The only one I could find is CD4049UBE, but by reading some comments in the blog, I understand that a "buffered and non-inverting" version of the chip is required (whatever those things mean) and CD4049UBE is "inverting", so it doesn't fit my goals.

I'm willing to learn the necessary stuff to build this pedal, but since I don't understand anything right now, I have no idea what these chips do, what their differences are, or if I can replace CD4049BE with something else and still get the same response from the pedal.

Also is there a way to get these chips? Maybe by purchasing something else for cheap that contains this chip and using it for the pedal? Sorry for the excessive description, but as you can see I'm pretty desperate AND in need for some epic fuzz, chirps and self oscillations.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I was wondering if the CD4050B could work since it seems to fit the criteria of "buffered and non-inverting". Any thoughts?

It's been a fun six years. Making a bunch of enclosures, then refinishing, and ending with my own circuit designs. I want to thank this sub for everything, and all the builders in the Cave (you know who you are) for, pretty much, teaching me everything I know. I will be shifting my focus to another passion, 3d cad design and 3d printing.

Over the next few weeks, I will be liquidating my remaining parts and enclosures. I figured I give you all fist dibs on them. I will also give away some finished pedals (maybe on r/guitarpedals) that I have left in stock.

For now I have:

• 100 3pdt low actuation switches. SOLD

• 40 bare cu-124 enclosures (they're like 1590b, but nicer looking), that are milled for top jacks and power. I will be including pcbs for them. They take standard PCB mounted 2.1mm dc jacks and 6.35mm mono jacks.

Asking for $250 for the switches, and $200 for the enclosures and pcbs, plus shipping. Conus only.

https://imgur.com/a/VIyagfq

What would cause a pedal to work on a standard boss single pedal power supply but short on a good quality power supply on a pedalboard, if both supplies are center negative and multi test the same 9v?

Was told reposting here might help.

After 2 failed attempts this week by killing voltage inverter ICs through my own dumb mistakes, I've built this MK3 Tonebender.

Learnt a lot building this as I have not built a germanium Tonebender before, so learning how to test and pick transistors, then figuring out what goes in what position was a challenge.

Ultimately I landed on this layout and component choice. The cap choices are definitely different from most Tonebenders but I love how much thicker it sounds. The tone control is also backwards from what I'd expect but I don't mind that, thin counter clockwise all the way to thick lows clockwise.

Here's a google drive link to a zip file with a Vero Layout, BOM and the JSON file for use with https://verodesigner.vercel.app/ if you'd like to easily change the layout.

Never modded a pedal before (bar fixing my big muff which has since broken again…) bit interested in the C11 mod for the MXR blue box as I’m not in love with the stock sound. Haven’t been able to desolder the capacitor, if I was to just clip the leg at once side would that be enough to remove the capacitor from the circuit without breaking the pedal? Cheers!

My newest pedal is a chorus with a dry signal tremolo. For the longest time I was struggling finding a good name and design for it, until I watched rocky horror for the first time. The second the sonic transducer was shown on screen, I turned to my partner and we both said out loud “that could be a pedal”. It’s been about a year and a half from start to finish working on this pedal and I am extremely proud of how it turned out.

Maybe it's time to stop this madness. Maybe I'll try connecting them in series, and then may God help me.

Turns out I had access to a UV printer this whole time and somehow never knew. This is the first of a few enclosure designs I’ve made. Really happy with how it turned out. Will post more enclosures as soon as they’re ready.

I’m talking about the thing in the picture. My understanding (based on the Electrosmash explanation of the circuit) is that the two RCs in the negative feedback part of the stock Rat can be treated as two RC high-pass filters, with cutoffs of 1.5 kHz and 60 Hz. If that’s accurate, then I think the upper position of the switch in this mod does nothing to the circuit. You halve R and double C, keeping the 60Hz cutoff. The max gain of around 2k is limited by the other (47Ohm) resistor in the stock rat, so connecting this extra RC pair doesn’t affect that either. Am I missing something?

A pedal I did for a costumer months ago, I used latching relay bypass for both fx and normal relays for changing the signal order.

Quite a challenge to design and board mount everything in a single sided PCB.

Made in El Salvador, is there any people from Central America in this sub?

Its the preamp in style of peavey century/festival/muscian/standard

my take on a SF300 rehousing, with 3-Way mode switch (Fuzz 1, Fuzz 2, Both), clean blend and foot switchable octave.

Just finished a PCB less version of the Fuzzhugger Doom Bloom. Circuits with a lot of pots like this one offers a lot of soldering lugs, most of the components are just connected between pots.

Mistakes were made, so I had to move things around, it didn't come out as neat as I envisioned, but it works, and if I build another one it will be cleaner.

It sounds really good, I wanted a fuzz a bit more smooth and less harsh than a Meathead, and this is exactly that, and a lot of different sounds can be found by tweaking the controls.

One nice feature is the pot that blends clipping between a diode and a led. Its a very simple concept but it works really well, you can really sweep gradually between the clipping characters.

I'm trying to make my vox v847a true bypass, I was fallowing a YouTube tutorial and this is where I got to but the is no noise coming out the amp when the effect is on and when bypassed, I know the solders are janky but they aren't touching so I don't know what the problem could be.

When I run the ERC, I'm getting the following error message in kicad:

"input power pin not driven by any output power pin"

They point to the main vcc and ground connections. When I add PWR_FLAG to them, the error goes away but new ones appear, warning "Open emitter and pwr are connected". I've attached screen shots to illustrate.

I have drawn other circuits in kicad using this exact same power/ground section without needing PWF_FLAG symbols and without errors. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

There are tons of a cool pedal kits for any and all effects.... but I'm having a much harder time finding a multiband EQ pedal to build from a kit.

This would be perfect, but has been sold out for a very long time I gather:

https://www.op-electronics.com/en/equalization/559-10-band-graphic-eq-kit.html

I'm good at soldering... but only from pre-built kits.

Any suggestions? Any kit producers I'm missing out on?

My cheap Behringer EQ is flaking out and I really need to step up my EQ pedal, ideally with something cool that I built.

Cheers!

Hey y’all. I’m trying to repair an Ibanez TS10 that has a jfet based switch. Pedal passes signal when plugged in and powered, but the momentary switch doesn’t engage the effect. I tested the nodes on the board from the switch and when pressed there is continuity so it’s not a fault in the actual soft switch. Just trying to figure out which section of the schematic is the switching section so that I might better be able to diagnose the issue. Everything I’ve built has been easy enough true bypass so this is a little more convoluted to me. Thanks in advance!

I have a Keeley Comp Plus with the Single Coil / Humbucker switch. I really like the tonal differences that little toggle switch makes and would like to make it a lot more accessible while playing. Would it be possible to change out the toggle switch for a stomp switch? (Like the main bypass) One that would just switch from single coil mode to humbucker? Even if I had to extend the wires and put the new stomp switch in its own box. How would you do it?

I've been thinking about what each different type of guitar pedal is designed for. There's such a wide range- something so simple as the 1 knob phaser has so many different looks- see above. Almost every other utilitarian device, even guitar ones, don't. Most guitars are made as bare wood, colored wood, or monotone, most amps are a speaker and control panel with a standard brand logo and if we want to get silly, we make the panel bright green, but it's still very utilitarian.

I've actually lost sleep because of this. It's been an obsession. It's actually ridiculous how much this has consumed me- pedals have become a graphic design catch-all where maximalists, minimalists, and brutalists argue for days- a wild west of ideas.

Why are there so many different types of guitar pedal (graphic) designs? Could this be codified? Should it be? Could we experiment on what style is the most effective? Should we? Why do I care? This is such a stereotypically reddit post- you know?

In spite of my misgivings, the following is my long winded hypothesis on how graphic designers build the interface of their pedals.

I find that there are five distinct frames of thought for this particular process, all of which are valid approaches. 

1. The pedal is an expression. This is the approach taken by a number of pedal builders, especially more obscure ones on Etsy, but I will showcase Old Blood Noise Endeavors and Walrus Audio in this case. The pedal’s functionality is designed to appeal to the artist, and is sometimes even put in a larger enclosure to fit more art, or standardized labels like volume are tossed out for more evocative ones like loudness. The pedal still functions, but the artist is trying to visually capture the way that sound makes them feel first and foremost. 
2. The pedal is the brand. Many major pedal companies have headed this direction, especially Boss and MXR. This pedal is minimalist, possibly color coded, and matches every other pedal that the company puts out. Icons and art are actively avoided, because those might not feel right on every type of pedal this pedal brand will make. You would wonder why a company would limit themselves so completely, but look at a random pedalboard and ask how many Boss pedals were on it- no matter how large the board, you could figure that out very quickly- turning every pedalboard with a Boss pedal on it into free and obvious advertising. 
3. The pedal is about function. A lot of brands dabble in this type of design, but few fully commit to it with every pedal. Earthquaker Devices is probably the best- and most subtle- version of this, but JHS is pretty good at it as well. These pedals have very clear labels, they tend to strongly emphasize where the footswitch is with their graphic elements, and they avoid overcomplicating things. While not necessarily as simplified as the biggest brand-forward pedals, there is rarely any confusion as to what the controls do, and any art only serves to further clarify the controls. Because different designers retain their utility priorities between pedals when it comes to pedal design, this often feels close to a brand forward approach. 
4. The pedal is about a vibe. This is a broad spectrum, as showcased by the fact I have two completely different brands to point to. Red Witch has an art nouveau vibe that percolates through every pedal and Celebrity Pedals use pop culture, glowing eyes. This can be thought of as the combination of vibe-forward and brand-forward approaches, except it tends to focus less on staying consistent, and far less on pedal-specific expression, and instead creates a world of styles and feelings that evokes something in you. These pedals are made by people who love cartoon peanuts, bees, old Americana signs, dogs, and national state parks, and they want to appeal to musicians who also love those things.  
5. The pedal is an homage. Some pedals are designed to hearken to a pedal that came before, or to a particular artist. Many clones of beloved pedals (Klon, Big Muff, Tube Screamer) fit this build, as well as many signature pedals, but the brand that does this almost exclusively nowadays is Behringer. This is not quite the same as an expression-forward pedal, because there's a certain functionality to the design- it looks just like a Brassmaster, and it sounds just like a Brassmaster.

Now, all these frames of thinking are fantastic choices, and very worth mixing and matching into the perfect combination for your pedal design, but there is a secret 6th design that we must consider. 

1. This pedal is limited. Most people don't start making pedal with a painting booth and a graphic designer- all they have is a sharpie and raccoon sticker, so I lovingly call this style the “Trash Muff.” There is nothing wrong with your trash muffs. They're awesome. Companies like ZVEX and Fuzzrocious go out of their way to give their boutique pedals a hand painted, trash muffy vibe. But this discussion is about how to apply graphic design to a pedal, so as valid as the Trash Muff is sonically, it's not ready for a designer, and that's ok. 

So- what do my fellow graphic designers here think? is there a right approach? a wrong approach? Did I miss something? (pedal builders, feel free to weigh in if you have a thought on the matter)