Making your own guitar pedals / stomp boxes

Hey all,
I was wondering if anyone else here has ever made their own guitar pedals?
I’ve made a few in the past and have recently got back into it. I’ve only ever followed circuit diagrams that I’ve found on internet. No real design on my part (yet).

I’m currently working on a clone of the MXR Phase 100 ( generalguitargadgets.com/ind … Itemid=140 ).

Anyway, without going on about it (until there’s any interest), anyone else make guitar pedals here?

sweet

one of these please

generalguitargadgets.com/ind … Itemid=148

Looks good. I’m thinking of building a compressor, possibly the Orange Squeezer. Any suggestions?

Nice, man. That one looks fairly simple too.
generalguitargadgets.com/ind … &Itemid=79

I’ve found the hardest things to get here are actually the transistors. Ironic considering where they are probably made.

So yeah, my advice is to find the transistors first.

The other thing that I’ve found hard to source are the actual stomp switches. I managed to find some yesterday at GuangWha, but they were double pole only. You really need triple pole for most of those projects.

I’ve heard of a really good source for hard-to-find electronic components near Taipei Main Station, which I’ve yet to check out. If anyone’s interested, let me know.

i am interested. put a switch on the leslie sim above and i am sold.

I haven’t built a stomp box yet, but when I was in the UK I built an amp with help from this forum: ax84.com/bbs/ . It’s an international forum, but the Taiwan contingent is definitely a minority! Probably just me, in fact.

Anyway, there is an effects building forum somewhere under the discussion menu. Last time I dropped in I heard about lots of companies that sell stomp boxes in kit form, though General Guitar Gadgets seems to be one of the most popular.

Buy a kit and you won’t spend endless hours combing the electronics district looking for a “reverse analog taper 500k potentiometer” or some other thing that makes the laoban look at you as if you have three heads when you ask for it. That would be a relief.

Irishstu, you point out a very big irony, that so much stuff that’s made here or near here is simply unavailable or impossible to source locally. After just laying out and building the board, I shelved a Kalamazoo 2 amp project I was working on. Reason? No local source for tubes, sockets, and transformers, and I didn’t feel like paying big shipping to get them sent. Transfomers tend to be heavy.

the forums on harmony-central is another good spot - under effects.

Well now… Excellent! I just ordered the stomp switches AND the transistors I was looking for (not to mention a couple of other things) from here: diystompboxes.com/cart/int.htm

Very cheap, even including postage.

That’s also an interesting site for getting into building your own pedals. I seem to remember trying one or two from there a few years ago. There are some pretty simple ones to get started.
diystompboxes.com

It seems a few people have said how difficult it is to get parts, I would like to make a suggestion.

www.AllDatasheet.com is a good place to type in your part number to find out the manufactures, IrishStu had said he was doing a MXR Phase 100 and had problems with the transistors. type in a part number like 2N5088 and you will get half a dozen manufactures. Go to thier web sites and find out who is thier distributer in Taiwan, and you may find half a dozen for each.

If you were a company or an contracter they would probably send samples for free, if you say you are a hobyist, I wouldn’t know that you’d get samples if you paid fo them or not, wouldnt hurt to try.

Slide switches there are half a dozen manufactures here and in China, again if they thought there may be a chance for business they would most likely send free samples, but then again going to a site like taiwanalpha.com/ and doing your shopping on line is easier than tying to find obscure parts in Taipei train station or something.

Thanks for the info, Mike. Much appreciated.

Welcome, a couple of years ago I looked at stomp boxes very breifly, a company begining with B had come out with 70 or 80 Boss lookalike stomp boxes.

I thought to myself at the time why someone wouldn’t chuck a DSP in and provide a stomp box with 70 - 80 different stomp box choices maybe hook it up via USB to the computer to load new stomp box effects and configure with a GUI on the computer much the same way line 6 do on their amps.

Unfortunately everything I do needs to be justified by projected sales returns and with a ton of other projects on my plate concentrated my attention to what I knew would make money. I don't play the guitar and don't know the first thing about stomp boxes, lets say I'm looking at it from an engineering point of view and lets say the effects are not "rocket science" and can be created and left out of the discussion. 

I am still very interested to know more about stomp box considerations.

Well, I was lucky enough to make it to the electronics market on Si-Ning Road (Near Xi-Men) on Saturday. Man that place is something else. I thought the basement at GuangWha was good, but for real audiophiles, this place is amazing. Several shops selling old (and new) valves (tubes), and beside one of them, there’s a shop selling nothing other than transformers (you hear that, Salvatore Armani?).

Anyway, I was just after a few simple components so I could build an MXR Micro Amp (following AWOL’s recommendation). It’s a very simple circuit, and one that I thought would be good to get me warmed up again. You can see the details here: generalguitargadgets.com/ind … Itemid=120

On Sunday, I happened to have a few free hours, so set about doing it. Here’s the results:


You can see I used veroboard instead of a specially made board for this circuit, so I had to redo the layout a bit. No big probs. It’s a very simple circuit.


That’s what the top looked like after about 80% of the components were soldered in.


Wiring it all up to the switch, sockets, etc. I’d forgotten what a pain in the arse this bit is (especially the way the switching works with the input jack, etc).


Time to test it out. It didn’t work first time cos I’d forgotten to cut one of the tracks. After I found the error, it worked fine.

OK, so some pics of the final enclosure. I had already made this box for a previous project, which never got finished. Hence the big black marks, where I covered the previous name. I’ll sort that out in the near future.


Ooh! Oooh! looks like the answer I’ve been looking for! :yay:

I need to get a die-cast aluminium enclosure, just like this: hammondmfg.com/pdf/1590BB.pdf

I don’t care about the brand, but the dimensions have to be the same (and the material).

Any ideas? I’ve been round a fair few shops near Taipei Main.

Thanks.

I’ve only a got a 1590BC

I’ve already got 3 of those.

Actually, I just found I can order it online through RS components. Let’s see if it shows up. I’d rather know of a shop I can go to though, so I’m still all ears.

Are you building a Bender? It can live in my closet.

Try the electronic component shops at Guanghua market, South-West corner of Bade and Xinsheng, in the basement (B1 and B2).

Thanks, but I already tried there. They have a stack of die-cast boxes, but they’re either too small, or FAR too big.

Well, I ordered one online from RS Taiwan (taiwan01.rs-online.com/web/) and it arrived at my office today.

Unfortunately they farked up the payment details, so instead of cash on delivery (the option which I ticked on their website), it has been billed to my company, which is going to land me in a world of awkwardness.