DIY Guitar Pedals

Hello, I'm Gar. this is my blog about building guitar pedals and synths, occasionally with some anecdotes about music I like. All posts are original. Feel free to follow, ask questions, make suggestions...

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Testing my super simple diy laser light show machine. Cheers, everybody.

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Just having some fun on my day off, trying to make some new toys and messing with a time-lapse program on my phone.  Quick and dirty prototyping for an active filter circuit for a modular synth/guitar pedal hybrid experiment kinda thing...

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Made this as a gift for local musician Joe Preston, aka Thrones.  Univox Super Fuzz clone with etched enclosure.

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Quick and dirty demo.  Made this one for Nathan Latona of Tera Melos.  May it serve him well.     

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Made this one for Nathan Latona of Tera Melos.  I never miss a show when they come to town and they never fail to impress. Check em out, especially if you're into Mathrock/prog/technical rock/actual talent.

Etching is always a rough process.  The GIF goes quick, but there is lot of work happening in between those pictures.  Every little thing has to be scraped just so with a dental pick.  Talk about tedious.  You can see that the image didn't transfer correctly the first time so some steps had to be repeated (Lost 3/5 Words in the first transfer).  In the end, it' turned out fine and I'm happy with the results. 

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Melt-Banana Comes to Town!

Finally got a chance to see Melt-Banana when they came to town on October 18th, 2013.  One of the best shows I've seen in a long while, and one I've been waiting for for years.

Agata's Pedal Rig

Agata is known for his unconventional guitar playing.  To achieve his sound he uses a Modified Digitech Whammy, a Boss DD-6 Digital Delay, a Boss RV-5 Digital Reverb, a Zoom MS-50G MultiStomp, a Fulltone GT-500, an Electroharmonix H.O.G., a Moog Expression Pedal (not pictured), and a couple of Keeley True Bypass Loopers.  The DD-6 and the Digitech Whammy seem to be the pedals he uses the most for odd sound effects, followed shortly by the Moog expression pedal that controls the EHX HOG (which was set to filter mode).  Agata uses George L's patch cables, a one-spot power supply and appears to favor using non-slip drawer liners instead of an actual pedal board.  Agata plays his triple-humbucker Gibson SG through a Sunn Beta Lead amp and a Marshall cabinet.

Yasuko Onuki's Rig

Yasuko uses an apple laptop with Ableton Live and a Numark Orbit wireless DJ controller.  Her vocals and samples go through a Roland Jazz Chorus 120 combo amp,  an 8-speaker Ampeg cabinet (with a couple of unidentified rack-mounted effects on top) and a couple other smaller cabinets.  She's also rockin' some crazy boots.

Check out my youtube channel to see some footage from this concert.  Go to http://www.youtube.com/user/garfrankwyn/

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September 2013

Hello, I'm going to start hosting my own workshops on building guitar pedals in Portland, OR. 

Update: Jan 2016.  Hello all.  I just wanted to let you guys know that I’m not officially doing these workshops any more, at least not on a regular basis.  If you live in Portland OR, and really want to learn about building guitar pedals, drop me a line.  We can still get together and build just about anything, or just grab a beer (or cup of tea if that’s your thing) and talk about building pedals and synths.  It’s always nice to meet people who are interested in this stuff.

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Video Demos!  I made all these pedals, and this is what they sound like.  Enjoy :)

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Ring Modulator.  Robbie the robot/flight of the conchords style.

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Envelope Filter, aka Tim Escobedo's Phuncgnosis.  Jerry used a mutron, but this gets pretty close to the sound.

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My private stash of DIY Guitar Pedals.  None of these were kits (who can afford those anyway?), most are vero boards, several others are made from PCBs I designed myself.  From left to right:

Top Row:  Dan Armstrong Green Ringer, Triple Thing Modulator, John Hollis Flatline Compressor, Catalinbread Heliotrope, Rebote 2.5 Delay, Silicon Fuzz Face.

Middle Row:  Bazzfuss (with selectable clipping), Brian May Treble Booster, Zvex Wooly Mammoth, Devi Ever Soda Mieser, Phuncgnosis, Double Bazzfuss

Bottom Row: Noise 567, Big Muff (w/creamy dreamer mods) Bazz Fuss, Thing Modulator, Pushmepullyou, DOD 250 Overdrive.

Absent:  Univox Superfuzz, TS-808 Tube Screamer, copies of some of the above pedals (with different art).

Future Builds:  Mutron III, Maestro S/H, Proco Rat, Octavia, Harmonic Energizer, Sequencer-controlled VCF, Fuzz Factory.

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OK, decals, I get lots of questions about these.  Here is another animated gif that shows the process of adding a decal to a guitar pedal enclosure...

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Another gif I made, showing the off-board wiring process, a little harder to follow, but then again, off-board wiring is the crux of the biscuit...  Almost done with the whole series...

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This is one of my favorite pedals, with artwork by Eric Drooker (Please don't be mad Eric, I love your art, I have this same image on a PM Press T-shirt that I got from Bound Together Books, SF).  One of my favorite pedals yet, it never leaves my pedal board.  The name I picked for it was a joke (isn't everything on here a joke?).  It was my first all black pedal and literally resembled a "black block..."

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Two simple fuzz circuits in one enclosure.

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Here is another gif I made that shows the etching process.   You can probably see that the toner didn't transfer exactly as planned, but it still made for a cool pedal.

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Yet another gif I made.  This one show the process of populating a pcb.  The circuit is a single transistor fuzz, aka bazz fuss.  As you can see it is very simple, a great project for beginners that sounds good and is easy to make.