Tag: electronics

Sabbath Drive

This is a post that has been a very long time in the mak­ing. I start­ed this project back in Octo­ber of 2018. Gui­tarPCB had a sale and it looked like their Sab­o­tage Dri­ve would be an inter­est­ing chal­lenge. There were six (!) tran­sis­tors in this cir­cuit. But I want­ed to make this a real­ly… Con­tin­ue read­ing Sab­bath Drive

Ah, Rats (Pedals)!

The Pro Co Rat is a, if not the, clas­sic dis­tor­tion gui­tar effect1. It’s still around though “vin­tage” effects can go for hun­dreds of dol­lars. There are many vari­ants and, like any clas­sic gui­tar effect, there are many clones. It’s also one of those ped­als that many of the mods and clones have improved upon… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ah, Rats (Ped­als)!

The Bazz Fuss

You know a pro­jec­t’s been lin­ger­ing too long when your son — who could­n’t care less about gui­tar or effects ped­als — won­ders into your office one day, points to a jum­ble of wires and com­po­nents, and asks “are you ever going to fin­ish this thing?”  That “thing” is the bazz fuss cir­cuit I sol­dered onto… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Bazz Fuss

Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Mods

This project has been “in the works” for a while. I’ve had the ped­al work­ing for some­time but final­ly got around mak­ing the mod­i­fi­ca­tions to make it a mod­ern ped­al. Let’s start with a bit of back­sto­ry: Last sum­mer, my wife and I were help­ing to clean out my late father-in-laws tool shed. He had a… Con­tin­ue read­ing Elec­tro-Har­monix Small Stone Mods

LED Wiring

This is a basic ele­ment of many elec­tron­ics projects: how to wire up an LED with a cur­rent lim­it­ing resis­tor. Most effects have a 5 mm LED and many wiring dia­grams show a 4k7Ω resis­tor. There’s a fair­ly wide range of val­ues you can use, depend­ing on how bright you want the LED (and what… Con­tin­ue read­ing LED Wiring

Amp Channel Footswitch

Most amps have the abil­i­ty to use an exter­nal footswitch to change between a clean and dis­tor­tion chan­nel. Of course, some have more sophis­ti­cat­ed options than this, but the chan­nel switch is a pret­ty com­mon fea­ture. My old­er broth­er recent­ly got an awe­­some-look­ing, orange Fend­er Duo-Son­ic and a small Fend­er prac­tice amp to play it… Con­tin­ue read­ing Amp Chan­nel Footswitch

Mini MicroAmp Build

With each new ped­al build, I try to focus on some aspect that makes it a new chal­lenge or some­thing new to learn. My first ped­al build ever (about 18 months ago) was a boost ped­al. I decid­ed I’d build anoth­er boost: this one using the MXR MicroAmp cir­cuit. I used the Gen­er­al Gui­tar Gad­gets… Con­tin­ue read­ing Mini MicroAmp Build

Tremolo Pedal Build

Christ­mas in 2018 was a lot of fun and my fam­i­ly got me a lot of won­der­ful things. Among them, my broth­er, Dave, got me a gui­tar ped­al effects kit. This was a tremo­lo ped­al, which is def­i­nite­ly some­thing I would­n’t have got­ten myself. If you don’t know, a tremo­lo ped­al mod­u­lates the ampli­tude of… Con­tin­ue read­ing Tremo­lo Ped­al Build

My First Stomp Box Project

For my birth­day, I decid­ed to work a com­plete­ly new project: build a gui­tar effects ped­al. I pur­chased the “Con­fi­dence Boost” project kit from BuildYourOwnClone.com (as in clones of pop­u­lar gui­tar stomp box­es). It’s a great project for about $15 which comes with detailed instruc­tions and makes a pret­ty decent lit­tle boost effect. The kit… Con­tin­ue read­ing My First Stomp Box Project