Stevexc's Misadventures In Pedal Building

Do it! It's hella fun. And hella frustrating to troubleshoot at times. But worth it.

I've been slowly working on what I've dubbed the Nuclear Rodent, but I took a break to bash out a quick Loop Selector pedal from a musikding kit (which wound up being cheaper than ordering jacks, enclosure, etc):



My drilling game still needs to get stepped up, I'm gonna blame it on poor lighting making getting the center punch lined up a nightmare. Only had one issue with this guy - LEDs wouldn't light up. Turns out that while they provided me 3 resistors - one of which goes in line with 9v, and the other two I assumed were CLRs for each LED - only the first one was needed. As soon as I removed those two resistors LEDs lit up fine.

I did make a minor ordering issue with this guy and grabbed the 125BB instead of the 125B enclosure, getting the sizes mixed up. My original goal was to have all the jacks mounted on the top of the pedal and just LEDs and switch on the front, but the extra space prompted me to do something a little less typical for a layout - hence the all-on-front layout.

Didn't grab a shot of the internals but it's REALLY simple. Each jack is wired together for Ground, then there's a wire for each jack coming from the stomp switch. The last three lugs on the switch are the LEDs and 9v. Fun little project.

 

Double post:

Finally finished the Nuclear Rodent (bottom right).



Very much a prototype, I've got a slightly more functional all-in-one PCB designed for it (rather than the 6 I'm using right now) that'll fit in a smaller enclosure (1590XX IIRC, it's been a little since I drew it up).

So, to break it down, it's all GuitarPCB PCBs in there. First is the Emerald Ring, based off the classic Green Ringer octave pedal. That's the simplest as it doesn't have any controls other than on/off.

From there it flows into the main attraction, a modified Rat circuit (Ruetz mod). 3-way selector for the order of diodes (LED, 1N914, both, or neither depending on the combination) and a two-way for symmetrical/asymmetrical. The Rat is on a blend circuit (in the revision the whole shebang is on the blend circuit, I just had issues with wiring), and has its own footswitch (which, again, for the revised would toggle the entire pedal, not just the Rat).

Last but not least is the GuitarPCB Stage 3 boost, a completely clean boost with something like 21db of boost and a bass switch.

I am not going to embarrass myself by showing a gut shot - it is a MESS. It is the messiest, scariest, spaghettiest wiring you will ever see, coupled with some very sketchy joins. High up on my priority list is to get the PCBs printed, parts ordered, and revisions assembled - and hopefully sold, when all is said and done.

I'm going to record some samples when I have time, but this thing DESTROYS. It is heavy, and noisy, and sludgy, and just overall a disgusting gain monster. I love it. I'd love it more if I had a noise gate in my chain (Zuul clone is on the list to build) but I love it.

 

Quick demo. Excuse the sloppy playing, just fiddling with a riff. The pedal itself is less... fizzy than it seems, that's mostly the Sunn T Pre that's fizzing.

 

Super quick demo of it on bass. The differences between the distortion/boost/octave modes are much more pronounced in real life but you can still tell over my shitty cell phone mic.

 

Built a smol fuzz. I actually got boards prefabbed for this one, just have to place my choice of transistor and solder the wires. Planning on actually selling these once I get an aesthetic sorted.