The benefits of getting into DIY pedal construction are many, and with the abundant
resources now available to help aspiring builders get started, there’s really never been
a better time to start putting together your own stompboxes. With a relatively small
investment of money and time, one can build a wide and colorful range of useful noise
generators. In fact, many of the most popular and venerable dirt circuits in the electric guitar
universe are extremely simple, consisting of only a toddler-sized handful of inexpensive
parts (crack open a Fuzz Face and you’ll see what I mean). So if you’ve been checking out
Mr. Kula’s DIY articles and felt like you wanted to take a stab at building something, but
have been slow to get going, allow me to convince you get on with it already. Here are a
few reasons to start building pedals now.
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Okay, so it’s not always cheaper to build your own
effects, but it can be in many instances. Given
the economies of scale involved, a proper pedal
company can generally purchase parts cheaper
and turn out product a lot more efficiently than
one person in a garage with a soldering iron,
meaning that by the time the company sells a
pedal to you, it might cost about the same as
if you rounded up all the components and did
it yourself. Where this system breaks down,
though, is with the simpler circuits that we
often find in vintage-style boost, fuzz and
drive pedals. These circuits are typically
not very complex, consisting of but
a few basic components, and they
can be easily assembled by pretty
much any primate with a soldering
iron. Thirty bucks in parts, some
instructions from the Internet, and a
little bench time can get a radical new
grime box on your board in nothing
flat. How cool is that?
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TONE TALK //
Build your Own Pedals Now: 4 Reasons to Get Cracking