DIY Effect Pedal Kits-with bonus!

[calaverasgrandes]

Well I dug out the old "Electronics Projects for Musicians" by Craig Anderton and was looking through it to see if I wanted to build anything other than a fuzz. Then I got online to look up some places to buy kits or pcbs.
Came up with these;

Build Your Own Clone, expensive kits that cost nearly as much as the originals(or more). Though they do come with everything and some of these just arent made anymore.
http://buildyourownclone.com/fxkitindex.html

General Guitar Gadgets, pretty much all versions of discontinued pedals, can buy just the PCB if you have your own parts.
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/index.php

AMZ, this fella has some nifty schematics for free and a few PCBs for sale.
http://www.muzique.com/pcb.htm

Paia, yeah they still exist. The source for those Anderton kits if you have the above-mentioned book. Plenty of other stuff too.
http://www.paia.com/guitarfx.asp

OLC, mostly their own versions of various classic amps in pedal form. Prices are high-ish.
http://www.olcircuits.com/olckits.html

Now for the bonus
I am thinking of building one or two of these kits for studio use. Anyone have any luck with balancing one of these types of deals? I am looking to build possibly an EQ or compressor and balance it electronically or ideally with iron. My other pet project idea is to adapt one of the ring mod kits for balanced operation. Can you say mid side ring mod?

jack orman from amz is the bomb. the fulltone fat boost is a stolen jack orman design. r.g. keen and mark hammer are also the the forefathers of pedal building.

those 3 guys did more for the pedal building community. there is another guy, who in the early nineties put out a schematic for just about every pedal design out there, but i can't remember his name now...

i would suggest getting some strip (vero) board, and building something from aronnelson.com/gallery. much cheaper...and just about every great circuit is there. my effects gallery (casey's vintage effects) on that site is good too. i've got a ton of vintage circuits if that's more your flavor...

thanks for the link.
I do use perfboard all the time for adding mods or just screwing around. I like the premade pcbs for the guesswork they take out of the process. I'm sure all of us have put together a circuit from scratch and had it just not work. Seems like I get less of those when I am using someones pcb and parts list as a starting point as oppossed to squinting at a circuit and trying to wing it on some perfboard.
Can I take a second to marvel at our forebears that built stuff on tag boards. Not only circuits, but production amps like Traynors and Fenders!
Crazy.

[Snarl 12/8]

Does anyone know about a DIY guitar synth plan/kit? I wanna start getting freaky on the git box.

[space_ryerson]

Music From Outer Space has the subcommander, or you can add a guitar input to the Soundlab. While I haven't built it yet, there's a seemingly doable guitar to midi converter in the october issue of Everyday Practical Electronics. You can get most of the pertinent info here. There's also a project on the diystompboxes forum called Synthbox, which I haven't built yet.

calaverasgrandes, if you don't already have one, a solderless breadboard is super handy for tinkering.

[calaverasgrandes]

you guys may laugh but I use one of those "200 electronics projects" kits for tinkering. You know with the little springs for connections?
its got transformers, diodes, resistors, caps, transistors and a couple ICs.
This has been my test bed for a lot of my pedal mods. Very helpful when I revoiced my rat box.
I predict this will be the next laptop-core.

[casey campbell]

Well I dug out the old "Electronics Projects for Musicians" by Craig Anderton and was looking through it to see if I wanted to build anything other than a fuzz. Then I got online to look up some places to buy kits or pcbs.
Came up with these;

Build Your Own Clone, expensive kits that cost nearly as much as the originals(or more). Though they do come with everything and some of these just arent made anymore.
http://buildyourownclone.com/fxkitindex.html

General Guitar Gadgets, pretty much all versions of discontinued pedals, can buy just the PCB if you have your own parts.
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/index.php

AMZ, this fella has some nifty schematics for free and a few PCBs for sale.
http://www.muzique.com/pcb.htm

Paia, yeah they still exist. The source for those Anderton kits if you have the above-mentioned book. Plenty of other stuff too.
http://www.paia.com/guitarfx.asp

OLC, mostly their own versions of various classic amps in pedal form. Prices are high-ish.
http://www.olcircuits.com/olckits.html

Now for the bonus
I am thinking of building one or two of these kits for studio use. Anyone have any luck with balancing one of these types of deals? I am looking to build possibly an EQ or compressor and balance it electronically or ideally with iron. My other pet project idea is to adapt one of the ring mod kits for balanced operation. Can you say mid side ring mod?

jack orman from amz is the bomb. the fulltone fat boost is a stolen jack orman design. r.g. keen and mark hammer are also the the forefathers of pedal building.

those 3 guys did more for the pedal building community. there is another guy, who in the early nineties put out a schematic for just about every pedal design out there, but i can't remember his name now...

i would suggest getting some strip (vero) board, and building something from aronnelson.com/gallery. much cheaper...and just about every great circuit is there. my effects gallery (casey's vintage effects) on that site is good too. i've got a ton of vintage circuits if that's more your flavor...

thanks for the link.
I do use perfboard all the time for adding mods or just screwing around. I like the premade pcbs for the guesswork they take out of the process. I'm sure all of us have put together a circuit from scratch and had it just not work. Seems like I get less of those when I am using someones pcb and parts list as a starting point as oppossed to squinting at a circuit and trying to wing it on some perfboard.
Can I take a second to marvel at our forebears that built stuff on tag boards. Not only circuits, but production amps like Traynors and Fenders!
Crazy.

there's a difference between perf and vero. im talking about vero. like this:

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main. ... 1.jpg.html

all you need is a small drill bit to cut the traces where necessary, place the components, and boom, you are done!

[calaverasgrandes]

ok so its kinda like the clad perfboard that has every 3 hole plated together, except it whole lanes. Thats really neat actually.

[RefD]

you guys may laugh but I use one of those "200 electronics projects" kits for tinkering. You know with the little springs for connections?
its got transformers, diodes, resistors, caps, transistors and a couple ICs.
This has been my test bed for a lot of my pedal mods. Very helpful when I revoiced my rat box.
I predict this will be the next laptop-core.

i have one of those in the top of a closet.

time to get it down and get down!

[kslight]

I have built a few BYOC pedals...they aren't bad...really pretty good actually...I only have a couple store-bought pedals left. Not really sure what you mean by "almost as expensive as the originals"...maybe at original MSRP but not originals on eBay... Yeah I think they are a bit spendy but I'm also a bit lazy and personally feel that the time saved by not having to source all my own parts and make my own PCBs and drill my own holes in boxes is well worth the cost. That said I have sourced my own pedals before (did a run of Magnus Modulus echo boxes that I tweaked a bit for a few friends and myself...) and its a huge pain in the ass...and didn't really save any money per build versus taking the BYOC delay and modifying it....though the Magnus certainly does more it is sort of an expensive pedal to build.

[calaverasgrandes]

on a delay pedal I could hardly argue the price. But for the fuzz/rat/muff pedals, they are almost in boutique pedal price territory but with the added fun that you can screw it up!
I guess the appeal of building gear is that you save money. If its a net wash pricewise why not just by a built pedal and solder a few toggles in there with some caps, diodes and resistors so you can mess around with modding it?
Sourcing parts is generally pretty easy, (except for some ICs!) you just need to have so many projects on the back burner that you acheive critical mass for caps and resistors and stuff. Then you look up a circuit and all you need is an opamp a transistor and a couple diodes.