DIY Octave Pedal

The
Octave pedal in it's earliest form was a fuzzy nasty pedal that produced an octave up effect if played around the 12th fret with the tone knob rolled off.  In more recent years, pitch shifter pedals have given us the ability to produce clean octave up and octave down tones

Still, these early crude octave pedals such as the Tychobrae Octavia or Green Ringer were used to great effect and produced some great tones

Many years back I fancied myself one of these old school octave pedals.  With an infant in the house and no disposable income I decided to learn how to build one of these beasts. With the abundant information on the internet and a lot of trial and error I got into the hobby of pedal building.

Below is a demo of the pedal that came to fruition based on my shear determination and want of a simple Octave Pedal.

DIY Screamer boost pedal

The Ibanez Tube Screamer is undoubtedly the most ubiquitous and famous overdrive pedal ever.  It has been used by countless guitar hero's as well as being in the arsenal of a huge number of working musicians.

A number of years ago I decided to take a stab at building my own pedals. The Tube Screamer type circuit has so many iterations and variations that it is almost mandatory that one tweak the circuit and put their own twist on it.

Below is a video demoing my take on a TS type circuit with plenty of mods to satisfy my own needs.

Get by with a little DIY…..

How many times have you had a pedal that sounded good but you thought, “it could use a little more bass” or “a little more mids would be nice”. Maybe you think, “I don’t know if I want a fuzz pedal enough to spend the dough”. Maybe you’re just naturally curious and like to tinker. If so, the I’m here to help you get bit by the DIY bug.


I got into DIY pedals about 10 years ago simply because I wanted an octave pedal but didn’t have the cash to buy one. I had a new baby and I couldn’t justify spending the dough on a pedal I didn’t really need. So I thought, “I can build one”. Sure why not. I quickly found out that DIY does not equal cheaper, but it sure is fun.


I surfed the net and found lots of great information and some not so great information. Here are some of my favorite sites to get you immersed in the world of DIY pedals.

Kit Sites

• General Guitar Gadgets
• Build your own clone
• Officially Licensed Circuits

General DIY info

• DIY stompboxes
• R.G. Keen’s site
• AMZ

Required reading

• DIY wiki
• Geofex how to’s
• Geofex debuggin page

Basic Electronics references

• Basic info on Capacitors,resistors, etc..
• Ohms law calculator
• Ohms law chart

Parts

• Small bear electronics
• DIY stompboxes store
• Jameco electronics
• Pedal Parts Plus

These are just a few of the many sites out their devoted to DIY stomp boxes. Look around and you’ll find a whole world of information to get you on the road to building your own pedals.

Scott

Plutonium Fuzz….Meltdown in a box

Fuzz pedals have been around for over forty years now. They were among the first pedals us guitarists had to use to create the distorted rock and roll sound we all love. A few years ago while learning the ropes of pedal building I built the Plutonium Fuzz. It was based on Fuzz Central's Axis Face which was a Fuzz Face variant. I did some tweaks based on information found on the various DIY sites and ended up with a really cool pedal.

I've had the schematic and perf board layout on the DIY stompboxes forum for a while but I think it's time I put it here for everyone to see.


The Schematic

The Layout



The Lowdown

This Fuzz is not subtle. It is not completely out of control either. It has lots of gain but with careful tweaking of the controls you can get a great maxed out fuzz sound while still maintaining some clarity and minimizing noise.

When building this there are a few things to be careful of. Make sure your input and output wires are as short as possible. Also don't let the input and outputs cross. Nor should you let any signal carrying wires cross the power supply wires.

 Fuzz circuits are a magnet for noise and you will be faced with some ugly hum, his and oscillation if your are not careful.

Here’s a link to a video demo from my old guitar blog days…..yes I probably talked too much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDbTzIldEY4