Why did you start building?

[TNblueshawk]

Sadly, yes.  Now he knows why I click "like" on his Facebook pedal pics at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Thanks for the visual Mark 

[jkokura]

But mainly I do it for the chicks.

Are you talking about the ones Juansolo puts on his enclosures?

I thought he meant the peeps...

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=4493.msg39771#msg39771

Jacob

[Leevibe]

I got into it in 2010. I had borrowed my friend's copy of Dave Hunter's awesome "Guitar Amp Handbook." At the time, I owned an Agile AD-2300, Digitech Bad Monkey & Screamin' Blues, DOD Milkbox. I may have acquired my TC Nova Delay at that point. And I was playing into a Blackheart BH5 half stack. By the end of the book, all I could think about was building a "2 Stroke" amp.

A couple of my guitar buddies told me I should start on pedals instead to gain some soldering chops first, and because it would be cheaper and safer than trying to build an amp. I didn't have money to build either one, so it was moot.

Then I read Dave Hunter's not-nearly-as-awesome "Guitar Effects Pedals." At the end, he interviewed several prominent builders, and they were all saying that nobody was coming out with any new ideas, just cloning and re-cooking tired old stuff. That got me thinking about what novel idea one could come up with that would be different, but still useful musically.

That made me want to know how the circuits worked and I started poring over the projects at BYOC and GGG. Eventually I saved up some money and bought the GGG ITS8 kit. I was shocked and amazed to see/hear it fire up, and I've never lost the little thrill of anticipation, wondering if the LED is going to light on the first try. Even though it doesn't always correlate with whether or not the effect actually works, I love seeing that LED glow! And it's always a mini heartbreak if it doesn't light right up.

Of course I set to modding the TS circuit and that led eventually to coming up with my own, non-TS OD circuit. Reading the "Cook Your Own Distortion" article (now called "Design Your Own Distortion") helped immensely with that.

I then got into some basic Eagle stuff and etching my own boards, screen printing, dabbling with powder coating (eventually giving up on powder coating). I met Jon, a.k.a. Stomptown, and he introduced me to the MB community about a year ago. He also created the amazing layout for my Big Block pedal that fixed the crazy tangle of off-board wire and took it from 3 PCBs to 1.

Through the stuff I've seen here, I've gained a ton of new creative ideas, and I've learned a lot from Jacob's Eagle tutorials. No more etching boards for me! I continue to be blown away and inspired by the builds that get posted here, and I'm learning something new here every day.

[juansolo]

Sadly, yes.  Now he knows why I click "like" on his Facebook pedal pics at 2 o'clock in the morning.

LOL!

[Droogie]

I got into building pedals because I wanted to learn enough about electronics and soldering to be able to fix my tube amps myself (after spending on two repairs in quick succession). Bought a BYOC Tremolo kit and a Rat Shack iron and when the thing worked right off the bat, I was hooked!

Six years later, still know almost nothing about electronics and never came close to opening up a tube amp. Basically, abject failure, aside from the 100 pedals I've built so far and the 20 I need to box.

[flanagan0718]

Here's my story:
I started in 2009 ish. I bought a used Line 6 DL4 that worked great...for a while. Then the tap switch started to flake out and I needed to have it repaired. I put it off for a while. Then I bought a Planet Waves PT-40 pedal tuner for $20 off some dude on craigslist. It was a piece of GARBAGE! Made this horrible noise when I had it bypassed. So I then needed an AB switch to switch over to it when needed. I figured it couldn't be that hard to build. I ordered the parts from PPP and built the switch. Then I decided to try and fix the DL4. Replaced all the switches and did a ton of mods. Then I did the same to my FM4. And the sickness was caught. Haven't been able to stop since. I started out modding for a few years. Then in about 2012 I built a GGG Big Muff and the rest is history. So in the end it was really to fill a need and save a little cash, now it for fun and friends.

-Mike-

[davent]

Started soldering up stuff from Guitar Player, Electronic Musician, Modern Recording and other mags as well as Craig Anderton's Electronics Projects for Musicians, back in the eighties. Graph Paper, Pencil & Eraser pcb design software, dry transfer pads & tape 'etch resist'. Went and visited Jon Gaines at his Rochester workshop in '91.

Fast forward to the end of the century, my integrated stereo amp is beyond repair but all the new ones i look at are phono preampless,  know i can build a phono pre to use with whatever amp i buy.

Find a cool preamp design by astronaut Norm Thagard in AudioXpress magazine, also find a tube power amp design in an issue that looks quite doable so why not? Build those plus a Transcendent Sound Tube preamp, all still functioning and sounding great. In searching for parts for those come across the Angela website/store and discover to my delight, people actually diy tube guitar amps, Eureka moment, i can do that?

Buy a Kevin O'Connor book on building guitar amps and there's a circuit in there for a Tremolo that could be integrated into an amp or made into a pedal, bingo! Made that, meh... eventually reused the enclosure for an EA Tremolo, much better.

I just like making stuff, anything, never occurred to me to buy a pedal, still not much of a pedal person, like making them, love messing around on the enclosure seeing where that journey goes, how do you bring that part of the process to closure? On occassion i even use them, most of the time just give me a SHO and one of my homebrew tube amps and i can contendedly bang my head stupid.

dave

edit; We had a Heathkit tube radio when i was a kid that my dad had soldered up so i'm genetically predisposed to be a solder sniffer.

When i started high school, walked there with a couple older guys from the neighbourhood who were into electronic projects. You'd be walking along talking and they'd randomly rhymn off some three digit number, 211, 524 whatever. Took a while to figure but they were using the resistor code to point out and talk about the 'hot chicks' encountered on the trip, keep the new kid out of the loop and in the dark.

Electronics and me go way back.

[RobA]

My intention when I started was just to learn about what made analog effects work so that I could do  more with the digital effects I was writing. I spent about a year doing nothing but breadboarding before I finally realized that the Fuzz Face circuit I'd been messing with really did sound amazing enough that I should put it in a box so that I could actually use it to play with. I did that first one point-to-point on hole board and pretty much had to learn to solder to do it.

I then decided to build the one effect that I had in my youth and sold and wished I hadn't, the CE-2. I did that on a Tonepad layout but eventually got annoyed enough with how noisy it was that I wanted to redo it. That's how I discovered Madbean.

My main goal is still learning about how the analog stuff works so I can do it in digital, but I now have so many pedals built that I'm kinda stunned by it every time I stop and look in the drawer that most of them sit in. The majority of them are the classic circuits that just aren't really obtainable any other way, so that's really cool too.

[micromegas]

My main goal is still learning about how the analog stuff works so I can do it in digital, but I now have so many pedals built that I'm kinda stunned by it every time I stop and look in the drawer that most of them sit in. The majority of them are the classic circuits that just aren't really obtainable any other way, so that's really cool too.

Haha, that's one of the reasons why I want to enroll in a DSP master... the problem is that I'm really enjoying the analog world at this time and don't have the intention to let that part go!! As much as I love programming stuff, emulating analog and creating things that are almost imposible to hear on a breadboard, I'll always be a soldering-iron-guy.

[alanp]

Ho-kay. Growing up, Dad had a shelf FULL of electronic stuff that he never did anything with (he's one of those people who never seems to have spare time), but I had no clue what I was doing so didn't touch most of it.

In High School, I discovered first my local BBS, then the wonders of the Internet. Then I discovered the synth-diy mailing list (late 90's). I've still got a notebook somewhere full of schematics I copied out but (at 50c a week pocket money) couldn't AFFORD to build.

I thought about learning guitar but, when I saw a page of chord charts ("You mean you have to memorise those semi-random patterns?! ALL those?!") I decided to learn keyboard instead. I wasn't hugely good.

A decade later, I heard Oasis' song "Talk Tonight". That was the one that spurred me to consider learning how to play guitar (at age 26, I think.) I don't think I finished making it through Ernie Ball Volume One, though.

I had a job that paid real money, and decided to build a guitar amp (since my MG15CD amp is fucking awful), on the basis it could be quite fun, more fun than just /buying/ one. This gave me a bit of confidence with that soldering thang. (And my 40W iron -- it's lasted me awhile!)

I spent several months doing the "Guitar to amp is purer!" thing, then decided I wanted to try out one or two effects, not a lot. The BD-2 Dad had felt uncontrollable to me, so I looked further afield. A guy on NZGuitars described the LaVache glowingly, and it sounded like a good match for my noobie hands, so I picked one up.

Building pedals turned out to be FUN. And cheaper than buildings amplifiers -- a LOT cheaper. My self-control is poor under these circumstances.

Once my confidence was propped up a bit, I remembered my high school dreams of a big MOTM modular synthesizer wall. Hmmm. I wonder how much harder a synthesizer module is than a guitar pedal... to quote Clarkson, Hammond, and May, "How hard can it be?"

[timbo_93631]

Love some of these stories guys.

I was given an Italian Vox Crybaby around 2004 and sold it for a huge price on ebay in 2009, then missed it immediately and went looking for another/something similar, which led to a period of true-bypass modding Thomas Organ Crybabys and Vox V847's, I don't even know how many, but I'd guess around 50, bought, modded, sold.  One day I thought I'd build a BYOC ESV fuzz, did it, huge massive sound, sold it.  Missed it, found FSB, built a Bad Stone, then an Aquaboy/Echobase 2-in-1 which led me here.  First proper MB board I built was a Boomstick, then many many Pastyfaces, all got sold, then many other dirts, then delay pedals.  So many delay pedals now.  I build, I sell, I buy more parts and do it again.  It has never really turned much profit, but it has been a self sustaining hobby and a great time.  Now I'm onto winding pickups, but still love to build delay pedals, just something so interesting about what you can do with them.