Share something you wish you would have known

[Betty Wont]

That i would have to become a dealer  to support my habit 😒.

[culturejam]

To badly quote Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame: When starting out, buy cheap tools. If you use it often enough for it to wear out, go and buy the best quality one you can afford, because that is something you will actually get use out of.

I totally agree.

The only reason I bought a Unibit to start is because I couldn't find a cheaper alternative. If I could have paid $10 instead of $45, I definitely would have.

[Haberdasher]

Get some of the Barry's Best wire from guitarpcb.

Try out some 63/37 solder unless you really have to use lead free.  Always wash your hands after you use it.

If your iron ever slips out of your hand while soldering, ignore that innate reflex that tells you you're quick enough to catch it before it hits the floor.

[alanp]

Hmmm...

BUY A WIRE STRIPPER.

Stop trying to half-ass it, stripping the ends of wires with your side-cutters. Uncrack your wallet, Alan, let the moths out, and buy some goddamn strippers.

[vizcities]

+ Clean the board with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush before soldering! I got lazy for a stretch and ended up with a string of pedals with cold solder joints, including a Lovetone Meatball clone that cost $40 in parts and remains in the do-not-resuscitate bin. This goes double for stripboard. And don't touch the board afterward! The oils can (again) cause cold joints.

+ Invest in one of those nifty Chinese eBay Mega328 parts testers. There are obviously better testers out there - the Peak DCA75 comes to mind - but if you just want to make sure your cheapie Tayda parts are in spec (or just working at all), the eBay tester covers a lot of ground. I test every single part before it hits my PCB, and I've gone from a 1 out of 3 first-time fail rate to something like a 1 out of 12 fail rate. The last project I messed up was an Aquaboy, and then only because that thing's a legitimate beast.

+ Wiring 3PDTs is a pointless hassle unless there's some special way they're supposed to be wired (as in a... buffered pedal, I guess?). If the project's standard true bypass, just use Rullywow's space-saving 3PDT board or similar. They're so cheap and reliable that I buy them in bulk.

+ Things I second: Barry's Best wire is great, wire strippers are great, step bits are great, and wiring (in general, not just for 3PDTs) sucks. I make about 95% of my mistakes during the wiring stage - cold joints, odd grounding issues, etc.

+ Socket your transistors and ICs. Everyone says it, but they're right: it will save you a world of annoyance.

+ Build a testing rig/Beavis Board and, as they say, "rock it before you box it." Nothing can make your head swim quite like repeatedly removing a build from an enclosure in order to troubleshoot it (and it's not exactly heaven for your connections either).

+ Speaking of troubleshooting: read the schematic when you troubleshoot! In my experience, it's surprisingly easy to brick your voltmeter by hitting a power connection instead of signal pad.

+ A spritz of hot glue will lock down a loose LED. Actually, hot glue is useful for all sorts of things.

+ If a knob has absolutely no metal parts, it's a piece of garbage and will almost certainly become loose at some point. Also, 1/4" knurled pots + 1/4" knobs made for knurled pots = the easiest possible knob job for a pedal.

+ The pedal market is very, very saturated - and with very talented people (go check out ZVex's Candela Vibrophase and goggle, if you like) - so don't go into this thinking "hey, maybe I'll start selling these at some point." Unless you're already an engineering guru or you've been at this for a few years, think of this as a hobby where you will learn some new skills, not a possible career. If you take to it, get down with some Craig Anderton and R.G. Keen, start to learn the E.E. fundamentals, and maybe try your hand at more ambitious projects (a mic, preamp, amp, or DIYRE-/TH Customs-style utility thing).

[stringsthings]

When I first started out, decades ago (!), I underestimated the difficulty of making good solder joints.
I was too excited to build this complex project as my first build and ended up screwing things up royally with some of the worst
solder joints known to man.   

Lesson learned.  Bought a quality Weller iron ( still going strong ) and started out much simpler.
Bought a simple breadboard and transferred the working circuit to one of those breadboard pcbs.
To this day, I still get a lot of satisfaction in making a good shiny solder joint.

[EBK]

+ The pedal market is very, very saturated - and with very talented people (go check out ZVex's Candela Vibrophase and goggle, if you like) - so don't go into this thinking "hey, maybe I'll start selling these at some point." Unless you're already an engineering guru or you've been at this for a few years, think of this as a hobby where you will learn some new skills, not a possible career.

Also along these economic lines...
A quality clone of a popular pedal can cost $50-$100 to build.  The same pedal can be purchased from Joyo for $30.  Building your own pedals is neither going to earn you money nor save you money.  But, it is fun, and what you can do eventually, perhaps, is design/build something unique.  If you ever do that, it can be far more rewarding to share it freely than try to market it.

[sjaustin]

Buy some prebond wire. Twisting and tinning is for chumps. I always have four colors, and always use them the same way: black is negative, red positive, green is in, yellow is out.

Bonus: get a wire stripper that measures, cuts, and removes the insulation all in one squeezing motion, like the tool pictured below. I would quit building pedals if I couldn’t use this tool. Really.

[gtr2]

Don't assume anything is right on a build that doesn't fire up the first time.

Buy two of everything.

[sonnyboy27]

Double everything in your first parts orders (so you have backups and can build random pedals without waiting later on).

Rock it before you box it. Then you know that it's your offboard wiring that killed the pedal. I've grounded the output on accident in the enclosure enough times to learn that.

Get a step bit and wire strippers. Stripping wire sucks and changing bits is annoying.

Make an audio probe with an extra input jack, 100nF capacitor, and some alligator clips for debugging.

Socket transistors, diodes and caps/resistors in filtering sections to play around with interesting parts of the circuit.

When you add SIP sockets, break off the amount you need and then stick them back on the remaining stick of sockets to space them out and make it easier to solder them in place. Once you get a couple of sockets in place, continue putting the individual sockets on the strip and then steady that strip by inserting part of it into the sockets you previously soldered to the board in order to steady it. This is a confusing thing to put in words, but there's a picture showing it in the build process article on my blog. http://prentisseffects.blogspot.com/2017/06/getting-started-build-procedure.html

Also, plug one end of your wire into a socket when you're doing your offboard wiring to hold it in place while you solder.

[EBK]

When your pedal doesn't work, your first debugging steps should be: 1) make sure your power source is plugged in, 2) make sure your guitar is actually plugged into the pedal input, and 3) make sure the amp is actually plugged into the pedal output.

I've seen lots of combinations/variations of those simple things going wrong and wasting time.

[nocentelli]

Breadboard is essential
Germanium is pointless

black is negative, red positive, green blue is in, yellow is out.

[Gnarcade]

Holy cow this really took off! I have loved reading everything so far and have learned a ton. Thanks to everyone who has shared so far. I look forward to hearing even more from y'all!

[alanp]

Buy some prebond wire. Twisting and tinning is for chumps. I always have four colors, and always use them the same way: black is negative, red positive, green is in, yellow is out.

Huh, when I do colourcode wires, it's usually -- black ground, red 9V, yellow for dry signal (In), blue for wet signal (Out).

[EBK]

Buy some prebond wire. Twisting and tinning is for chumps. I always have four colors, and always use them the same way: black is negative, red positive, green is in, yellow is out.

Huh, when I do colourcode wires, it's usually -- black ground, red 9V, yellow for dry signal (In), blue for wet signal (Out).

I used white wire for clean signal (in) and brown wire for dirty signal (out).