One Knob Fuzz

Here's the One Knob Fuzz I finished building the other day. It's built from a GuitarPCB board. The circuit board is roughly the size of a quarter. I also used the guitarpcb 3PDT switch board to make the wiring a little prettier.

The pedal has a really cool sound somewhere between ZZ Top and punk rock.

The Looking Glass, a Lost-Themed Envelope Filter/Auto-Wah

This was made from the Build Your Own Clone envelope filter kit.



BYOC makes some really clean kits. Mounting the potentiometers to the PCB board really helps keep the wiring clean and holds the board in place. The pedal was built to bass guitar specs.

The effect is controlled by the amount of picking, allowing alot of control over the final sound. It's really a neat sound and I can't wait to use it on a song.

Making the same mistake twice

There's always a bit of trepidation whenever I finish an electronics project. I put the battery in, wire everything up and then cross my fingers (and toes, for the extra bit of luck).

With guitar pedals, there's two steps of testing, first checking if the pedal lights up. If it does, cool. If it doesn't the wiring is messed up. Then it's time to check to make sure the pedal works. A few strums on the guitar, and a few twists on the knobs and it's either joy or pain.

Yesterday, I finished the most complicated kit I'd built in a while, a BYOC Flanger. I plugged the cables in and it lit up. Then I strummed the guitar... Nothing. Whenever this happens, my stomach drops.

Fortunately, a quick scan of the board revealed the problem, I hadn't installed any of the IC chips into their sockets. I've made this mistake far too often, but it's one of the less depressing ones because at least it's so easy to fix.

So, I put the chips in and it worked. It's a really cool sound too, I'll post pics soon.