Build Your Own Clone E.S.V. Fuzz

This is the Build Your Own Clone (BYOC) Extra Special Vintage Fuzz kit I finished the other day. It's designed to be similar to a classic Fuzz Face right down to the giant resistors and Germanium Transistors.

If you're looking for a first pedal to build this would be a great place to start. There are only a handful of parts, and plenty of room for wiring and anything else that can get tricky.

The Nautilus (Brassmaster)

This is a Brassmaster kit I built from General Guitar Gadgets. It's a clone of the Maestro Brassmaster that Chris Squire used with Yes.

It's probably the most complex effect I've built so far. There was a slew of off board wiring, but fortunately GGG broke the instructions down into four different sections.

This isn't built in the case GGG included but rather a 1790NS.

Sound-wise, the pedal makes my bass sound huge, from a nice chunking fuzzy distortion, to a really metallic sound. The Brassmaster even has a mix between the clean bass sound and the distorted sound, an important feature for bassists.

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.

A few things to making build Guitar pedals easier

Besides offering a bunch of really reasonably priced PCB boards, guitarpcb.com offers a couple of items that will make building pedals easier.

The first is a board that works with 3PDT switches to make it easier to wire. When I first started building pedals, the posts on the 3PDT was the most intimidating part. This board gets rid of the tricky wiring, and should make pedals a little cleaner on the inside.

The second item is the pot condom. These neat little bits fit onto the bottoms of potentiometers to prevent them from shorting out the circuit. I used to use a little strip of electrical tape, but this is a much prettier solution.