Chorus Pedal Build

This is the BYOC Mega Chorus/Vibrato. It's a guitar pedal kit you assemble and design the casing for yourself. I've done a handful of other effects (see previous blog entries) and really enjoy it. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to make this pedal for someone else. This one is for Joel Korte of Chase Bliss Audio. He's been making some fine effects. You should for sure look into them. He wanted to get some feedback on how this pedal sounded and it also gave me a chance to prove my building skills.

I love how this one turned out especially the casing. A chorus for a chorus! What better image to have on such a pedal? I Mod Podged the kid's chorus to the face of the pedal and paint-penned the knob descriptions. It took a good while to affix the photo and have it look ok. Alot of patience for sure.

The build it's self wasn't too difficult, just took a fair amount of time. A bump up in difficulty from your average fuzz pedal.
 

It sounds quite good! The rate gets really fast. Along with your classic Chorus and vibrato sounds, you can get some cool de-tuning effects and the tone knob is very effective.

Hard to send this one off! But it's in good hands. Thanks Joel.

The Magician

This is the Build Your Own Clone Leeds Fuzz. It comes as a kit with all it's parts and a plain metal casing. You can decorate it how ever you wish. This guitar effects pedal is a clone of the Vox Superfuzz made famous by the great Pete Townshend of The Who heard on the Live At Leeds album.

Here I decoupaged a copy of one of my favorite Tarot cards The Magician (this one is from the Rider-Waite deck) on top and painted the casing yellow to match. I also replaced the stock black knobs for red ones to match the artwork. It has a switch that changes it's settings from a tighter wooly harmonic fuzz that sounds great playing two notes at once, to a wider aluminum heavy sounding fuzz. I find that the first option cuts through in a live band setting and this has got pretty good volume too. I used this sound on Little Man's song I Know Who You Are off the Original Face album. (in the video I state using it on "We Understand" but that is not the case.)

Here's a little Tarot lesson on The Magician, but first take a look at this image and see what your gut feeling is about it. Trust THAT. The Tarot is for you. It is card number 1. The number of unity. The connector of the many to the one. The Magician takes things out of thin air and makes them appear just like a songwriter takes ideas out of the ether and brings them into reality. The conscience between sub-conscience to cosmic-conscience. He has everything he needs to perform. Awareness of dreams. Captivating performer in the moment. Infinity, not of time.

From the Marseilles deck.

This is a fun hobby for me. I like to listen to my vinyl collection and work on stuff like this and them test them out and get creative with the sounds through an amp and then with the band. You can check out my other builds The Fuzzy Face, Fat Rocket and the Tube Dreamer if you're into it.

Tube Dreamer

This is the OD2 Tube Screamer clone from BYOC. It comes as a kit that you build. This is the 3rd build I've done (see previus posts of my Fuzzy Face and Fat Rocket) I call my version the Tube Dreamer. I took a picture from one of my LP covers and stuck it on there and painted the enclosure green like the original Tube Screamer. This guitar effect pedal is an overdrive. It's great when used with a clean tube amp and then this bumps it up a couple notches. Stevie Ray Vaughan is probably the most notable guitar player that uses this. It's a very popular classic pedal. BYOC's pedal also has a separate boost on one side, that gives you an increase in volume and that "just right" break up tone from amp.

The build ables you to make some modifacations or "mods" as they say from the orginal TS808 Tube Screamer it's built off of. I chose to (and here's the tech talk if you want to skip ahead) replace the final 470 ohm for a 220 for a little more gain. Added Mosfet B5170 clipping. Replaced the .22uf Tantalum capacitor for a .15 for better tone knobe frequency responce. I did some research on the mods to learn about them and figure out which ones I wanted to do. It even has three trim pots inside that you can adjust for Louder, Min and Max drive. I also added the blue LED's.

I had just gotten a new record player and a whole mess of albums from a friend so it was really cool to put on an LP and work on this project. The build was fairly easy but a little more difficult then the others I built.

I tried this pedal with my little Silvertone tube amp. Playing the amp at half volume gives a nice clean tone, a little dark, that's just the character of this amp. Using the boost of the pedal I can make it sound like it's up all the way breaking up nicely. With just the "tube screamer" side on, it gives a great overdriven distortion brightening up my amp and giving it a little more of a Vox amp sound. Both sides on lurches out a ripping tight zip tone kind of similar to a low batteried Fuzz Face.

Listen to the demo:

Fat Rocket!

I finished building an effects box for my guitar. I call it the Fat Rocket. It's the BYOC Large Beaver, a clone of the classic Big Muff. This distortion pedal has been around since the early 70's made by ElectroHarmonix. You'd be familiar with it if you've heard Pink Floyd, Dinosaur Jr and The White Stripes among countless others. It's a very thick and heavy guitar tone with lots of sustain. My first build was the BYOC Fuzz Face clone (see earlier blog post) and loved not only the sound of it but the experience of building it as well. I haven't had a hobby like this since I was a kid building lots of airplane models. It's great to get back into something so detailed. Something my mind can be present with. To be focused on something, to zen with.

Although easy to lots of builders, this one was just a step more complicated than my previous build. I started with preparing and painting the case first. I had never done this before. My other one I covered in fuzzy fabric, this one I spray painted red layers on, over and over again. Then I figured out a design and got some stickers of a fat looking rocket and some gold stars to put on there and hand panted the name I came up with. Very steady hands!! I had the words painted on there so nicely until I tried to make one final touch with one of the letters and a big drop of paint fell from my paint pen onto it. I was so upset!! Why did I have to perfect something that was already good! Ugh. I quickly had to wipe it down and spray paint over it. In my rush I completely sprayed my hand that was holding the case. Even after trying to wash it off, my hand looked like it had been bloodied after a killing for a day or two.

While this stuff dried I started soldering the components to the board and then added the pots and jacks. You can build this to the Ram's Head or Triangle versions of the Big Muff. I went for the Ram's Head. The trickiest part was wiring this thing. It took a little while to get my soldering skills up to speed too. Some of my first soldering attempts were pretty sketchy and I knew that if this thing didn't work, that was probably the problem to be looked at. I worked on the pedal on and of and in bits over a couple of months.

And then I finished it. ooohhh ... will it work?...what will it sound like?...what's going to happen? I got all excited to plug it in and step on it! Plugged it in. Turned on the amp. With it off, I got clean signal going through it. That's good. Then, the moment of truth, I strummed a chord and hit the switch and POW!! We have lift off!! It worked!! What a great feeling. It really sounds good.