The DIY pedal that you still own and maybe use

Mimosa Jr, a BYOC mini Orange Squeezer type compressor kit. Just the right amount of compression, with a bit of something extra - the blend knob is a wonderful addition. Always on.

 

Original Blues Breaker clone. Silver Pony II. Both great

 

Fuzz. Fuzz is good. Fuzz is simple. Fuzz is life. The only one still in regular rotation is an op-amp based kit fuzz, which offers a different fuzz to my others. There are many Vero examples littering my clutterbox. The boards themselves are simple, but it's the chassis I struggle with.
A 12Awhatever7 based overdrive. This has a voltage kicker circuit to raise the voltage above starved plate into the 'It'll tickle if you touch it' region. It plays well when boosted itself, or can be a fairly clean boost, or can sound quite gnarly if needed. It's like having an additional gain stage ( duh ). Gain, tone and output level plus you can bias each triode individually if you so wish. 12AX7 for gnarl, 12AU7 for cream.

 

My main board presently has two DIY pedals, the Stratoblaster and Triangle Muff in the upper right corner.


I also regularly use my paisley Rat clone, seen here on a previous incarnation of my board.


I've built several other pedals that I've sold off, but keep around DIY versions of a FuzzRite and a Catalinbread SFT.

 

I have a prototyping setup on a breadboard. It's got a silicon Fuzz Face on it at the moment that I am going to put on a Vero board and in an enclosure at some point, I may try and make some more modifications to it before then. Maybe an EQ or something or a bias pot.

Not sure what if else I would make myself. I'm pretty happy with the pedals I have. Maybe I could fiddle around with my own OD. It'd be fun to make my own Klone with the midhump moved to suit my Orange amp. The Klon circuit sounds pretty crappy on my Orange. A Tube screamer with the midhump moved could be nice too.

 

Thank you Guys !

Some quick samples :

Tone of the FL Moseley (the green one) :



Tone of the Melodium Fuzz (the white one, mono-pot) :



-tbln

 

Continuation :

Tone of the Smoby wah-drive (the FoXX casing one) :



Tone of the IBM OVD (the trapeze white casing one) :



Enjoy...

-tbln

 

I built a CGG Guvnor pedal some years ago, I bought the circuit board from them and sourced my own bits and pieces into a 1590BB box.

https://store.generalguitargadgets.com/guv-rts-pcb.html

It's pretty tasty, but nothing special to look at - just the usual grey box with sharpie lettering...

I also ran it at 12v rather than 9, for reasons that escape me now.

I haven't used it for a while, but it's still around the place somewhere. I must dig it out and run it into my Katana

 

Well those really are inspirational. Thank you!

 

I started building in late 2012 and over 70 different pedals built. Some of my earliest builds are still my favorites. Over half of the pedals I have on my board were built by me.

 

I gave up building drive pedals after the Gain Changer which along with my Pro Reverb and a Boss RE-20 is just perfect for my rockabilly gigs.
I must have at least a dozen of the usual suspects in a drawer but the GC is the best.

 

More than half of my pedals are DIY, from Vero, stripboard and PCB's from various vendors. I use them as much as I use the "store-bought" pedals, though I'm only an at home guitar player, drums have been my gig for over 35 years.

Some of the DIY boards are the same as the professionally made pedals such as Madbean/VFE. Pretty much all of them are clones of some popular effect, mostly discontinued. My main issue with my DIY pedals is that the decals will never live up to a life on the road but since they never leave the house it's good enough.

A small selection:

 

If it sounds good, aesthetics are 99% irrelevant, IMO.

Actually, it's like a small tragedy to have a pretty pedal with catchy graphics, that barely makes tepid sonics.

I think I actually prefer guitar gear that has evidence that the aesthetic parts were actually attempted by human hands, because it's evidence that the builder didn't just wash their hands of any process beyond the design itself.

 

I've built a lot of novice and beginner type schematics that I've found from the internet for myself and my bandmates....the only things that have really stuck around are my LPB-1 booster. It's the turret board schematic style circuit. I also goof around quite a bit with my analog octave up, it's a clone of the EQD Tenticle.