I finally hit 50 pedal builds and found a pattern I should have seen coming

I started building guitar pedals as a hobby about three years ago. Last month I finished my 50th build, which is just a Fuzz Face clone on perfboard. Nothing special. But when I went back and looked at my build log, I noticed something. 40 of those 50 pedals had some kind of DC power issue on the first test. Either reversed polarity, wrong voltage, or a short. I thought I was getting better at soldering, but I was just getting better at troubleshooting after the fact. It hit me that I should have just installed a protection diode from the start on every single build. I never did because I was always in a hurry to hear the sound. Has anyone else realized they spent way more time fixing dumb mistakes than actually building?

2 comments

2 Comments

kair659d ago

Just build first, fix later - that's the pedal way.

the_kevin9d ago

Hard disagree on this one @kair65. Jumping straight into building without a solid plan is how you end up with a pedal that works but sounds like garbage. That's the difference between a fun project and a wasted weekend chasing ground loops or dealing with oscillation you can't kill. Take a Klon clone for example - you can wire it up fast but if you don't plan the input buffer right, it'll suck your tone dry before you even hit the clipping stage. Quick builds turn into endless troubleshooting, and that's not the "way" for anyone who wants to actually use their gear.