The D.I.Y. FX Pedal Building Thread

[kimball492]

Yeah it's Hendrix's ring the letter, ring and pic are all sealed beautifully in a silver metallic frame. Sorry Doc I wont Jack your thread anymore.

[DrNomis_44]

Yeah it's Hendrix's ring the letter, ring and pic are all sealed beautifully in a silver metallic frame. Sorry Doc I wont Jack your thread anymore.

That's alright mate, the thread-jacking doesn't bother me at all, in fact I think the letter you posted is pertinent, since we are talking about pedals that Jimi Hendrix used.

[kimball492]

I think you made a great job of the pedal Doc and the demo was great. Thankyou much appreciated. What's your favourite pedal you've made and why ?. Also was it a clone of other pedals

[DrNomis_44]

I think you made a great job of the pedal Doc and the demo was great. Thankyou much appreciated. What's your favourite pedal you've made and why ?. Also was it a clone of other pedals

You're welcome Kimball, it's hard for me to pick a favorite out of all the pedals I've built, but if I had to it'd probably be my Baja Real Tube Overdrive pedal, since it uses a real 12AX7 Tube or Valve to generate Tube distortion which has a different character to Fuzz pedals, there are some pedals which I've built that I really like a lot, my Rangemaster Vintage Treble Booster is a good example, I also built a Klon Centaur just to see what the fuss about it was, it doesn't really sound like anything special, basically like a TS9 Tube Screamer with a more prominent midrange and more output.


How close do you reckon my Axis Fuzz sounds to the one Jimi used on his Axis Bold As Love album?


Since I have it here at home with me, I should do a quick demo of my Octavia pedal, shouldn't I?

[wokkaboy]

hey Doc good comparison, gee the fuzz face sounds totally different to the Axis pedal.

might as well demo your octavia pedal Doc

would be hard to replicate Jimi's sound without Jimi playing and who knows what sort of pickups/string gauges etc he used.

What pickup setting was that Doc, bridge?

[DrNomis_44]

hey Doc good comparison, gee the fuzz face sounds totally different to the Axis pedal.

might as well demo your octavia pedal Doc

would be hard to replicate Jimi's sound without Jimi playing and who knows what sort of pickups/string gauges etc he used.

What pickup setting was that Doc, bridge?

I used the neck position pickup for that sound demo Wokka, yeah, I agree, the Fuzz Face has a different sound compared to the Axis Fuzz, has a lot more bass in it, I'll do a quick demo of the Octavia shortly.


Oh, and I've got 42-09 gauge strings on my Strat, who knows what gauge strings Jimi used on his Strats, I think he custom made his own gauge of strings from different sets, there's a story on the internet about how he used a Banjo string for one of the strings on his Strat.

Of course, you can get close to Hendrix's sound by using the pedals he used with a 60's Super Lead Plexi, but unless you play exactly like he did, you won't sound exactly like him, there's been guitarists that got close to sounding like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan is one example.


I've also got my Univibe pedal here with me, can do a demo of it too.

[wokkaboy]

yeah cool, lots of demo's to do Doc !

Jimi and SRV are in my top 10 favourite guitarists, its a hard cut to make I tell you !

[kimball492]

Supposedly Jimi Hendrix used these strings. But it depends who you talk to. The actual strings he used were not what people would expect. The string gauges would run .010, .013, .015, .026, .032 and .038. The big difference there is that you're using the .015 for the third, because if you use the .017 for the third, the actual sound of the guitar is very G-heavy.

[kimball492]

Need you to play some Hendrix riffs Doc so we can check out the Axis pedal.

[wokkaboy]

thats a very light gauge KB, maybe thats how he did triple bends so well.

On the other hand I think SRV used very heavy gauge strings?