The D.I.Y. FX Pedal Building Thread

[DrNomis_44]

Okay, here are some build-progress pics I took last night as I was building the Doctor Overdrive pedal:


As usual with all my pedal builds, I started off by marking out the centres for all the mounting holes in the diecast aluminium case:



After drilling all the mounting holes to size, I did a quick test-fit to make sure everything was okay, and also to stick the four nylon circuit-board standoffs in place:



These next two pics should give you a bit of an idea what the pedal is going to look like:

[DrNomis_44]

Next thing to do was to start doing all the initial wiring-up of all the controls and etc, prior to installing the circuit board:



Then I started wiring up all the controls, etc to the circuit board:



And then comes the final wiring-up of the input socket to the footswitch and circuit-board, I also wired-up the 9V battery clip too:

[DrNomis_44]

And here's a pic of the finished, and working Doctor Overdrive pedal:

[stan]

so cool, love it Doc

[DrNomis_44]

so cool, love it Doc

Cheers mate, I thought you guys would like it.

[Dedman]

You are going to have to go into business Doc

[DrNomis_44]

You are going to have to go into business Doc

Hahaha...I reckon, actually that wouldn't be a bad idea, would bring in some extra money for me.


Building guitar fx pedals to earn money to buy more PBG kits, that sounds cool.


I'm in a pretty vibed-up mood today, probably cause a good mate of mine is going to be popping by for a visit, with some new parts for his Peavey Triumph amp that I'm modding for him.


Last night I couldn't turn my Marshall up very loud while I was trying-out my new Doctor Overdrive pedal, so I decided to give it another test-run a few minutes ago, my initial impressions from last night were pretty spot-on, now that I was able to turn my Marshall up a bit, I'm pretty surprised just how good the pedal sounds through the clean channel of my Marshall, it seems to work pretty well, and I am really liking how dynamic the pedal is, pick softly and there's very little overdrive, as you start picking harder the overdrive gets more intense, just like a good valve amp, which is surprising cause the overdrive effect is created by what's called a back-to-back clipper-diode configuration, there's one difference between the Dr Overdrive circuit and the Tube Screamer circuit in that the Dr Overdrive circuit uses three silicon diodes in the back-to-back clipper-diode configuration whereas the Tube Screamer uses two.

[DrNomis_44]

I guess it's time for me to do a little demo clip of the Dr Overdrive pedal for you guys, I'll see if I can record one for you to check out, so stay tuned.


Here you go, here's a link to the demo clip I recorded for you, I recorded the pedal straight into FL Studio with no fx plugins just so you can hear the raw sound it creates:


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...20Demo%202.mp3

[Dedman]

nice work Doc, that has some nice bite

[DrNomis_44]

nice work Doc, that has some nice bite

I agree, it has the kind of bite you get with a Marshall amp, I'll have to record a demo of it going through the clean channel of my Marshall, might see if I can do that this weekend.

I'll see if I can get a board layout posted so that anyone interested can make one too, and I'll do a mini-tutorial on how I made the circuit board too.