Cool video on Designing an Overdrive Pedal

[Simon Barden]

You use a breadboard to try out designs and change components easily. They have push-fit connection terminals that make for quick assembly but not for long-term robustness. Once you're happy with the design, they you'd either make your own PCB, or transfer it to strip-board. It all depends on how compact you can make the design as to how big a box you need to fit it in.

All the micro-pedals do without a battery ability, and use surface-mount components for the most compact footprint. With mostly discrete, and all hand-soldered components, you're unlikely to ever get down to that generic micro-size box, but you should be able to manage to squeeze most pedals with 1-3 knobs in a small MXR/Boss sized box. If you've got 6 knobs on a pedal, then their physical size, and the spacing need to cleanly access each knob, determines the minimum size of box you'll need.

[jugglindan]

Simon has it right. Breadboards are used for prototyping or for building temporary circuits. They are noiser, prone to picking up radio signals, and fragile. But they are non-destructive, components can be reclaimed and used again. They are also easy to modify, letting a pedal designer quickly explore ideas: how would it sound with hard clipping?, what if I used a different tone circuit?, this is too bright, lets swap that capacitor. Last night I built a temporary circuit for testing JFETs then tore it down again. They also let me test a circuit to see if I like it enough to commit to a permanent build.

I don't etch my own circuit boards. For simple to moderate circuits I use stripboard where copper tracks are cut and links are added to make a circuit board for a specific layout. You can see the process in my recent build threads, such as the current Phase 45 build. They require more concentration to avoid mistakes compared to a circuit board as there are not so many guides to the correct location for a component. But they are significantly cheaper and quite fast to prepare. For more complex circuits I prefer to buy a PCB. I find very large stripboard builds exhausting.

Most micro pedals come in a 1590A enclosure. I built my buffer in one of those, but the circuit is tiny, there is no battery, no footswitch, and no pots.

I put most of my other builds in a larger 125B enclosure as they have lots of room for all the hardware. 6 pots and a footswitch will fit with care. But even though this box is larger, the fact that it has room to top-mount the input, output, and power jacks means the pedals can fit very close together on a board:


All up, it's a great hobby, and a great distraction from the time I have available to do other things, like play guitar.

[Joe Garfield]

Geez pedals have gotten a lot smaller in the past 10 years! Those look tiny!

[jugglindan]

Geez pedals have gotten a lot smaller in the past 10 years! Those look tiny!

They are not that small, it's just a bad photo. They are roughly the size of a Boss pedal, or maybe a bit chunkier. 122mm x 66mm x 39.5mm.