Create your own pedal company: good or bad idea?

If you already have made a few pedals yourself, you surely have thought about selling them or at least build some of them for other people. Create your own guitar pedal brand seems like a good idea on paper, however there are many pitfalls.... Lets talk about it!

Disclaimer: I make effects myself, and this post is not intended to "kill competitors" (with my 30 pedals a year...)! On the contrary, I think it is way better to be transparent and to talk about it: this is only my opinion, and feel free to express yours in the comments section :)

It is a complex matter that is not always easy to discuss peacefully because of money, and there are many different opinions on the subject. It is also the source of really long yet exciting threads on DIY forums (check this one!). The simplest option for me is to discuss it from my point of view as a builder. Thus, I will talk about Coda Effects, and well, just once will not hurt, about me, and give you some tips if you want to jump in it!

Early 2013, I started to show interest in guitar pedal building: after opening a Fuzz Face, I was quite astonished by the simplicity of the circuit (there is almost nothing in there!), and I realized that building guitar effects might be simpler that I thought.

Boss Tap Tempo DIY

Here is my latest build, a very simple tap tempo pedal for a Boss DD7 pedal (or any other pedal with external tap tempo). It is very simple : one mono jack, one momentary SPST! Very easy build, I think it is the perfect build to begin with DIY! Tap tempo is very useful if you play in a band, so I think this is really a great way to improve your beloved DD7 guitar pedal.

I used a Hammond 1590LB enclosure, which is really small. However, I did not centered the momentary switch because of the lack of space.

Eagle for making guitar pedals PCB: getting started (part 1/3)

Sometimes, especially with complicated builds with a lot of components, or when you have to build several times the same pedal, it is easier to use a printed circuit board (PCB) than veroboard or turrets board. A PCB is easier to assemble, and it prevents from doing many mistakes that can occur when using veroboard: false contacts, misplaced component, complicated wiring involving a lot of wires...etc.

"Eagle" is the name of a beautiful animal, but it also stands for "Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor", the name of a famous software that helps you to conceive and make printed circuit boards (PCB). I already used it a lot to make PCBs. For instance, I made a few Klon buffer boards with it. I decided to write a serie of articles explaining how to use it to make PCB for your guitar pedals.

2026 Update: Autodesk has announced End of Life for Eagle for June 2026. This is super disappointing, but Eagle seems to be no longer relevant for the guitar pedal community. Alternative is to switch to KiCad, which I will dive into this year. In the meantime, I have saved the popular Gauss Markov library in Eagle XML format and KiCad format (symbols and footprints) on GitHub.

Article parts:

• Getting started (you are reading this one now)
• Tracing the circuit (to be published)
•  Creating the PCB layout (to be published)

Become free to make PCB like you want with Eagle

Relay bypass with anti pop system: noiseless and clickless true bypass

Did you like my post about relay bypass? At least I did, and now I use it in almost all my pedals! Thus, they are longer lasting, and we avoid the mechanical noises of a 3PDT. However, I noticed something annoying: the relay bypass makes more "pop" noises than the 3PDT, especially with high gain circuits...

Indeed, relays tend to switch from one state to another much quicker than big mechanical 3PDT switches, which causes the "pop" noises to appear. The gainier the pedal, the more it will amplify the pop and make it louder.

So I adapted a system that I have found on Stompville that suppresses all these noises. Here is the result, with a (very) simple "before and after" video:

Ultimate guide to guitar effect wiring: how to wire DIY guitar pedals properly?

Your guitar pedal circuit is finally populated and ready to rock! However, you still have to solder all the wires... I noticed that it was during this step that beginners encounter most of the issues that go along with guitar effects making.

Especially with veroboard, you can quickly get a huge mess of wires going everywhere in the enclosure, with the so-called "spaghetti wiring" that we all achieved at least once when starting to make guitar effects!

 

Other Vemuram Jan Ray variants

Since I designed my own Jan Ray circuit board, I assembled quite a few. The PCB is quite small, so I have made different variants of various sizes and colors, and I though you migh enjoy it. Here are some of them!

Here is a Jan Ray in a beautiful "mirror" copper color:

Why you should NOT paint your guitar pedal enclosures yourself

I know this is a bit against the concept of DIY, but the more I am spray painting enclosures, the more I notice that the results are not as great as a commercialy available prepainted enclosures.

First, sanding the enclosure is a long and painful task and is mandatory if you want a clean surface to paint on. Avoid the long long hours spent carefully polishing your enclosure !

Then, a lot of thin layers are required if you want a proper painting, and most of the time, the painting will still be fragile and sensitives to shocks. I got craks or scratches on the paint really quickly... Nice if you want a beaten-up, vintage, relic look, but not if you want something really clean and durable. You will end up having something similar to the first tall font russian big muff that had paint quality issue:

Tap tempo tremolo DIY: a complex project!

I am currently prototyping a tap tempo tremolo that I conceived. It is quite a big project, and I have been working on it since nearly 6 months now! Like many guitarists, I really like the warm vintage sounds that you can achieve using tremolo (like in "Bang Bang" from Nancy Sinatra), but also the choppy madness that you can get with square waves, like in "Know your enemy" from Rage Against The Machine, or even weird stuff with high speed tremolos... A really cool effect!

I play regularly in a band, and my point of view is that tap tempo is just absolutely needed for rhythmic effects like delays for instance. Thus, I decided to add one in my tremolo. It is not easy to implement a tap tempo, as you have to use digital circuitry, as we will see later... Here is my current prototype:

That is a lot of knobs! You can already notice that there are two footswitches: tap tempo (right side), and the true bypass footswitch that is a clickless relay bypass system! I used the relay bypass system that I conceived, which is completely silent, and more reliable than classic 3PDT true bypass. Indeed, 3PDT footswitches are the main reason for guitar pedal failure. The little switch in the middle of the two LED (bypass LED, and tempo LED) allows you to switch the pedal temporarily. This is nice to add some choppy stuffs while you play!

Black Arts Toneworks Pharaoh Fuzz clone

I want to make  Big Muff variants using my Coda Effects Big Muff PCB, and show you how to make them yourself. Lets start with the boutique version of the Big Muff that made it popular again on the stoner / doom scene: the Pharaoh Fuzz! Produced by Black Arts Toneworks since 2011, it was an immediate success because of the huge, warm, doomy sounds it can produce.

Here is my version:

Relay Bypass: conception and relay bypass code

You might already have heard about "relay bypass", or even used it without knowing it. It a different true-bypass system than the classical 3PDT switch. Instead of using a mechanical 3PDT switch, a soft switch, a microcontroller and a relay are combined to turn the effect on and off.

 So... Why bother? My 3PDT switch is great, don't you think?

Guitar effects and reliability: 5 things to improve to make your pedals longer lasting

I am building effects since three years, and now that it has been a while, I noticed first failures on my devices. In this article I am going to describe what are the main causes of guitar effects failures that I noticed or that people report to me, how to repair it, and how to build your pedal to make them long term lasting or easily repairable.

Dead Astronaut FX Chasm Reverb

Remember my Dead Astronaut Chasm Reverb PCB? I finally finished it! I left it quite a long time aside my bench, mainly because I did not have time or money to buy and build all the remaining things that needed to be done. Remember, if you want to have one, you can buy one directly from Dead Astronaut, or buy the PCB to make it yourself.

Here is my build: