Black Hole : Sunn Model T preamp

This is my last pedal I made : a Sunn Model T preamp in a box!

I named it "Black Hole" because of the antimater doom riffs it can generate :)

Modding the Behringer UV300 Vibrato : tutorial

Here is my last ""build", I modded a Behringer UV300 vibrato:

Behringer released a whole series of pedals inspired by not-produced-anymore Boss pedals like the Hyper Fuzz FZ2 (Behringer Super Fuzz 300), the Heavy Metal HM2 (Behringer Heavy Metal 300)...etc. I was really interested in one of them: the Behringer Ultra Vibrato, which tries to emulate the famous Boss VB2.

Enclosure art: how to make good looking DIY pedals

One of the nicest parts of making guitar pedals is having a personalized design. However, it is quite hard to make good looking guitar pedals.

Here are a few techniques to make guitar enclosures pretty! You can of course combine these techniques to get the best looking pedal possible!

I will present you a lot of techniques, from the most basic ones to the most professional looking ones.

1. Bare aluminum enclosure

It is the simplest way to do: just let the enclosure in bare aluminum.

Please don't do that.

Bare aluminum enclosure guitar pedals simply do not look good. They really look like something cheap and dirty that you have done quickly in your garage, whereas you have probably spent a lot of hours on it!

It can be nice for prototyping though, you can improve the design later on if you are satisfied with the result. (practically speaking, it is very rare to improve the design... and I like good looking prototypes so not for me!)

Pros A circuit in a box is better than a circuit without a box...  Cheap Quickest possible method

Cons Not really good looking Do not really reflect your hard work and dedication

Relay Bypass: final code

After the crowdfunding campaign, I decided to update the relay bypass code.

Indeed, this first version was nice, but one main drawback that was feedbacked to me is that the switch was activated on release, which was not always very intuitive or easy to handle. Moreover, I wanted to add a "temporary" bypass option in the Montagne Tremolo.

In this post, I am going to explain a bit the new code and to show you how I did it.

If you have not read my post about Relay Bypass, I highly recommend you to read it before reading this post. All the basics of microcontrollers are presented there.

  Tip! The full code is available on Github. With the relayonpress.c and header.h files, you will have everything needed to code or burn chips.

If you already have a GitHub account, you can Star the project for updates, or Fork it to modify it and make your own Relay Bypass code.

Lets go!

Ground loops and guitar pedals

Yesterday, I received an email from a beginner that decided to make his first guitar pedal. I always enjoy this kind of emails and answering questions is part of the game. This time, he asked me a question that I had several times: "my circuit is noisy, could it be a ground loop?"

Ground loops are part of the legends and myths around DIY guitar pedals. When asking about noise in a setup, it is the most common answer, and is supposed to be the main cause for hum, hiss or other noises that you can have on your first circuits.

So I decided to write a post about it, starting from the begining:

Development Hell: multiple fuzz pedal

Today, I am going to introduce the concept of Development Hell: it is a special place where projects stay when they need a lot of fine tuning before properly work. Unfortunately, I have a few projects that are still burning there, like the one I am going to present today.

It is a multi-fuzz machine! I always felt that a lot of Fuzz are quite a "one trick pony", they have a very characteristic sound that can be modulated by mods, but still sounds "like a fuzz face", "like a big muff"...etc. Moreover, fuzz are usually quite simple circuits, and I find that allowing one spot per fuzz on a pedalboard can quickly be space-inefficient.

So I decided to create a multi fuzz pedal, with no more than 3 different fuzz inside : a germanium Fuzz Face, a Muff Fuzz and a Companion Fuzz, which should provide the 3 main "flavors" of fuzz in this world: a classic warm, soft fuzz face, a "chainsaw", very raspy Companion Fuzz, and a compressed and heavy Muff Fuzz.

On top of that, I added an upper octave generator that allows to combine it with any fuzz, with a potentiometer to adjust the amount of octave. It is based on the Green Ringer circuit, which is a small, but efficient analog octaver circuit.

And of course, I made it fit in a 125B enclosure...

Here it is in its current form: