How to build your first DIY guitar pedal (step by step tutorial)

You have never made a guitar pedal before? You are a bit lost and do not know where to start?

Here is the perfect place! I decided to write a full tutorial for beginners, to build an Earthquaker Device Acapulco Gold, step by step. No excuse not to get started!

The Acapulco Gold is a simple, yet very fun pedal to play with, and is perfect for beginners. The circuit is simple and easy to mod as well. With this tutorial, you should be able to build your first guitar pedal!

If everything goes well, you should get a guitar pedal like this in the end:

Acapulco Gold clone

Ready to make your first guitar pedal? Let's get started!

Debugging DIY guitar effects

Rule #1 in guitar pedal building is: "It NEVER works at the first attempt"

So you will have to learn quite quickly what to do when one of your wonderful DIY guitar pedal is not functional. Fortunately, beginners or tired experts often make the same very common mistakes.

Debugging guitar effects

In this article, I made a small list of things to check when your pedal does not work, from the most common to the least common errors. This is of course not an exhaustive list, but it includes a set of common problems and errors that you will surely encounter one day.

Here is my small troubleshooting guide.

Sovtek Bubble Font Russian Big Muff (1995)

A pedal that I recently fixed and a legend in the stoner/doom scene: ladies and gentlemen, here is the almighty Russian Sovtek Big Muff!

Sovtek Big Muff Bubble Font

This lady is already more than 20 year old. Not as old as the 50 years old Maestro Fuzztone that I fixed before, but still!

Modding the Behringer UV300 Vibrato : tutorial

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

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.
DIY guitar pedal bare aluminum
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