BYOC fx pedal kits

Has anyone tried one? There is 3 or 4 kits Im looking at right now. Looks like alot of fun. Anyone?

http://www.buildyourownclone.com/index1.html

I've heard good things and have had my eye on doing a couple boosts for awhile now.

Would be totally fun.

I've built 5 of them, and they're great. I was surprised to see how much the prices have gone up since I got mine, though. I will say that the forums has got tons of great ideas for mods. I built the tubescreamer, phaser, digital delay, fuzz, and trem. Which ones are you eyeing?

-Colin

I think ive narowed it down to the Mouse (rat type - ive always loved my rat OD) and ESV Fuzz. Plus Id probably pick up the chorus kit too

vindaloo said:

I've built 5 of them, and they're great. I was surprised to see how much the prices have gone up since I got mine, though. I will say that the forums has got tons of great ideas for mods. I built the tubescreamer, phaser, digital delay, fuzz, and trem. Which ones are you eyeing?

-Colin

Click to expand...

tone wise, do they really hold their own against the boutique pedals?

droptrd said:

tone wise, do they really hold their own against the boutique pedals?

Click to expand...

Hard to say as I don't have the boutique pedals to A/B. That being said, the Tubescreamer (they've updated the design from the version I have) and the Phaser are my two 'go-to' pedals these days.

The Screamer sounds really good in to my Tweed module, and it gets almost SL+ levels of gain. I put a few mods in to the design, but they were straight off the forum.

The Phaser I modified to be like the Uni-Vibe...at least I think that's what it was. Sorry, it's been a while. The mod takes the uniform in/out of phase and makes it asymmetrical. Does a GREAT Pink Floyd sound It was also off the forum.

The Trem is good, but I was looking more for a hard-edged trem sound, and this has the corners rounded off, so to speak. It does its job nicely, though and if I hit it and roll my volume back a bit it works great for outros.

The D-Delay worked just fine, but I switched to the GSP1101 because I needed to be able to change DD settings/sounds on a song-by-song basis.

The Fuzz I modified extensively for my brother (our bassist) and it kinda gets the job done, but it's so far removed from the initial design that it's not fair to judge it at this point.

I hope that helps...if you have more questions let me know. I can also go dig up the mods that I did as I think I know where I kept all the documentation.

-Colin

You wont regret the ESV. it has a great FF sound, deffinately stacks up against my Analog man and Keeley. Also the Opto Comp is a nice alternative to the Demeter Opto-Compulator.

I have purchased and have been building a few pedals not from BYOC, but from GGG:

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/

I've picked up a couple of Big Muff Pi clones, a BSIAB, and an OSQ. My soldering skills being not what they should be, I have a sneaking suspicion that when I finish wiring up my first BMP (configured for the Green Russian-era) that I'll have burned up a transistor or two.

The Phase Royal from BYOC very much interested me. I'll probably be getting that one. I also wanted the 10-band EQ, but they discontinued that.

I've built a couple of ggg's too, their fulltone '69 is fun for getting different fuzz tones
And built the ram's head and ggg tuned bmp. Good muff clones, especially if you use higher quality parts, then they are great clones. The only reason I like byoc more is they have better boards and traces as well as some better components. But you can't beat ggg for the prices, so if you blow up a project your only out $50 bucks or so.

Actually, just looking at some soldering videos on youtube, it appears I might have indeed burned up my transistors (and germanium diodes) because I'm using silver solder, not the tin/lead stuff... Silver makes a nicer connection but melts higher... I'm guessing that's why my solder joints take 5-10 seconds to melt and set up instead of the 2-3 seconds I'm seeing on these videos.

I'm thinking 5-10 seconds with a 40-watt iron is a problem...

Did you use a heat sink? When i deal with small, easy to burn stuff i usually attach a hemostat or something like that between the solder point and the burnable stuff to absorb some heat. That way less heat from the iron makes it to the component's valuable part.

Also 40 watts is kinda hot for transistor or capacitor work. If you can get it, i recommend a variable temp iron. Or get both a 15 watt and 30 watt. 30 watt and up works good for grounds and the like but the 15 works better for smaller solder jobs like pots and caps and transistors.

And yes silver solder is not the best for fine, low temp solder jobs. I'll agree with you fully on that.

Peace, Joshua