DIY pedals
Just a rabbit hole I've been down recently. Found some good resources:
- Polyend AI guitar pedal on HN led to some good recommendations, especially from this commenter.
- Pedalshield was rec'd by that commenter, but it didn't seem very easy to me
- diyDSP was sold out and similarly seemed diff.
- Hothouse looked cool, but cost was expensive, and also compared to the MS70CDR there didn't seem to be many effects available. Of course the difference being that the MS70CDR is difficult to code and write new effects for, and this is built specifically for that. Also slightly expensive, ~$170-180 all in if you're buying pre-built or if you don't have a soldering iron already. I thiiiink this is what I'm gonna end up getting because it seems to be totally on the coding side and generally...made for that..? but it is disappointing that it doesn't have a screen.
- A lot of Line-brand pedals I didn't include (Line H6 etc??) they're also stupidly stupidly expensive
- Found a post from the diypedals subreddit that mentioned a few; really the thing these folks say mostly is If You Are Confident Enough In Building Something Yourself You Can Make What You Need. And I am not yet confident enough for that. most of the top pedals recommended (will link here eventually) are STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE!! looking at your monome, organelle. They remind me of 100r... a lot. Very very intriguing. Will have to add monome & bela to that page eventually.
- ZOIA seems Perfect, it is a modsynthguitarpedalahauhuhefwubewiub but it is also prohibitively expensive :( would like a cheaper one.
- Really just explore The Subreddit. There's a lot of stuff there, things for FV1 chip(??) for use with digital signal processing. (that's what DSP means btw.) And a whole sidebar of resources. Very cool.
- The Zoom Multi-stomps (MS70CDR, MS50 etc.) have their own dedicated subreddit with a lot of work being done to modify them and decompile their effects and put a ton of new effects on. This is less build-it-yourself and more program-it-yourself: decompiling, modifying the images shown, flashing new effects, etc., etc., listing all the effects out, and more. Because there are sosososo many pedals under this line, I think it might be a bit more difficult to make things for any given one. If I were to get one, I'd Ebay the old MS70CDR; I find very attractive the sheer number of effects they have as well as the little screen with the cutesy art. They don't seem to have any drives/distortions, but apparently you can flash them on with some of the tools I mentioned (they're in the firmware editor from Barsik Barbosik?). No building necessary, big community, everybody still hacking away on how to decompile stuff.
Okay, so what I ended up doing instead was actually building one myself. I was bored, and came into a spare ~$250, and with a Pi lying around and an old circuitry kit I hadn't done anything with, I was like... you know what? It's cyberdeck time.
I'll attach my original drawing when I get time, but I decided that the cool thing about mine would be I'd include a DSP guitar pedal, programmable within. Instead of the daisy seed, though, I'm using the Teensy 4.1, which I got on Amazon for ~$33. Most of this stuff you can Amazon or Adafruit; the PikoKey keyboard I got from Tindie, though.
Parts list:
- PikoKey keyboard ($50?) x1
- Teensy 4.1 ($30) x1
- Audio Shield for audio processing ($20) x1
- P-channel MOSFETs -- x8
- B10K potentiometers -- x6
- Toggle switches -- x4
- LEDs -- x8
- Joystick -- x1?
- 1/4in audio jacks -- x2
- ST7920 12864 LCD screen ($15) x1
- L7805CV for voltage regulation, x1
- LM258P for operational amplifier, x?
- DACs, x2?
Total cost: ???
Current proj: Pikokey serves as keyboard plugged into Teensy, typing shows up on 12864 LCD
I found these two tutorials where people built guitar pedals slash instruments generally with a teensy, which is the board I'm using, so I'll attach them here: Stanford, SparkFun.
The linked Sparkfun article also mentioned using op amps & linear voltage regulators, so I just bought those parts off of mouser which may be my favorite online electronics part shop.
I have heard that some effects (fuzz, overdrive, spring reverb, tape delay) are better analog than digital. So I have decided I'm going to build those analog circuits and then allow my Teensy to run signals through them (with a DAC, of course)! Resources:
take me home