pedal diy

In the pedal-building communityā€”as in Alcatrazā€”sharing is caring.

When I have a conversation about business with someone outside of the music industry, I often find it leads to a discussion of competitors or competition. These terms tend to place a comedic smile upon my face. Both of those words are almost always used by the person not in the music industry. As natural as the concept of competition is, the response I give is often received as unnatural. This could solely be because folks are not used to hearing how our industry actually operates internally.

Read MoreShow less

Note the two trimmer screwdriver slots, surrounded by blue, in the middle of this phase shifter.

Aisha Loe explains how to cure mushy modulation with a screwdriverā€”but you need to know what youā€™re doing.

Potentiometers are used for most of the controls on pedals and a lot of other electronic equipment as well. A potentiometer (also known as a pot) is defined as a 3-terminal variable resistor in which the resistance is manually varied to control the flow of electrical current. A potentiometer acts as an adjustable voltage divider. Any control on a guitar pedal that has a knob will typically be controlling a potentiometer, or sometimes a rotary switch.

Read MoreShow less

Electrolytic capacitors are your stomps' first line of defense against bad current. Keep them healthy and your tones will be, too.

Feeding clean power to guitar effects is really important. We do our best to buy the highest quality power supplies that we can find for our precious pedals. Once that clean power is fed into the unit from the wall outlet, it often goes through something called a power filter, inside the power supply. This ensures that the pedal's power needs are being met, and allows each pedal to function properly. It also mostly gets rid of ripple.

Read MoreShow less