Collin's Lab: Guitar pedal hacking with Arduino 

That has got to be one of the best pedal mods ive seen. I have watched alot of vids and read alot of articles. Spent about 40 years messin with my pedals. This one takes the cake. The bonus is, it actually sounds good. My ears perked with inspiration as you hit thr first couple notes. You could make some money by packaging that circut up cleverly. Rock on my friend.

We need more guitar pedal vids

It brings me back, watching these videos again some 13 years later

I love collin! It´s sad that he is gone. i would like him to go back to make! or he makes his own channel!!!

This is cool. You get a lot of arguments in the guitar world about dig vs analog effects - I think one area that is worth exploring further is using digital to control an analog sound as you are doing. That way we get more sound possiblities without losing what is strong in analog.

I love this idea. I think it would be fantastic to replace all the pots with digital potentiometers, and then you could use the Arduino to save presets for your analog pedals.

Digging the Mark Mothersbaugh style background music.

But, how to get rid of those awful clock noises?!?!

That was one of these coolest arduino makes I've ever seen! And with just an uno!

This right here is why RU-vid is an invaluable resource

You should create a wet/dry blend control for the effect too so you could control the fuzz to wave modulation ratio.

Trevor cleaned himself up

The 3 best makers all have alliterated names - Collin Cunningham, Kip Kedersha, and Derek Diedrecson!

you're so right about finding your own sound. buying tons of pedals won't do the job.

A cool effect would be to detect the attach on the string and ramp the distortion up form there....so kinda going clean---->distorted as the sustain carries on. or the other way.

This guy is awesome. I'm already ordering the parts! :D

Collin is our Brian Cox of electronics.❤

@TheMr514 actually, the different wave forms give it a different sound. the square wave makes the signal sound choppy and almost stuttering. sawtooth makes it sound like a synth type deal. although he made the pedal sound like a tremolo, each wave sounds different.

Holy crap - Thats an Ibanez ST-50, I'm just restoring one I was given 17 years ago! It was in a punk band in the 70s in London, they split in about 1980, reformed in the 90s for a bit and the manager ended up with the guitar sans all hardware. I've had it ever since. Oddly, I'm goign to use it as a test bed for electronics as I have about 20 other instruments. Spooky - its clearly a sign! LOL :o)

I truly love your stuff. Gadgetry, presentation, everything. (I play, and have no use for the sound, but fully respect the hack and the potential.) BTW... the introduction was so completely Agent Smith.... did you INTENTIONALLY put the glasses on when moving from musicration to geekification, or was that coincidental???

Did you hear that Mister Anderson? That's the sound of inevitability and a Big Muff!

if you type in guitar related circuits into google, the first thing youl get is a sight with schematics for different guitar effects pedals, like jimi, hendrix's fuzz face, and big muff

80's? You must be young. He fits the 70's a lot more than the 80's.

@MrPHGFX Its not really digital anyways the guitar is only going through a digital pot, which digitally controls its level but the analog signal is not digitized.

@Tinsaovez, One more thing, you can get an Arduino from The Maker Shed for about 40 bucks. Or you can get it with a starter kit for a few extra dollars, hope this helps.

this is just wow..! the video quality is at it's best..

did i just see a fender jazz bass knob at around 0:53? damn good bass dude....

Seriously Collin, how much Kyuss do you listen to and how many bowls did you smoke before thinking up this? Awesome work buddy! I'm sure the likes of any stoner metal bands would be stoked with a mod like this! \m/ \m/

The concept of tweaking pedals with the Arduino is a cool one. Unfortunately, this particular tweak just comes out sounding like a tremolo.

Who would try to fuck up such a beauty? Those russian Big Muff's aren't cheap, they cost like 500 dollars

pleassee!! Would you be willing to make more videos about building musical devices? Synths, pedals, etc. it all helps me on many levels.

so this is a homemade tremolo+distortion pedal?

What you need is a tap pedal to set the tempo of waveform changes.

Now just add a low frequency oscillator, connect it to a frequency modulator and you can make some badass, Dubstep.

this video shot in 2009, still looks good and relevant in 2012, especially with the Maker Faire and adruino going strong in 2012, i guess if you read this in 2015, we will see if it's still going strong! see you then!

I love Colin’s lab. He reminds me of agent smith from the matrix

@tinsaovez, No problem man. It can get confusing at first, have fun!

very cool video! why don't you add in a tap tempo too? shouldn't be too hard to do with the arduino and would definately make the effect more musical if the frequency was a nice multiple of the song tempo.

Cool. I have never thought of using Arduino for projects. I will be looking into it.

I will definitely be looking into this.

Hello, for the switches I would use a relay, if you want to enable distorsion components passing directly the audio sigfnal I would use a gate like CD4016 or CD4066. Look for the datasheets.

Cool! You took something that already existed and made it worse! You're the man!

it is awesome what you can do with the arduino. true, it is a vintage pedal, but these kids are flipping out because he disconnected a pot. also he's playing through a cheap practice amp that's not even mic-ed, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it doesn't sound awesome tonally. i think the point of this video was to demonstrate what you can do with normal pedals that you have, not to show how awesome his end result is.

@neutron7 Exactly - This is where I think there is potential - using digital technology to control analog circuits. Every analog effect is self contained (on/bypass is about all you do during a performance) imagine if the pots of all of your pedals were exposed to an dig controller - not only could you have presets but you could dynamically change settings in real time creating more possibilities

@Tinsaovez, Actually you can check out your local Radioshack, though they may or may not display it online, they sell tons of great electronic components. Or you could just check out Digikey, Jameco, Sparkfun, or Electronics Goldmine; they're great online retailers for a variety of electronic components.

Actually it's only a demonstration of the capability of the setup with a micro controler. You can achieve lots and lots and lots of new effects if you know what you're doing. And besides that, you can even use the sound you're generating to control some hardware...for example: leds.......on your guitar......:D

you can definitely achieve the same result without hacking your big muff. just run a modified version of colins sketch to control an LED on a breadboard, hook up a 2 jacks on the other side of the board and an LDR then turn out the lights. U get the same sound to my ears - why you would want that sound is a question you have to ask yourself :0)

Sounds good... but is that an old Green Russian BMP? Why didn't you do this with a new Muff Pie that isn't hard to find? When are you coming out with more Maker kits?

Good idea, but wouldnt Wah basically do the same thing?

@Mas7erChief117 Unfortunately not. A lot of people have been saying he should have his own channel though.

The effect with square wave reminds me of Guerrilla Radio by RATM :)

Can you control the arduino with midi external controller to change setting of the distortion know ?

i like the sine wave and the reverse sawtooth

it's a guitar distortion synth machine basically - cool

nice project...is it possible to modify the ammoon POCK ROCK? i am planning to change the dial buttons with some sort of push buttons that act as dials for each module. is this project feasible?

1979 ibanez studio series st-50 with stock pickups. Yes.

really cool sound, could really make some cool tuneage with that.

a secondary re-verb would be awesome with the sin wave

what the difference between reversed saw and ramp?

@Elltrixer lmfoa yes but i bed with tweaking this is a great base for experimentation and eventually finding good sounds

The real question is where you got the time machine to get a Russian muff so perfectly clean without even a paint chip!?!

So an oscillation tremolo?

it just sounds like a distortion pedal and a phase shifter pedal. I can get the same sound from my Washburn Overdrive pedal along with my MXR Phase 90.

The distortion sounds pretty much the same except for different types of tremelo.

do you use PID control to Arduino? it sound not very stable. you can increase the parameter of D to increase the feature of sound.

It's far more than a tremolo for those who think that's all it is. you can hear that it produces synth like sounds because the different shapes of wave forms.

wow, you turned a big muff into a tremolo pedal. Why?

The square wave reminded me of Guerilla Radio.

dig the chops man. and you play guitar.

I don't know if I should like this or not. Interesting demo. Not sure if I actually learned anything

That's cool! BTW, are you Hugo Weaving?

Interesting, but I was hoping for a little more than just using an LFO to modulate a pot

The best sound is acoustic right?

Shame on you for hacking up a green muff!

So rad, very unique

would be cool to get an update on how this turned out.... I've been thinking about modding some of my pedals for sometime but can't get any ideas on where to begin :( I'm looking for a more of a random note screecher type of effect... any ideas ?

old story but new style presentation. this is american style that we can found everywhere for nowadays.

does he have his own channel?

very cool. I wish I knew more about arduino and what it could be used for.

Link to the source code does not work. Anybody still has it?

Now to try pplaying One winged angel with those effects....

He is high in the beginning when the leprechauns came to steal his guitar @ 0:15 - then by the end of the video he is totally sober. you can tell by his speech :)

how does he play so close without feeback

hahahah this guy seems to me like the real genius in make-mag i just descovered the arduino it's just amazing it's really what i needed for a project we are working on me and my friend

@AresExodus This statement was so true when yo wrote it, Kip Kay has gone shamelessly corporate. I have no issues with selling out, but it is now 100% of his content :-( not just plugs here and there....

Awesome experiment, but why break solders on a vintage, great, pedal. I know you have the knowledge to build up a big muff from parts with the 100s of layouts available. Again awesome experiment but im against altering great vintage pieces unless damadged and must be fixed for use.

Whenever I've tried to put a load of wavetables into an Arduino (trying to make a MIDI LFO for my synth) I've had troubles with running out of RAM. There's probably another way to do it that'll just hold the wavetables in flash instead of RAM?????

i think the tone pot would've been a better choice to control.

Cool, an original Sovtek Big Muff Pi, I think.

@melak6 I can't speak for the dude in the video, but you can achieve similarly cool stuff by being aware of possibilities and trying to apply logical thinking when trying to invent something. You don't need natural talent, just a willingness to tinker/hack/explore.

where does one learn to do this kind of stuff? I would have no idea where to start.

holy shit I used to watch these videos like last year! :O Isn't there like a group of a few guys that do this on a channel?

Where and I get the source code I clicked the link and the page was not found?

So you made a bad tremolo / vibrato.

What would you use to remotely(from arduino) control the foot switches on a pedal like that? Relays, transistors or something else?

@Elltrixer its a start.

you're on the right track.

I get better fx from my Korg effects box and for cheaper then buying that guitar pedal and the arduino. otherwise a pretty cool mod if you happen to own both of the parts needed. it would be a lot cooler to see what an arduino could do with out the guitar pedal. how about making one that is fully DIY and you could get cool sounds by building one of your own... I´d be 10X more interested in the arduino after that.

You modded a Sovtek big muff?! why didn't you just send it to me and you could have my EHX one! xD

LOL glasses go back on when it's time for hacking/computing. Music cool != hacking cool.