This is all I ever wanted. I wanted to see somebody take a schematic and build it with real parts-- constantly referring back to the schematic. This was a huge help! Now I know the basics of how to read one!
Hey, I'm a guitar player and I've been trying to learn about pedals and circuits. This video puts a lot of light and bridges the gap between theory diagram charts with the real board, so thanks! 😬🤟
Zero-experience electrical engineer here looking to get into this kind of thing and am amazed at the quality of this lesson!! Learnt so much about breadboards and reading schematics, thank you so much!
currently a junior in college studying electrical engineering. i wanted to make my own pedals after we learned transistor circuit designs and this a great stepping stone thank you
Thanks so much! I remember watching some of your vids a few years ago. As a musician I was fascinated, but didn't understand any of the electronics. I finally chose the path beyond ignorance and went back to school to study EE. This video helped me understand the relationship between power and signal in a schematic. Now I can finish my semester final! Yaayyy!
I have a nephew who wants to start building pedals. Because of the physical distance between our respective cities, it’s difficult to try to get him started with the ins and outs of breadboarding. You did a swimmingly splendid job here sir. I’ve watched maybe a dozen videos, curating as I go and yours is the best. I’ll send him the link and answer any questions he might still have. I’ve been building my own circuits since the 90’s and designing my own circuits for the last five years. I was about ready to do my own video for my nephew to explain all this. Now I just have to send him a link. Again, much thanks to you for this superb tutorial.
Best tutorial I have seen detailing how a schematic is wired up on a breadboard. I was having trouble visualizing it and this clarified the whole process. Thank you!!
Really excellent tutorial! Absolutely what I needed! As someone trying to learn basic electronics, I've been struggling with understanding how to translate a schematic to a real working circuit, what matters and what does not, how to connect everything, etc. This video shows and explains everything very well. Just what I've been looking for! The only thing I miss is something about how/why these components work in a guitar effect pedal. Apologies if you already have videos on that on your channel. I've started to understand how transistors and diodes work, but a video about how they work in a guitar effect, how they modify the signal, etc, would be very nice. I'm also a guitar player and have been wanting to learn how to make my own effect pedals, which makes your channel even better, so thanks a lot for your videos!!!
Understanding the purpose and why a component is in a circuit is key to having some confidence in modifying. I see this comment is a bit old, hopefully you've found the resource you were looking for :)
@@derekmitchell2675there are some actual pedal kits like the 8 dollar fuzz pedal but I think you need a solder and a case to put it in but they do have kits for pedals
Very old comment but maybe you or somebody else would still like some insight! Really knowing how to make a working guitar pedal can quickly become a complicated task where some math or engineering knowledge would be needed. However if you still want to find out I’ll give you a starting point. What you’re guitar(pickup’s) are doing is translating sound to a electrical signal. Now that we have this electrical signal we can play with it what every component is doing individually is very hard(impossible) to get in to precisely due to the incredible amount of possible configurations and differences in outcome. But a good starting point might be transfer functions for RCL circuits it’s a mathematical way that creates a formula called a transfer function the formula tells you what happens with the signal if it passes through the circuit. If you get comfortable with these functions you know what the output graph is going to look like and how it will influences the input!
If you are just interested in re making some pedals and don’t care about the theory of making one I would just suggest buying or finding some schematics for pedals and a good soldering kit!
You my friend deserve much more credit. You explained the circuit board perfectly. Even better than my teacher. Thanks a lot. Now you have earned yourself 1 more Subscriber.
I was always looking for somewhere I could redirect beginners when I am writing instructables, so they have immediate help when struggling with the basics. And I have to say: you did a marvellous job guiding people through the process and showing how to approach things and what to look for! Thank you a lot!
First, I must say that the best dad hands down that you have on the wall is the cutest thing 😍 Second, is that I really enjoyed the video and I look forward to giving one of the kits a go at some point as this video was really easy to understand. Thank you very much :-)
recommend putting the schematic link in the description since you say "do-it-yourself" in the url not "diy" for people that haven't been to your site before :) Love your vids btw started building a couple months ago.
Any Chance you can do a series ( full Build on one or a few of your circuits , from start to finish ) . I know you have covered drilling cases etc but a full build multi part series would be fantastic to see .
So I did it but I used stereo 9v Jack and stereo input and output Jacks. The pedal signal comes through but is terribly gated and comes through distorted. Any ideas as to why?
It worked! It worked! After several failures and wanting to give up on this passion of mine this video lifted me up! But you were wrong it's been 4 hours and I still can't wipe the grin off my face 😀
I built this along with you last night and I can't say thank you enough! I'll be ordering a PCB kit soon just as a way of thanking you. This is just what I needed to better understand guitar circuits and I plan to swap out components of different values to see what they do!
I don't know how any assholes can give you a thumbs down on anything. You're providing such an amazing, informative service that is clear and friendly and you give this away for free. I'm so thankful for your videos, I'd have no leg into this world without your videos dumbing things down for dumbies like me.
Thank you sir! Thumbs down mean nothing when you receive emails from fans telling you how they started learning from your videos and have moved onto their dream jobs in the pedal and electronic engineering fields. Stay focused on the goal and the purpose my friend. PS, your not dumb, your a beginner. Stick with it and you will learn alot.
This was really great! As someone who's always had trouble with electronics, this was nice and easy to follow. Definitely learned something here. Thanks a lot, mate!
I've just found your video on how to build fx pedals brilliant I love the way you take the time to show exactly what goes where really looking forward to having a go .
Hey Paul, thanks for making such an easy to understand tutorial on breadboarding and basic circuitry. This is the video I've been looking for for about a year, I haven't found anything else that breaks down the way the blasted things are wired up internally in such an easy-to-understand manner. I'm going to have a play with the components I have for now but I've bookmarked your site for when I get to the point of wanting specialised components for projects I'm working on. Great to find a small-scale Australian supplier for all of those more arcane transistors etc. used in audio circuitry as well. Take care!
Cool video...as a complete noob, I'm gonna look foreward to watching several times to wrap my mind around it, and try it myself along with the video. Thanks!
Nice one, this is 90% of what I have been looking for. The only bit I see missing is a brief description of what each component does, what bigger and smaller values do.
Very interesting ! Thanks ! Question is for beginners : how to learn the basis BUT applied principles of electronics ? I mean understand what a component (a resistor, a capacitor, a transistor, a diode) does is (quite) easy, but understanding how and why they are combined is way more difficult, even with the help of many internet resources. Most of the time, those tutorials says nothing about these combinations... Where to start from ? Any advice here ?
Hey man, big thumbs up for your vids, i'm a beginner in electronics and just built some kits with success... but what i really miss is: WHY an Xk resistance, or WHY an Yk instead? or why a Znf cond and not an Kuf instead? i mean, if you can, could you bring up a vid (or a series of vids) explaining the basic WHY of a circuit choices (also this little booster is totally incomprehensible to me) for audio? thanks.
The LPB1 is basically a gain stage to produce natural saturation in an amplifier. The circuit is one of the first EHX products, and it was intended to push the tubes in an amp into overdrive and create not only a volume increase but clipping, and give the guitar the basic slightly distorted sound. Now, in this schematic he's just building a basic polarization network for the JFET transistor in the center. If you read more about biasing transistors, and using them as amplifiers you'll understand a little bit more. There's some math but it isn't hard to understand ;)
Fantastically helpful vid as a newbie to pedal building myself, I have this circuit 90% complete on a small breadboard just waiting on parts from Amazon and Ebay. I have ordered big stocks so loads of prototypes. Next is a Dallas treble booster again waiting for my geranium transistors to arrive.
Hi ! Thanks for all that helpful tips ! I made it this week-end with components that i found in electronics garbages in the street. They have not really same values than the ones you use, but the pedal works pretty well for now, and it sound more like a fuzz :P
watched about six other videos on this subject, none of them nearly as helpful! just built your bazz fuss successfully, now I'm working on a simple tremolo from a schematic I found. Cheers
You really are gifted in circuits, I've been bashing my head on it and I simply cannot get the pedal build I'm working on, to work. (Lm386).. it's like I'm missing something obvious.
Nice tutorial. Do you have a video explaining component choice & purpose? I have decent electronics knowledge, but I'm still struggling to visualize the electron flow. It would also be nice if you marked the expected voltages or even the expected waveform & frequency (depending on application of course).
Awesome video! I'm considering trying to mess around with pedal circuits mostly as a curiosity at this point. This gave me a basic understanding of how to get things hooked up.
This is an awesome and informative video. Do you have any videos where you explain the theory on why we use certain components at different locations in the schematic? “we put a capacitor here because” and “we use a 100 ohm resistor here and a 10K ohm resistor here because…”
About 5 minutes in he speaks of a resistance point where you won't get a beep, if anybody is wondering he's talking about the beeping u hear on your multimeter and it usually happens around 30 60 ohms. Not all multimeters will beep, but they should all read continuity (all or almost all zeros, like a short piece of wire) and the point where the speaker begins to stop sounding (the resistance of the beep circuit and the speaker, is what I think he's talking about.
Great and very instructive intro to bread boarding, answered a lot of questions I'd got. Have been thinking of reusing a large metal biscuit tin as an enclosure, with the common parts i.e power input / output jacks and maybe a few switches installed in the sides of the tin. I think Brian Wampler used an amp chasis for the same kind of thing. After watching your video feel a bit more like trying to make it work. I'm fairly new to this stuff, having modded a few pedals from kits and getting bitten by the bug! Thanks once again - great video.
Just wanted to say thanks for making this tutorial. This is the exact step I was on in my pedal making journey, and it has helped me take that next step! Great stuff!
I love bread-boarding, but I love to use it more efficiently by cramming everything tightly. Result is that down the road it's hard to trace what's what after having 4 stages of cliping and boosting.
Thank you for this video, just really getting into breadboarding. Now I know I understand it. I appreciate your attention to detail. Thanks again, Steve
Thanks mate! You've made one huge connection for me. You've joined three of my hobbies. Namely guitar, computers & electronics. A nifty "Start here..." first lesson. I have some breadboard & a box of wires & components that came "free" with an Arduino clone. I know what I'll be doing tonight! Just had a thought... Do you think an Arduino could be the heart of a multi FX pedal or would latency be a problem? 🤔 Subscribed! 🙂
I tried a lower gain 2n3904 and i kinda like it better. Low gains are higher noise apparently but this one sounds a bit quieter to my ear and more...control maybe? Thanks for the great work. Best diy stompbox teacher on the tube, in my humble opinion.
