“The Scream” is starting to look finished, but it has two more steps to go. Chase’s “Good Vibrations” tremolo pedal is starting to look like a Jamaican flag. Oops. I think it will still be cool. It needs text, and then it will be done.
I was scrounging around yesterday, looking for something I could build/make… When I realized that with but one quick trip to Radio Shack, I could be the neato PWM guitar effect pedal that Collin Cunningham video demo’d for Make Magazine. So I did:
PWM pedal (foreground) with a few homebuilt friends
Here’s the guts:
PWM Guts
It’s a really cool pedal. Way different animal than other guitar effects. It makes sounds that most closely resemble a synthesizer. Hope to use it for some fake-synth parts on some of my tunes in the future. It’s kinda “glitchy” though, which I think is by design. But every now and then the pedal does something weird, and I can’t tell if there’s something wrong with the it, or if that’s just the way the weird pedal sounds. For instance, it doesn’t always pick up every note, and I don’t know if that’s just how it works (it *is* glitchy) or if I’ve got something loose in there. I’ve also got some rhythmic clicking going on when the pedal is engaged but I’m not playing. I don’t think this is umm… desired behavior, but I checked my wiring and I think it looks good. It’s not awful, and since I mostly do recording, I can edit it out fairly easily, but it would be much more nice if it just didn’t happen in the first place. If I figure it out, I’ll update the post.
My tremolo pedal is done. This is my version of the Baja Trembulator, which i have christened “Good Vibrations.” A little overspray on the text stencil, but that’s okay. I’m not very good at this kind of thing, so I’ll take what I can get.
It. Sounds. Awesome.
Homemade “Vactrol” using a red led and a photoresistor in some heat-shrink tubing. Very fun. Have to build one of these for Chase now.
After finally having some success with my “Mastodon Dave” guitar distortion pedal, I’ve been wanting to make a few more. I’m continually amazed, however, at how many different electronics parts there are out there… I’ve got coffee tins full, rubbermaid organizers full, and I STILL hardly ever have the parts on hand I need to make one of practically anything. So I was looking around for a pedal circuit I could build without waiting around for parts to show up, and I found the Trotsky Drive. After digging around to see what diodes I had, BINGO! So tonight I threw it all together on the breadboard.
It sounds pretty good too, but it’s a little hummy – which I think is probably the breadboard. A very simple circuit, but has a couple options for modding. There’s a low-pass switch you can throw, and you can swap out the capacitor for different amounts of low-pass. And you can mess with the kinds of diodes you use, and whatnot. Fun project, with a Russian name, so I’m going to have fun painting this one.
Most of the trouble with this project was hacking through the various electronics components grab bags I bought to find the right parts. The numbering schemes on the caps in particular are tricky. I got a few that I think are caps, but I’m still not sure. And how do I tell what kind a random diode is? If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.
