The Art of Modifying Guitar Pedals

So this is only the second pedal I've worked on but at this point I'm starting to get the hang of things and wanted to share my thoughts.

First, working from a kit is awesome and makes diving into these projects really accessible. Two sources if you don't know of them: Monte Allums and Analogman. Kits are nice because the step by step directions are clear and provide they all the parts for you.

The other option is to do it yourself, which as you might imagine is more difficult but can be more rewarding because you can dial in YOUR sound to just how you want it. For this I followed a lot of guidance as laid down by this guy but in the end a lot of the final decisions were up to me.

If you want to go this route I recommend starting off with the Schematics of your pedal (if you can find them) as that will help you map out the board (IE identify where volume, tone control and effects happen). Here's a number of guitar pedal schematics and many more.

Next, if the pedal uses cheap wiring (my big muff did) then go through and replace all the wires, one at a time and check the pedal each time. It's a tedious process but I had a problem with the original wires falling off while working, replacing them helped. For this I used 24AWG solid strand wire, it was stiff and soldered well.

Next, get a pile of components and sockets, by sockets I mean something like these little guys. With the sockets you can easily begin to swap out resistors and capacitors to see what happens to the sound. The idea is simple, experiment until you like it, then solder that part in.

And that's it, there's a lot of resources out there, I recommend you head on over to DIYStompboxes.com for more info on this topic and to get started. Have fun and don't break anything too badly.