DIY Guitar Pedal Project - 4/21/2021

Following my DIY microphone that I made as a senior project, I have come to appreciate the microphone I made the most out of all my equipment I own. The fact that I put effort and dedication into the creation of something that I can use on a daily basis was really rewarding for me. For this same reason, I decided to branch out to other DIY projects as well. During my last few weeks at Sweetwater Studios, I decided to purchase a guitar from their store that was on demo, which allowed me to get a really good deal on it. I had always wanted to learn guitar anyway, and since the time I visited Gibson's factory in Memphis and picked up a 335-style semi-hollow, I've always wanted that sound. Lucky for me, I found something similar at Sweetwater on demo, so I bought it! That led me to think about all the cool guitar pedals that are out there. Of course there are plenty of awesome pedals that I could go out and spend a lot of money on, but just like the DIY microphone I built, why not just make my own?

After doing some research on the many DIY guitar pedal websites, I landed on The Thunderdrive by MOD Electronics. I almost went with The Wave or The Persuader Deluxe, but both of those seemed a bit complicated. The Thunderdrive is said to be a build difficulty level 1 on MOD's website, which was one of the reasons it was more appealing to me; not because I don't think I could handle something more difficult, but that I feel like I would learn the most about guitar pedals by starting out small. To be honest, and having the pedal built already, I can say that was probably a smart choice. By choosing an easier pedal, I had more time to slow down and really think about what the components are doing within the pedal. With a more difficult option, I would have spent much more time being frustrated or running into problems, and not enough time comprehending how the components I'm assembling will affect the signal.

The entire build took me all of 3 hours to complete, with no issues or mistakes made in the process. I got this pedal right the first time, and with no problems to troubleshoot at all. Here's all the tools I used in the assembly of the pedal, as well as the package all the parts come in, and all the components involved:

As you can see, it was a fairly simple build with few necessary tools. By the way, I didn't really need channel locks, I was just using them instead of a wrench. These parts all went into the pedal to make one awesome overdrive that actually sounds pretty awesome! I did come across a couple of interesting issues with the pedal though. The foremost issue is that when the pedal's distortion knob is turned all the way up and you find a good spot for the volume knob, it picks up radio signals that can be heard quite clearly trough an amp. For this reason, I'd like to figure out why it's having this problem, as well as how I can fix it. I have a feeling it may have something to do with shielding the case, and I'm pretty sure that's a fairly simple procedure. Also, this pedal kit is powered by one 9-volt battery. While this may be convenient for the assembler since all you have to do is solder a simple 9-volt lead, it would have been much more reasonable (in my opinion) to include a port for a 9-volt power supply. Although they didn't include one with the kit, I would be very capable of buying my own, as well as figuring out a way to cut out a spot for it in the case and mount it. I think this is a modification I'll be doing in the future. The last issue I had was that one of the knobs that are screwed onto the potentiometers has a brass flathead screw to keep tension on the pot, but as I was tightening it to the potentiometer, the screw stripped! I haven't really seen this happen very often with a flathead screw, but I might decide to switch these knobs out for better, more reliable knobs sometime soon.

Keep your eye out for some sonic examples of this guitar pedal in the near future. To conclude this blog post, here are a couple pictures of what the pedal looked like during and after assembly:

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!