Sometimes, regardless of effort or intent, things just don’t work right. Maybe a bit of static came through, with bits scratchiness from the twist of a knob, but no thick, hearty growl from my guitar. Try as I might, my efforts were fruitless. I cross-referenced every resistor, capacitor, transistor, wiring and other bits and pieces in hopes of tracing where I erred in my earlier attempts. Set to a soundtrack of melancholy tunes, I fired up the soldering iron, and checked out my schematics and layout notes. So I sat down at my work desk recently in hopes of getting sound out of one of these two boxes. A feeling of shame and defeat, and maybe a bit of denial, wash over me. It bothers me so much that I’ve barely even looked at them in months. A few hours of work here and there, and the time came to hit the bypass switch to hear my creations at work. What’s been months ago now, I set out to build a tubelike fuzz distortion pedal for myself and a bass fuzz distortion pedal for a friend. Like the fuzz on “Purple Haze” or the spacey delay on Pink Floyd tracks or the flanger on Van Halen’s “ … And the Cradle Will Rock,” effects can transform a song. I dabble sometimes in building my own instrument effect pedals - little boxes that affect the sound of an instrument for color and, sometimes, mayhem. While trying to find something to distract my clouded mind and provide my idle hands something to tinker with, I remembered a neglected project: a pair of unfinished guitar pedals.
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