The DIY Guitar Pedal Culture Edition

Chris Moon (CM) is a serial hobbyist living in San Francisco. When he’s not soldering on the kitchen table, he is sharpening antique Disston saws, pickling umeboshi, rebuilding a clutch-pack, or solving for zero-days. 

Chris here. Amongst electric guitarists, effects pedals can be an obsession. These small, sound-distorting aluminum enclosures offer a wide range of effects across curious categories, from optical phasers and rotary flangers to auto-wahs, bitcrushers and fuzz sustainers. And all of them typically contain a printed circuit board (PCB), requisite components, power, and a few audio jacks.

For decades, effects pedals have helped define and inspire musical genres. From Pink Floyd using a Colorsound Power Boost and Binson Echorec to sculpt psychedelic landscapes on Dark Side of the Moon, to Kurt Cobain popularizing the woozy and watery EHX Small Clone Chorus in Smells Like Teen Spirit, to the near mandatory use of a dimed-out Boss HM-2 to achieve peak Swedish death-metal “chainsaw” tones, specific pedals are seen as inescapable staples in every genre. (Stompboxes like the Fuzz Face, Uni-Vibe, Big Muff, and Tubescreamer have iconic tones featured on equally iconic tracks like Hendrix’s Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Pink Floyd’s Breathe, Smashing Pumpkins’ Cherub Rock, and Metallica’s Fade to Black.) 

Guitarists spend years questing to find their own amalgamation of grail worthy tones: trying to identify the precise effects used on their favorite track; snapping photographs of pedalboards at live gigs; endlessly listening to reviews on a myriad of YouTube channels; or lusting after legendary (and expensive) pedals made by long defunct manufacturers. And while certain brands like Electro-Harmonix, Boss, and Dunlop have always lined music store shelves, the last decade has seen a frenzy of boutique guitar pedal manufacturers offering a dizzying array of effects, with elaborate graphics and names like Astral Destiny, Rabid Mammal, Lizard Queen, and Tonal Recall, all serving up a true smorgasbord of tonal-manipulation.

Why is this interesting?

   Photo: Reddit

Because as people have become ever more passionate about their pedals,  DIY pedal builders—a seasoned community of guitarists, electronics enthusiasts, makers, collectors, and at times entrepreneurs—are making their own. While many guitar effects pedals can cost hundreds of dollars retail, they can be made at home for as little as $10 in parts, provided one knows how to solder and can identify the positive lead on a diode. Forums abound with clones, mods, schematics, and debates on the tonal nature of germanium vs.silicon transistors. Pedal making is akin to sonic cross-stitching, hours spent softly soldering resistors, A/B testing components, and tweaking potentiometers until they’re just right. While DIY pedals may offer aural perfection, often the telltale sign of a homemade pedal is its stark blank aluminum enclosure. Occasionally, if you make a keeper, it will get custom spray paint or even an acid-etching. 

Practically there can be very little, if anything, distinguishing a homemade pedal from a factory or boutique maker. Indeed the allure of cheap replicas is strong, and the DIY community has gone from veroboards and point-to-point soldering, to sites now offering fully pre-made PCB boards citing the retail pedals they directly copy. While it might be tempting to see this as blatant theft, circuit schematics themselves are not protected under copyright or trademark. Furthermore, the reverse-engineering of circuits is not regarded as a trade-secret. Scant are patents in the guitar effects world. This lack of legal protection has caused some manufacturers to “goop” their pedals, wherein they douse the components in thick black epoxy to completely obscure components in a sticky ooze. 

Photo: Wampler Pedals

While wildly tedious, it is possible to remove this layer in a process known as “de-gooping.” Many in the DIY community see gooping as an affront to consumer transparency. The practice obscures not only the components, but the possibility of a pedal itself being a clone, not to mention the general quality of the workmanship. 

With the abundance of clones, some makers have taken to peddling their wares online, offering custom acid-etchings, direct-clones, desirable circuit mods, and frankensteining effects together. Many modern boutique pedal makers got their start in the DIY community, and many new manufacturers make pedals with nods towards those grassroots contributions. The relationship between the DIY community and pedal manufacturers is mostly harmonious. 

Perhaps the most notable example of a DIY guitar pedal being cloned by a big name manufacturer is the Klon Centaur. The “Klon” as it is known, was originally released in 1994 by boutique builder Bill Finnegan. A clean-boost pedal, it provided a transparent extra umph to a rig’s setup, and quickly became a staple on many legendary artists’ boards including Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, Jeff Beck, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Nels Cline of Wilco and John Mayer. As word spread, so did demand. Finnegan was unable to keep up with orders, and prices on the used market went stratospheric, reaching at times above $7,000 for a pedal that originally sold for $225. The Klon was famously gooped, but as prices rose, the collective lust of gear hungry guitarists became too strong. Once again, the DIY community was on the job. Across forums the painstaking de-gooping began, and by 2008 the Klon’s schematic had been mapped. DIY builders sprinted to build their own, followed by a tidal wave of Klon-clones hitting the open market. Now, big name manufacturers were meeting pent-up demand with pedals like Wampler’s Tumnus, Electro-Harmonix Soul Food, and MXR’s Sugar Drive. In a matter of years the Klon went from unobtanium to a $99 staple on nearly every single pedal board, thanks to this reverse-cloning. Bill Finnegan would finally release his own Klon Clone - the KTR (at $269) featuring the same circuit albeit made in a way that allowed for mass manufacturing. 

For many guitarists caught in an industry saturated by boutique gear, hype, and pseudoscientific tone-sniffing, the opportunity to have a hand in building your own equipment is empowering. Not only does it offer a frugal alternative, it also allows one to cut through flowery marketing and reveal the immutable truths found in simple circuits and schematics. On every one of Bill Finnegan’s Klon KTRs it states, “Kindly remember: The ridiculous hype that offends so many is not of my making.” (CM) 

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Chris (CM)

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