Things I have learned from making my first properly DIY pedal (Bitsbox Heartthrob Tremolo)

english_bob

Having built my fair share of BYOC kits, I decided to take my relationship with DIY building to the next level and ordered a stripboard kit from Bitsbox to build a Heartthrob (Schaller) tremolo. It's taken ages to build, mostly because I haven't had time, but last night I finally got the little bastard finished. Here's some musings of an electronics dumbass and DIY noob.

1. Read that diagram more carefully. No, more carefully. I spent several fruitless evenings working out that I'd connected a resistor one row short of the strip it was meant to be soldered to.

2. Drilling enclosures is well worth leaving to some other guy. If you don't have a pillar drill and/or a very steady and extremely strong hand, that is. I drilled smaller guide holes to start with which made drilling the larger holes easier, but it's still slightly wonky.

3. You should think more carefully about where you drill the holes. I put the jack sockets, switches, LED, 9v socket and knobs in what I thought were sensible places, but found that I'd made it a very tight fit inside the enclosure for the circuit board, which is quite an important part of the pedal. It squished in eventually, but I had to tape up the back of the stripboard (with masking tape- I thought I had some electrical tape, but I didn't!) to stop it earthing on the enclosure. 

4. Cheap chinese knock-offs of Hammond boxes might be a false economy. For one thing, they take forever to arrive. Three of the four screws went in no bother but the fourth had to be forced in for the last half of its journey. Not ideal if you plan on opening and closing the box more than once.

5. Grub screw knobs don't fit on splined pot shafts very well. Mostly because the splined shafts are quite a bit longer, so your nice white oxblood-era Fender amp style barrel knobs knobs end up looking like little mushrooms on the top of the pedal. I had some spare not-as-cool knobs off a BYOC pedal that look a little less ridiculous.

All valuable lessons for next time. Next stop is a Skreddy Screwdriver Deluxe. And I can tell you what I've learned about Ge transistors.