Hey, I’m Pete and I’ve been a guitar player and pedal enthusiast since 2005.

After having bought and sold my fair share of gear over the years, I wondered how easy it would be to actually build some of the pedals I wanted to own but couldn’t actually warrant buying.

Down the rabbit hole I went.

Following a few failed attempts at building a Fuzz Face clone using parts out of my dad’s garage and schematics off of the internet, I took the plunge and bought a BluesBreaker kit off eBay and to my amazement it worked, the first time. As I own an original 90’s Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal, I knew what it should sound like and after putting them in a side by side shootout, I could pretty much get the same tones. I couldn’t have been happier and then realised I’d been bitten by the bug of DIY pedal building.

Ready for my next project, I ordered a few more kits from eBay and quickly sped through them and was completely amazed that they all worked the first time and sounded pretty good!

Even after building pedals for this long, I’m always amazed when they work without any additional tinkering.

Having improved my soldering game and beginning to understand how the circuits were working, I moved away from ready-made kits and started buying sets of components to start piecing together projects myself.

A little way down the line, I came to a realisation that many of the resources out there for aspiring DIY pedal builders are quite technical and unless you’re already familiar with electronics, can seem a little hard to grasp.

That’s why I’ve created this site. To help people get into building their own DIY guitar pedals with tips and advice that will hopefully demystify what is already available and get you on the road to building a full rig of DIY effects pedals.

I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions on how to improve this site for beginners. Also, if you have any good war stories from previous builds, please send them over as there’s generally something to learn from past mistakes that will help make this a much more pleasurable activity for those of you who are just starting out.

Happy building!

Beginner's Guide