The Thousands

Hey DIYers! Instead of waking up at 3am to bid on eBay for that overpriced vintage guitar effects pedal, why not have a crack at making your own? Impossible? Nope just read on!

Having myself not soldered (soddered if you’re American) a piece of metal since high school, let me tell you that all you need to get by is a pedal kit from Build Your Own Clone and the occasional online tutorial. Actually you better add to that list a decent soldering iron as things can end up a bit like doing surgery with a stick of butter otherwise.

A few hours and probably half a litre of summer sweat later and you should successfully have cloned your first pedal. Even if the pedal’s circuit board looks more like a used cheese grater than a refined piece of sonic technology the sound should be just right.

With BYOC claiming to have the world’s finest DIY kits, the verdict on my own attempt at the Scrambled Octave Pedal for the tech-heads out there is that it was easy to assemble and gives a damn nice fuzzy tone, with enough levels of controllable octave to create something nice and freaky. Well worth having a go if you want to keep an eye on the beer fund and sleep through that eBay auction alarm.