Introduction

Hi All,

Thought I'd start this up as maybe a bit of help for those of you who are a bit like myself. Basically I have always enjoyed making things for myself, fixing things myself if I can (this is often budget driven), and being willing to research, mostly via the internet what it takes to achieve the result. My main profession is now teaching construction trade skills, having been a contractor for 30 years prior. I started playing guitar about 25 years ago and for many years, just for the love of making music, have been the lead guitarist in a garage band. our biggest gig if you could call it that is the annual new years eve party we hold which gets a good group of followers.

Over the years the geek in me has got into the gears and repairs side. firstly fixing and making cables, patch cables- then all the other guys. I started out with a Marshall Valvestate VS265 ( which I will always keep ) and an early Epiphone Les Paul- second hand. After a few years problems arose that meant professional repair costs were not viable, so as above, i started finding out about electronics. Replacing old filter caps, scratchy pots, old cold solders etc. Then started rewiring and hotting up the guitar. Then I pimped up a few guitars for mates. Then I started delving into world of magical Pedals!!

Still with the Marshall. one clean, 2 overdrive channels, built in chorus & reverb and pickup options were good, but I started wanting more options and differences in sound for some of the songs my group started coming up with. Started buying some as I could afford. EHX Memory boy first- mxr phaser- EHX flanger - I started getting a collection of varying modulations just to see what I can do with them. Then I want more dirt options. Different flavours so to speak. The Marshalls kinda one toned . I'm into this enough now for a Tube amp methinks. Scored a Trace Elliot Velocette fitted with a greenback and manufacturer weaknesses modded out. It's peaches and cream with pedals and still my main playing amp today. During that time ( I had some extra dough) I laid my hands on what is the perfect guitar for me, The Fender Strat Mahogany HSS. Think Fender Deluxe with a Darker tone. If you find one- get it is all I can say. Now the doors open for some different gain sounds. Coincidentally, one of my first pedals here was from ( I didn't know it at the time) one of the revered pedal gurus Bajaman. He convinced me to get one of his real tube overdrives while he was doing some repairs to a PA speaker that were a bit beyond my capabilities at the time. It gave me the Marshall sound back for my now clean tube amp. Started getting a few other options OCD v3, got the MOOER Black secret for the RAT, tube screamer ( not such a fan ) all tried and true. Started building custom pedal boards to fit all this. Adding 5 switch true bypass looper for different layers of sound, buffers, booster, inbuilt tuner. Now gaining a lot of knowledge about placement issues, getting this lot to sound good. My age of less is more and tone hunt had really begun. So modding my existing pedals came next. Adding script mode to MXR Phaser, true bypass the wah etc. You can see where I'm Heading. I've got to take a look at making my own pedals. If you know me, not from a kit - from scratch.

It's absolutely amazing the amount of free information available if you want to start this journey. I've been looking, learning ,making and evolving for a couple of years now. I think I’ve got to a point I can save anyone starting out much time with shortcuts to helpful websites, places to get components and all the bits and bobs you’ll need, circuits I think are worth making. Tayda printing without Adobe illustrator. Things like that.

I can also show off the pedals I make LOL.

I’m no expert, It’s amateur to amateur talking/listening

Once I figure out how to create some navigation on this blog I’ll start adding some stuff that hopefully you may find useful.