Pedalboard
What am I making?
I'm making cheap DIY analog guitar effect pedals for Distortion and Fuzz. To ensure a high quality pedal I will be using reverse engineered schematic of the iconic Boss DS-1 and the Big Muff Pi. Careful planning will be done to ensure that these DIY pedals perform equally as well only for a fraction of the price, while still keeping in mind the Mod-ability and ease of repair.
Time Spent: 28 Hours
My Goals For This Project-
- [ ] Only THT Components
- [ ] Easy to modify
- [ ] Cheap components
Day 1 (17th May) - Started DS-1
Since I already made a DS-1 pedal before I had experience with designing pedals and I also knew about stuff I should avoid adding in my design. Some of those problems were - - Having thin holes for the potentiometers - Placing the potentiometer holes in the middle instead of at the edges - Using holes to solder wire instead of having screw in terminals
To start with the project I made the DS-1 v2 schematics in kicad, the schematics for version 2 were similar to version one because the schematics just work!
DS-1 Schematics
I started out with PCB layout after finishing It. I always like to first start of with a rough layout to see how I can arrange my components and look at how I can improve from their and then restart the PCB layout again. This is exactly what I did for this design and by the end of the day I ended up with a layout that I liked.
The next step was routing everything together. Because I already made something like this I had experience and knew what to avoid while tracing. I carefully routed all the audio signals first, keeping the traces short and smooth. After that I routed my power traces, this time I made sure that the power traces were far away from the audio signal and that they also cross the audio traces are a 90 degree angle to reduce EMI and noise from the power trace radiating into the audio traces. This was a lesson I learned from making version 1, my power traces were routed improperly which introduced a 60hz hum from the cheap power supply into the audio signal, It worked fine but there was just a buzz which was a bit annoying.
This was the final result PCB design:
Time Spent: 5 Hours
I was pretty locked in today!
Day 2 (19th May) - Big Muff Schematic
I started working on designing the big muff pi schematic today.
The big muff pi is pretty easy to make compared to a DS-1, and I finished making its schematics in like 30 mins.
After that I started working on the PCB for it. I again followed the same method I listed above of creating a rough layout then going to a finalized one. And this was the end result of the PCB.
Big Muff Pi Schematics
Big Muff PCB Layout
Time Spent: 3 Hours
Day 3 (5th June) - Updated DS-1 PCB
tl;dr I was pretty ambitious when starting this project but I have now decided to split this into three different projects.
After pondering and doing some research I've decided to actually split this project. Right now Im making a lot of pedals and Initially I though all of them could be made using analog circuitry, but I was wrong, for a lot of these effects I listed initially (chorus, eq, loop, noise gate) having a digital pedal is the only viable option. And so I have decided I'm going to split this into three different projects- one of which is this project (Distortion, Fuzz , the second project would be making a digital pedal that's capable of the effects listed above and is expandable, lastly the third project would be create a pedalboard for these pedals and a dedicated low noise power supply. Creating a digital pedal is way more complicated that I initially expected it to be and that's why I'm gonna keep it as its own separate project.
Now back to the actual project. Today I did some minor revisions over the DS-1 PCB layout, I added ground pours on both top and bottom layers and stitched them together with a lot of vias. This will help keep ground plane continuity throughout the board and reduce EMI which in turn will reduce any buzzing/hiss generated by a noisy power supply (hopefully).
I also realized just now that I placed in the screw in terminal footprints in the wrong orientation.
I updated the footprints and fixed the problem.
DS-1 PCB
Time Spent: 2 Hours
Day 4 (6th June) - Big Muff PCB
Today I started working on routing the Big Muff Pi, It was a pretty long and boring process but here is the final result
I'm not super happy with the way it came out for a few reasons- - The power traces are long and cross through a lot of audio signals, while the traces cant be made any shorter I could route them in a much more efficient way. - Very dense layout led to a lot of audio traces to be routed from on the bottom layer, while this is not that big of a deal I would prefer if most of the audio traces were on the top layer and only power traces were on the bottom
I also started working on making a BOM for this project today, I spent a lot of time just surfing on aliexpress for cheap component kits which include everything I require for this project. This took a few hours because I had to cross check the component values from the aliexpress listings to the component values required. Overall I finished about 60% of the BOM today.
Time Spent: 5 Hours
Day 5 (June 7th) - Redid Everything
I finished making the BOM today and the overall cost comes up to about $90 USD which is a bit expensive but not bad considering that this is the cost for two pedals which would be something $180 USD if buying the originals. Also with all the parts in the BOM you could make about at least 4 of these pedals, the only thing bringing up the cost in our DIY scenario is the 125B Aluminium Enclosure. I think spending money on a Aluminium enclosure is 100% worth it, I've tried using a plastic case for my DS-1 version 1 and wrapping it with aluminium foil but it just doesn't shield it from EMI properly and is a big hassle overall, Its much better to get a solid enclosure which can handle the stomping and shield the internal circuitry from EMI.
I also decided to reroute the whole Big Muff PCB again and here are the results-
Front
Back
With Fill
Even though the Big Muff's schematics were easier compared to DS-1, routing the Big Muff was way way harder. This was a very dense layout and very complicated to route but nevertheless I finished routing It.
Well on second though I decided to completely scrape my PCB design and start a new one from scratch. There were far too many problems with the routing on version 1 of the Big Muff, there were a lot of traces overlapping and long power traces parallel to audio traces. I decided to increase the board size a bit and have two separate screw in terminals for the guitar input and output. This was the layout I finally decided on-
In my humble opinion I would like to say that I absolutely cooked while making this. Its just so beautiful and organized, and much much better than the previous layout.
PCB Front
PCB Back
PCB
CAD Render
I also create a basic CAD design for the case, I'm gonna be using a 125B Aluminium enclosure so there was not much to design, I just had to place the components to get a rough idea of where to drill the holes later on. Anyways here is the case -
I'm still unsure if I should add some spray paint in my BOM and make my pedal colorful instead of just a grey box.
I also decided I should try panelizing the PCBs and order both PCB as one board to save cost and get more boards, but in order to do that I had to reduce the size of the DS-1 PCB down a few mm. So I decided to start off fresh for the DS-1 PCB and this time set the board size to 45x45mm. I spent a few hours creating a new layout and ended up with this -
After about a hour or so of routing I ended up with this masterpiece-
Front
Back
Render
I also have like 22 DRC errors about edge clearance violations and courtyard overlaps but I'm gonna pretend like I didn't see that.
I panelized my design now I can now get 5 boards each for the price of 1. There probably wasn't a need to do this as ordering it separately would have only costed like 2 dollars more but I always wanted to learn how to panelize and this seemed like a great opportunity for it.
I can fit like 4 boards (2 of each design) into one panel but I think ill use the rest of the space for a 3PDT switch breakout board which I'll make tommorow.
Overall I would say today was my most productive day, I've been working on this project since morning and basically redid everything today.
Time Spent: 10 Hours
Day 6 (7th June)
I decided to make a breakout board for the 3PDT footswitch as soldering wires directly to it gets messy after a while. I made the design in Easyeda because they had a footprint for the switch, then I imported it into KiCad.
PCB In EasyEDA
PCB imported into KiCad
Breakout Board Render
My project was basically finished at this point. I added the breakout board into the panelized design and this was the result-
PCB Panel
Panel Render
Aw hell nah! The panel actually ended up costing more, I guess jlcpcb doesn't like it when you cram 3 different designs onto a single board.
Panelized Design
Individual PCBs
Well panelizing it was a waste of time but atleast I learned something new.
I spent about an hour or so updating my BOM and formatting everything in the project repo, the overall cost comes up to about $130 USD which is a bit more that I anticipated but hey atleast the pedal will look good this time.