BYOC Pedals

[skydigger]

Does anyone have any experience with BYOC pedals?

I'm looking for a compressor\sustainer and a tremolo pedal. They've got decent reviews at HC.

I've listened to all of the Tremolos at Musicians Friend and I kind of like the Diaz Tremedillo best.

I'm not sure about the compressors though...

[hollowbody]

I've listened to all of the Tremolos at Musicians Friend and I kind of like the Diaz Tremedillo best.

+1 for the Tremodillo! I have a vintage one made by Cesar himself back when they were handmade. It's a great little pedal and does a great job of creating vintage sounding tremolo reminiscent of blackface Fenders. I don't have any experience with the newer ones, but the old Tremodillos are awesome!

[Joey D.]

Personally I have the Muff clone and delay, both outstanding pedals (especially the pre-builts from Scott over at axeandyoushallreceive). They're tough no-nonsense pedals. I can imagine, based on the pedals I have, that the compressor and trem are both great sounding and reliable.

Not to send anyone away from this fine site, but if you check over at thegearpage.net many, many people sing their praises for these. Of course tone is relative, trust your ears!

:rockon:

[torndownunit]

I won a BYOC overdrive in one of the contests on here (thanks Scott). I got it pre-built. I love it. I got rid of all my other OD pedals because it's the only one I use. It's built like a tank too. From my experience I'd definitely recommend them.

[LowWatt]

My BYOC Tremolo was one of the first pedals I ever built. It has never left my board in the 2 years I've had it. By far my favorite tremolo. Very amp-like and natural. Great for CCR and James Bond style tremolo sounds, but no good for modern style square wave tremolo.

Keep in mind that in my 16 years of playing I went though 6 different trem pedals and tried out over 20. The second I heard the BYOC Is topped looking. The other trem that floored me is the TRex Tremster. Great pedal too and Scott at www.axeandyoushallreceive.com had a used one on craigslist the other day for $125 when they usually go new for about $200

[Stratin2traynor]

Love my Large Beaver. Easy build and sounds fantastic.

[Paul]

I believe that the BYOC chorous pedal can be modded to flip between a chorous and a trem pedal. I think you just need to add one toggle switch to the circuit, in the right place, of course.

[mhammer]

Actually that's chorus and vibrato (pitch wobble) rather than tremolo (volume wobble). You can do that with any chorus, phaser, or flanger if you know where to look.


The circuits themselves are clones of existing well-loved pedals, generally with time-tested mods that have either cropped up or been suggested by chatter on the DIY forums. Whether BYOC or some other kit company (like PAiA), there is great value in making yourself at least one pedal of some sort. The nice thing about unfinished chassis is that you don't mind popping another hole or 2 in them for more options and control over things. As well, there are some circuits where a change of chip or selection of transistor may move you in a direction you prefer, and building it yourself with sockets for the semiconductors allows you to conduct the sonic experiments that a prebuilt pedal does not easily permit.

And, if it makes a difference to you, apparently John Meyer built himself a BYOC tremolo that sits on his pedalboard presently.

Brian Duguay, who does some of the prebuilds, is a nice guy, a friend and one of the guitarists in Burlington alt-country band Loomer. It's nice to know that pre-builts a) provide work for Canadians, and b) are being built by actual musicians rather than Chinese rural youth who have relocated to a factory complex the size of Peterborough.

[Paul]

Actually that's chorus and vibrato (pitch wobble) rather than tremolo (volume wobble). You can do that with any chorus, phaser, or flanger if you know where to look.

You are right, what can I say....it's early.....

Right now my favourite tremelo is on my Victoria Victorilux. 'Tis a beautiful thing to hear.

[mhammer]

If you would like to further expore the world of tremolos AND vibratos, I encourage you to take a look at RG Keen's solid-state implementation of the Fender Pro amp vibrato: http://www.geofex.com/ (RG and I have known each other since 1991. After a lengthy career at IBM, he is now chief engineer at Visual Sound.)

You can also take a look at the scanned copies of Nicholas Boscorelli's short-lived Stompboxology newsletter: http://moosapotamus.net/IDEAS/stompboxology/stompboxology.html

Boscorelli had a brief but legendary presence in the world of DIY. His "Stompbox Cookbook" still commands high prices on E-bay. Though many have wanted to scan and post the book (it is long out of print), no one has been able to either contact him, find out his whereabouts, or even determine if that is indeed his real name. Though some of us feel his circuits are perhaps a little more complicated than they need to be, there's some good stuff in those issues, and he often does a nice job presenting it via the Socratic method. Well worth a look.

I've probably mentioned it on another thread, but the Small Stone, the black Ross Phaser, the DOD FX20 phaser, and undoubtedly several others I am unaware of, lend themselves to a fascinating mod called the "phase-filter". I stumbled onto this while absent-mindedly perusing through my back issues of DEVICE newsletter one day. http://hammer.ampage.org/files/Device1-6.PDF
http://hammer.ampage.org/files/Device1-4.PDF
Soon after the legendary (and now generally unobtainable) SSM2040 filter chip came out, synth icon John Blacet found that the 4 stages in the chip were easily reconfigurable from an allpass (phase-shift) to a lowpass type. He designed and produced a synth module called the Blacet Phase-Filter that let the user select how many phase-shift and lowpass stages they wanted to use. It wasn't until some 24 years later that I was staring at a Small Stone schematic and realized that - holy crap! - I could do the same thing with any phaser using OTA chips (CA3080, CA3094, LM13500, LM13700). I've since implemented it on both a Small Stone and Ross clone, and it works like a charm.

I mention it here because when one uses ONLY phase-shift and some lowpass filtering, without any dry signal mixed in, one gets this absolutely mesmerizing combination of subtle vibrato (pitch wobble), modulated wah, and a kind of tremolo at the same time. In truth, there IS no tremolo in it, but the lowpass filtering creates apparent modulation of overall volume, given the range of frequencies that are removed then re-added. Absolutely nothing like it on the market. The current newstand issue of Guitar Player has an interview with John Fogerty in which he notes a pedal of his that incorporates a combined vibrato plus tremolo from an old Kustom amp he has. I have no idea if it works the same way, but combining both vibrato and tremolo at once can be a lovely and seductive aural experience.

Charlie Barth has some soundclips of a Small Stone he has modified in this way, though we both agree they do not do the unit justice: http://moosapotamus.net/THINGS/frankenstone.htm One of these days I have to work up a sound clip of me stepping through the various toggle settings on my pedals. You'd hardly even know it started out life as a phase shifter by the time I'm through.

[iaresee]

Mark, I've never drooled while reading a pedal description before...until now. I absolutely have to add that phaser mod to my to-build list year! Thanks!

[mhammer]

No prob. We need to do the coffee thing soon. I can loan you my phase-filtered Small Stone pedal, and that De-Scrambler, and you can have some serious fun.

To be specific, the mod consists of simply rerouting thw caps in two of the phase-shift stages from the input to ground. All it takes is a DPDT switch, which means it can be a ilttle toggle, or for those who think of it as a potential performance control, a DPDT or 3PDT for status indication via LED.

The one caveat I would note is that the cap values that make for well-placed notches in phase-shifter mode are perhaps a little too low for lowpass filter mode. So, if one is modding a Small Stone, it might be better to use a pair of 4700pf caps for the lowpassed sections rather than the stock 6800pf, and if one is modding a Ross phaser then changing from 3300pf to 2700pf is probably advisable.

I encourage you to buy yourself a couple of boards from www.tonepad.com for the "Ropez" Ross Phaser clone. Terrific little phaser that lends itself to a mountain of truly interesting mods.

I'm just surprised that nobody offers the mod yet. Not Keeley, not Wampler, not anybody that I've seen. Maybe they think it's my turf and they don't want to get served.

[John Kingma]

I bough a BYOC compressor kit from Scott (axeandyoushall...) and it worked great once I got it right. My eyesight isn't good enough to be working with resistors and pc boards so I screwed around and made a few mistakes first crack at it. If I ever get another one of these BYOC kits (and I probably will) I will spend the extra coin and have it pre-built.