Sketch Me Up!
Here’s the table of contents for the whole DIY pedal building series:
- Intro to DIY Pedal Building
- Beginner’s Course in Sketchup
- Drilling a 125B Guitar Effects Pedal Enclosure
- Pedal Enclosure Finishing: Surface Prep, Priming, Painting
- Using GIMP to Create Pedal Artwork
- Printing and Applying Waterslide Decal to Pedal Enclosure
This is part 2 of my new series on building guitar effects pedals.
This part of the project ended up being far more grandiose than I originally intended. I started out planning to just show how to model this diecast aluminum 125B guitar pedal enclosure, to make sure my PCB and components would fit properly inside. But by the time I was done with it, it was essentially a complete beginner’s how-to course for Google Sketchup. (Note, Sketchup is now part of Trimble instead of Google). More
Intro to DIY Pedal Building
This is the first post in a series on building guitar effects pedals. It’s going to be a bit out of order- I’ll be starting with what is usually considered the finishing touches- putting the pedal in an enclosure, modeling and laying out an enclosure in Google/Trimble Sketchup, drilling the enclosure, painting and finishing it.
Then hopefully later, I’ll go back and do a project showing how to build a simple boost pedal from scratch.
Here’s the table of contents for the whole DIY pedal building series:
- Intro to DIY Pedal Building
- Beginner’s Course in Sketchup, Modeling a 125B Guitar Pedal Enclosure
- Drilling a 125B Guitar Effects Pedal Enclosure
- Pedal Enclosure Finishing: Surface Prep, Priming and Painting
- Using GIMP to Create Pedal Artwork
- Printing and Applying Waterslide Decal to Pedal Enclosure
This first video is the motivational intro: here are some of the things I’ve done, and yes, you can too! If you have some interest in electronics and guitars, what better way to improve your knowledge? You can get started with little or no electronics experience, and you’ll learn a bunch along the way. More
Garden Arbor Bench Project
In addition to my usual guitar studies and projects, I’ve been working on some other projects over the summer. I thought I’d share some details of what’s been keeping me busy.
At the beginning of June, Chunling hinted that she’d like something to go between these two Tristania Laurina trees along our fence – perhaps a nice shady place to sit.
One morning, she pointed out a design she liked from Sunset magazine: More
New Les Paul Setup
The factory setup on my new Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus definitely needs some work. Fortunately, it’s not quite as bad as my Riviera’s original factory setup. Thank you inspector #22 in the USA 🙂
For these measurements, I’m using a capo set of feeler gauges like this set from Grizzly.
More
A Worthy Tribute
My new Epi Les Paul Tribute Plus arrived yesterday for my birthday, and it’s a beauty! These things are hard to find- none of the local stores have inventory, and every online retailer is backordered. I managed to get Guitar Center’s last one in the country(!) – from the store in Tonawanda, New York. The store manager there was great- sent me some pics, played it for me to confirm it was all good, gave me a great July 4th discount, and shipped it over for free. Thanks Chip!
Cosmetically, it’s really nice. Clean, well-defined flamed maple top and cream bindings. The cherryburst finish looks near-perfect- with rich warm coloring- not the bright overexposed yellow in the pictures at Guitar Center’s website. The Grover locking tuners feel fantastically smooth, and the switch, knobs and jack all seem good. And after some quick adjustments, it plays pretty well (but still needs some fine tuning).
The ’57 Classic pickups sound really dynamic, rich and beautiful – they’re warm when played gently, and crank when spanked. Love em. There’s quite a range of sounds with the push/pull series/parallel switching on the tone knobs. When a tone knob is pulled, the humbucker’s two coils are wired in parallel giving a lighter, brighter, thinner sound, somewhat reminiscent of a single coil (though different). It’s completely different from the ultra-thick and heavy series-humbucker sound (knob pushed in). This is a really versatile setup: a total of 8 different sounds using the 3 switches, not to mention the variations you can get by adjusting the volume knobs in the middle switch position.