After finally putting out my EP, I spent a couple of weeks researching and planning for my first stompbox build. To get my feet wet, I settled on a true bypass double looper pedal that I found here.  Using the basic layout as a starting point, I crammed the two 3PDT switches, the six jacks and three LED’s, into a 125B aluminum enclosure, all of which I bought from PedalPartsPlus.com.  I also drilled the holes using an Irwin Unibit (what an indispensable tool for DIY pedals – this affordable stepped drill bit I bought at Home Depot allows you to instantly drill perfectly round holes through aluminum).

What does this pedal do?

If you have a group of effects that you always use together, you can “Send” the input signal to that chain, and then “Return” it to go to the output of the pedal.  You can also place another chain of effects on the second loop, and just stomp on the left footswitch to select either loop (you cannot play both loops at the same time).  This way, when you don’t want to use that effects chain, you don’t have to step on each of those pedals to turn them off. You can just switch to the second effects loop, or, stomp on the right footswitch to bypass the loops.  This is a “true bypass” because the incoming signal is essentially hardwired to the output jack, and the signal will be as strong and unaffected as if the pedal were not there.

This “passive” switch was a good starter project for someone like me because it has no active circuits.  The 9V battery is there solely to power the LED’s.  So basically I needed to learn how to read a layout, figure out which wires to solder to which points, and have a basic understanding of how signals flow through the switches and jacks.  My soldering skills were not very good, but several hours and days later (I could only work on it late at night after my son had gone to bed), I managed to get the pedal to work. Finally, I stuck on some Avery clear address labels.  This project can be completed for $20-25.

Left: My modified layout placing the input jack on the top of the pedal and the out jack on the right side. Also note that the original layout was incomplete. From my research I figured out how the LED’s should be connected; Center: Six jacks, two 3PDT switches, a DC jack, and 3 LED’s crammed into the 125B enclosure from Pedal Parts Plus; Right: The finished pedal

The main takeaways were:

1) Work on my soldering skills.  Check out soldering videos on YouTube;

Poor planning left me with no choice but to place the input jack on top and the output jack on the right.

2) Next time, use smaller gauge, stranded wire.  I was using 22-gauge solid core hookup wire from Radio Shack because they didn’t have anything smaller. This meant that any attempt to move the wires was liable to break my bad soldering joints (which should have been fixed anyway), but it also makes it difficult to maneuver inside the box;

3) Really plan out the holes to be drilled. Use a template. Measure, measure, measure.  My poor planning resulted in having to place the input jack on top, and the output jack on the right.

4) Use a larger enclosure.  There was not enough room for a battery, so I ended up permanently powering the pedal via a 9v DC jack, which I also mistakenly purchased at Radio Shack.  The DC jack should have been a round jack, with a nut, to fit the round hole I had drilled.

Next: I plan to build a simple A/B switch, and then move on to more complicated projects, like a booster and a delay pedal.

To get started like I did, become a member of diystompboxes.com.