building effect pedals

[Romotov]

hi everybody.

i heard that rage against the machine's guitarist builds his effect pedals himself.

is this very difficult? what do i need to build my own effect??

[ESP_Viper]

It is very difficult. You have to have extensive knowlege in electroincs. You have to design a circuit, build it, test it, trouble shoot it, repair it, etc. I built a fuzz pedal from a kit once. It was terrible sounding and it broke quite quickly. All there was to do w/ it was to solder the components down to the PC board. My biggest complaint w/ it was they gave me too high of a resistor, so the sustain w/ it was terrible, it cut off too quickly. Even EMGs (very high output pickups) got cut off.

Tom Morello may have pieced stuff together from existing pedals, but I don't know about him building them from scratch. I know that he made controls for his effects on his guitar via added knobs and switches.

[smfulla]

check this out
http://www.voxamps.co.uk
these guys offer circuit diagrams for sum effects pedals, and also sum of their amps