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Do you want to learn about building guitar stompbox circuits? Have you been frustrated before by soldering, or trying to buy the right parts? Have you tried your hand at various kits, but want to learn more about how circuits actually work? Do you want to hear how certain designs sound before you plunk down your hard-earned cash on boutique or commercial pedals?

Well my friend, I think I may have something that will interest you: the beavis board.

The beavis board is designed to give you a platform for learning and building. If you can follow along with simple instructions, you can start building and modding a classic and new stompbox circuits.

Frustrated Newbie? I guarantee that you will be successful with the beavis board, even if you been frustrated by building in the past.

Intermediate Builder? Already have a few kits under your belt and want to go to the next level? The beavis board makes it easy to test-drive new circuits, mod, and come up with your own designs.

Seasoned Professional? Hey, you've already have breadboards and a great parts stash, so the beavis board probably won't be for you.

The beavis board makes it easy to:

  • Build a huge array of stompbox circuits including overdrives, distortions, fuzzes, filters, amplifiers, tremolos, noise generators, oscillators, and more.
     
  • Learn about the different components and how they work to shape your guitar's signal
     
  • Modify stompbox designs to tailor your sound.
     
  • Easily try out your circuits through a true-bypass breakout box
     
  • Have a giant buttload of fun

How it works

The beavis board is comprised of the following things:

  • a true-bypass i/o breakout box that makes it easy to connect circuits to the real world, i.e. your guitar, amps and pedals
     
  • A pair of breadboards to build on
     
  • A big collection of components: resistors, capacitors, transistors, ICs and more, specially selected for building some of the coolest stompbox/audio circuits


 

  • A digital multimeter (DMM) that makes learning and troubleshooting much easier.
     
  • The Hacker's Guide to the beavis board, a comprehensive guide that shows you how to easily build and mod circuits
     
  • The beavis board projects: 25 projects (and growing) with a clear description, schematic, and easy breadboard layout guide. Plus, most of the circuits have great mod ideas so you can tailor each circuit to your tastes.

Tell Me More about the Circuits I can Build

Breadboard layouts are included for loads of great projects:

MXR Distortion + ● LPB-1 ● Brian May Treble Booster ● Gretsch Controfuzz
SHOw Booster ● Orange Squeezer Compressor ●  Muff Fuzz
 DOD Overdrive 250 ● Fuzz Face ● Muff Fuzz ● EA Tremolo
 Cigarette Amp ● Ruby Amp ● Noisy Cricket Amp ● Trotsky Overdrive
 Atari Punk Console ●  Dual Oscillator Tone Generator
Boutique Tube Screamer ●  PWM ● Red LLama
567 Modulator ● Bazz Fuss
 Mockman ● IC Buffer ● JFET Buffer

and more are being added to the list!

Learn more about the projects

So How Hard is it Really?

It is really simple actually! I've been through a lot of frustrating projects myself, and talk to folks all the time via email about the most common problems that keep people from having a great stompbox-building experience. I've  take all that knowledge and designed the beavis board to make those problems go away. If you can follow some basic instructions, and are willing to invest just a little bit of time, you'll be surprised about just what you can do.

But wait, can't I just buy a breadboard?

Yes! You can buy a breadboard. What the beavis board does is a little different.

Different? How? Read the the philosophy part....

What about Pedal Kits?

The beavis board is not a replacement for pedal kits. Pedal kits allow you to build things that you can mount on your pedalboard, and there are a lot of great kits out there. Rather, the beavis board is an augmentation of, or a precursor to, pedal kits--it is a great way to build a large array of great circuits, learn more about how the parts work, and mod circuits to come up with your own personal sound. In the meantime, if you are looking for complete single-pedal kits, you should check out:

www.olcircuits.com

www.buildyourownclone.com

www.generalguitargadgets.com.

Download the Hacker's Guide to the beavis board

Want to learn more? Download the whole manual as a PDF and check it out for yourself. Even if you don't want to buy a beavis board, the manual has lots of good information for your projects.

The Hacker's Guide to the beavis board

 

copyright (c) 2008, beavis audio research