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Build your own guitar pedals, breadboard, designs, overdrive, fuzz, compressor, booster

Projects are where the real fun starts: lots of things to try and lots of techniques to learn. Each project includes an introduction, the schematic and breadboard layouts, and in some cases, interesting mods to try. This list encompasses a lot of great projects from great designers around the web.

Build your own guitar pedals, breadboard, designs, overdrive, fuzz, compressor, booster
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See All the Projects!

Current Project List

Here's a list of the projects currently included in the Hacker's Guide to the Beavis Board. Check back often as I add new projects pretty often.
 
567 Modulator A bizzare beavis creation: use a chip designed to decode touch tone frequencies on phones, and turn it into a noisy ring mod/tremolo
Atari Punk Console Kaustic's take on the great Forrest Mimms Stepped Tone Generator. A dual timer 556 modulates one frequency with another. A fun build and a great noise generator.
Bazz Fuss Hemmo's great fuzz using a single transistor and diode. Easily adaptable for use with a bass.
Boutique
Tube
Screamer
Quick question: How many boutique makers does it take to make an tubescreamer-based overdrive? Answer: all of them apparently :) This project shows you how to strip the buffers and other useless goo off a tubescreamer and make it the same as any boutique overdrive. The basic project includes the stock parts, but then there are tons of mod suggestions to get some great non-honk overdrive tones.
Brian May Treble Booster Here’s a simple treble booster based on the Brian May model. A single medium-gain transistor with low-value caps on the input boost the treble part of the signal. The original used a BC182L transistor but the 2N5087 works just the same. This circuit is very close to the original Dallas Rangemaster.
Cigarette Amp The great little amp that is built in a pack of cigarettes. Based on the 386 power amp chip, just a handful of components gets you a simple practice amp.
DOD Overdrive 250 A classic overdrive from DOD based on an opamp and back-to-back diode clippers. Build it stock and then go to town trying out asymmetrical clipping, LED clipping and other fun mods.
Dual Oscillator Use a quad Schmitt trigger chip to create a fun project with dual independent oscillators. Great for stoner-rock drone sounds.
EA Tremolo The classic DIY tremolo originally published as a project in an Australian electronics magazine. Sounds sweet.
Fuzz Face Like the BMP, a requirement for any self-respecting circuit collection. This is the NPN silicon version using NOS BC-109 transistors, plus some fun mods and variations to try.
Gretsch Controfuzz An oddball rare circuit that’s also quite fun. The Gretsch Controfuzz is an opamp-driven fuzz/distortion unit that allows you to mix the amount of clean signal with the fuzz signal.
IC Buffer A stompbox-friendly buffer circuit based on a single operational amplifier. This project shows you how to make a low-parts-count buffer that is great for experimenting with your signal chain. Try it right after your guitar and before your first pedal. Also try it at the end of your pedal/signal processing chain just before the amp. Even in the world of true-bypass, a buffer can do a good job at restoring high end and lowering noise, especially in a long signal chain. Based on a Jack Orman design.
JFET Buffer As with the IC Buffer, this project is a simple-to-build buffer with pretty good performance. This one is based on a JFET transistor and offers a bit warmer tone. Based on a Jack Orman design.
LPB-1 The classic single transistor boost from EHX. This design uses a single silicon transistor for a linear boost that goes from clean to mildly dirty.
Muff Fuzz A simplified variant of the muff, and a great sounding fuzz to boot.
MXR Distortion+ Originally released in the mid-1970's the MXR Distortion + has been a popular pedal ever since. The gain is a bit less than what most of us would consider as distortion, but the circuit is simple enough to provide ample room for modifications. Take a look at the DOD 250 Overdrive project--you’ll see that is almost identical to this one.
Noisy Cricket The beavis audio take on the ruby. Adds a tone control and a switchable grit mod. Provides about half a watt of power off a 9v battery, or take it up close to 1 watt with a 12-15 volt power supply. Will drive a 4x12 cab!
Orange Squeezer Dan Armstrong's classic compressor. Adds a great amount of squish to your tone, this circuit has a unique sound.
Ruby A great 386 amp from runoffgroove.com. Adds a buffer front-end and some nice tone-shaping to the standard 386 amp configuration.
Power Supply Filter A simple circuit snippet that will effectively filter noisy power supplies and provide reverse-polarity protection.
PWM Tim Escobedo's great little digital type distortion. Using a 40106 quad Schmitt trigger, you can get some very unique fuzz/distortion tones. A simple build and loads of fun.
Red LLama The Way Huge clone of Craig Anderton's original Tube Sound Overdrive. Use a CMOS chip to generate great overdrive sounds.
Runoffgroove
Mockman
runoffgroove.com has been churning out great great designs for years. And the Mockman is one of my favorites. This opamp distortion pedal is billed as getting close to the 80's Rockman type sound. Distortion is mainly achieved by overdriving the opamps as opposed to diode clipping, but the circuit includes a switchable set of red LED clippers for an even more distorted/compressed sound. The result is a great project. For more info, check out http://www.runoffgroove.com/mockman.html.
Trotsky Overdrive The beavis audio take on the classic Electra Distortion circuit that used to be built into guitars back in the 60's. The Trotsky adds a gain control and a switchable hi-cut filter. Build it stock or experiment with different transistor types and diode clippers. Lots of mods...

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