Instructables user and Community Manager [Randy Sarafan] recently put together a tutorial on how to build an ages-old musical standard, the “Fuzz Pedal”. He says that the secret to rocking out is fuzz, so if you can handle both a soldering iron and a guitar, this project is for you.
When you take a close look, the pedal’s components are actually quite simple. The distortion is created by a pair of transistors, which in his case are vanilla NPNs from RadioShack. We have covered other distortion pedal builds before, and they have used germanium transistors to obtain a ‘creamier’ sound – you should be able to swap these cheap ones for uprated models with little trouble.
The handful of components were soldered neatly to a piece of perf board, and placed into a sturdy metal case that looks like it can withstand even the harshest abuse. He’s got schematics and a BOM in his writeup, so all that’s keeping you from a rocking weekend is a little bit of time and a soldering iron – what are you waiting for?
Stick around to see a quick video of [Randy’s] fuzz pedal being built.
