OCD Clone – DIY guitar pedal build
One hobby I’ve picked back up of late is building my own effects pedals. I’d started getting in to the DIY guitar pedal build thing a few years ago, but the events of this year have given me the chance to revisit it, and I’m glad I have. There are a lot of different online stores selling PCBs for clones and I’ve already built quite a few. I purchase a lot of components from Tayda as they are usually fairly cheap. Last time I was on their site I noticed they were selling PCBs of some popular pedals so I thought I’d buy one and put it together to see how it sounds.
While putting it together I decided to take some photos throughout the process and ended up pulling together a video you can watch below.
How difficult was it?
I found this build fairly straight forward. Building a pedal using a PCB like this is a little like painting by numbers I guess, particularly if you’re sticking to the schematic and not adding any modifications.
For me, the most difficult part of the project was boxing it. I drilled the enclosure by hand and I don’t have a vice, so things can move a little. I can see that a drill press would help out a lot. I did pick up a set of step drill bits a while ago though that make the process a lot easier than trying to use regular drill bits.
I also cheated a little in terms of wiring up the footswitch and used a break out board I’d picked up from diyguitarpedals.com.au.
How much did it cost?
All up this project cost me around $20USD as I already had a footswitch and audio jacks.
The PCB itself cost $8 from Tayda and you can find it here. Beside the PCB, the next most expensive component was the enclosure. I used a Hammond style 1590b enclosure from Tayda. Plain aluminium enclosures run for around $4.50-$5 on Tayda. If you’re so inclined you can pick up the branded Hammond 1590b enclosures in matte black on Amazon for $8.65 currently.
The 3PDT footswitches are $2.49 on Tayda. Alternatively I found a pack of 10 3PDT footswitches for $19.59 on Amazon with free delivery in my country.
Potentiometers cost around $0.50 each while mono jack sockets can cost anywhere from $0.50 – $2.50 depending on the brand. The remainder of the electrical components (resistors, capacitors, diodes and IC chip) would come to $1-$2 total.
If you were to buy everything you need for the project it’s probably around the $25USD mark give or take. Of courses this does not take in to account the rest of the equipment you’ll need (eg. soldering iron, drill, bits etc). It also doesn’t account for your time, but if you’re just doing it as a hobby then that doesn’t really matter.
