Tonebender MK1 advice

[Poor Edward]

Hi guys I hope you could advise me a little, please?
I am wanting to venture into my own builds, to see how successful I can become after watching countless videos of others build. I am a complete novice builder. I have experience with guitar wiring but schematics and pedal innards escape me at present.
I have a silly question. On the attached image is a basic layout I'm going to work from. The back has 1 link, 5 tracks. Is that quite literally a small piece of wire that goes between the dots marked out?
Also what do the red dots denote? I'm not in a rush to build as I am a novice and will be learning and buying the necessary tools as I go.

Thanks for any help

[Blackboarcult]

Red dots are cuts you have to do on each track to separate continuity of signal and/or current.
The wire goes from upper row to lower row to interconnect them.

I'd recommend this guide to help you through the process.

Good luck with your build!!

[Poor Edward]

Blackboarcult wrote

Red dots are cuts you have to do on each track to separate continuity of signal and/or current.
The wire goes from upper row to lower row to interconnect them.

I'd recommend this guide to help you through the process.

Good luck with your build!!

Much appreciated. I will post updates here in the hope of guidance along the way 👍

[Travis]

The layout is shown from a top view. The copper tracks are on the back/bottom side

The red dots are cuts in the copper track. These are shown from the top view, so need to be mirrored if you mark them out on the back of the board. It is easy to make a dot on top of the board with a sharpie where the cuts go, then drill all the way through with a ~1/8” bit

The links are as you said but on the front side of the board. They can be made with clipped leads from resistors etc

The one thing I gotta point out is that the MKI bender would be a really bad choice for a beginner, and generally still very difficult for advanced builders.

That circuit just happens to be extremely picky about transistor selection.

[Mulekicker]

I agree with Travis. The mkI is a tough one to bias right. Unless you have tons of transistors to audition, you may wanna stay clear til you get your feet wet. Maybe try something like the DOD250 at first. Only 2 pots and you just gotta pop in an opamp and not really worry about it.  If you just have to go Tonebender, the mkII and mkIII are a little more forgiving. If you dont have a means of testing transistors, you can buy a set of germanium trannys from small bear that are specific to the version of Bender you wanna build.  Better than going in blind.

[Poor Edward]

I was looking at schematics all day and images also. I've made up a lost on ebay with enclosure, pots and such. I really wasnt sure about the germanium trannys as I've read a lot about getting shit ones. I will go to Small Bear. I've heard it mentioned a few places so far. I do have a problem with resistors. I have looked at countless images and layouts but I dont really understand which ones i need.
Are there specific ones in packs or do i need to buy individual?
Lastly i appreciate it might not be the easiest but it's where I'd really like to start. I've read of the issues people have with the bias and the possible ways to overcome but I'd really like to keep it as original as possible. I know it might not be perfect but it's the process and the end result. If its rubbish I'm going to adapt it from there.
Hope you guys understand?

[Poor Edward]

Taking all the comments into perspective. I've seen a 3 transistor fuzz pedal, relatively straight forward with just one(?)  resistor, although it had no volume or gain pot. Would this be about as easy as I can start?

[Mulekicker]

 As far as resistors go, we commonly use 1/4 watt metal film (the blue ones) or 1/4 watt carbon film (beige). For more mojo builds people like carbon comps (1/2 watt, which are bigger and look cool). It doesn't  really matter too much. You could buy a kit of common values but you may be missing some that you need. If you go to Tayda Electronics you can stock up on whatever values you need now and possibly in the future for about a penny each.

[Travis]

I don’t recommend the MKI set from smallbear the ones I got really did not sound good. They weren’t shit btw just not good for the MKI, I used them in other projects. Smallbear has a lot of nice transistor sets for other projects though. You could do a MK1.5 or Vox with one of their fuzz face sets.

I totally understand the appeal of the MKI, it just takes a lot of luck or somebody selecting transistors by ear out of a batch of particularly suitable transistors. I don’t know of any sellers who select by ear and have an ear I’d trust for the MKI. When you put the amount of time and money into it to get to that point, you’d more likely add the 10 or so cheap parts to turn it into a pedal worth several hundred dollars than sell the transistors for $20 or so