Your most disappointing builds?

[Freppo]

Well, title says it all.

I'm mostly happy with all my builds so far.
But some of you must have made a few that went into the bin?
Which ones are not worth builing in your opinion?

/ Fredrik

[Surgeon]

I built a wooly mammoth (the cut down version) and hated it. It wasn't that bad but it wasn't different enough from other fuzzes I had built. I then modded it to get all pots, thinking I'd like it better that way. Still no... I guess that circuit isn't for me. Sure glad I didn't buy that thing new full price.

[mirosol]

ZW44. Everyhting else has been useful. Some to smaller extent, or just for one particular purpose. But that one. I couldn't find any use for it.
+m

[Rolf Poti]

Lovepedal Eternity Burst,
I boxed it and used it for a few days than recycled the parts, Don't think I threw away the circuit though.
Compared to the madproffesor sweet honey overdrive it sounded shit.

[dodido]

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[Dave]

Devi ever karaoke party, that was just a waste of time.

[JaviCAP]

Let's say... every Evi Dever I've tried except the Hyperion. Electric Brown and OK were a real waste of time, luckily, they're  very easy  and you take no more than 15 minutes to build it all.

On the other hand, the Hyperion has been a real discovery, and takes too no more than 15 minutes to build.

BR

[MAndrews]

I find my disappointing builds are down to; not the pedal necessarily, but how it acts with the amp/guitar, other pedals and style of playing.

I've made pedals that I thought didn't work properly and that I had a fault I couldn't trace, but my amp just doesn't do certain pedals - especially fuzzes. On another persons amp they will work fine.

It also works the other way around, where certain pedal that sounds crap on most peoples amps can sound good on mine.

THIS IS THE BEST BIT ABOUT THIS SITE - YOU CAN EXPERIMENT AND IT NOT COST A FORTUNE!!!

Maybe we should list our guitar and amp when commenting on a successful build. It may give people an idea if it will suit their set up.

[IvIark]

Very true.  Still my favourite distortion pedal ever is the Zoom HL01, it is EXACTLY what I want a distortion pedal to be and for the type of music I play.  But it sounds like a can of bees with my Engl amp which is the one I use the most.  With my Marshall 6101 or VHT Special 6 Ultra it sounds fabulous again.  Good job the Engl sounds so good to me that I don't need a distortion pedal with it I suppose

Like you say, the very best thing about DIY is that you can try it for peanuts and you could even throw the board away if you don't like the way it interacts with your gear.  Because I socket all the ICs and transistors in my builds I reckon I could build any of the layouts myself or Miro have done on here and it will cost me no more than £2 in parts, even something like the Klon.  Much better than gambling £200+ on the latest fad.

[peeps]

Negistrem.  At least I got it to work, just not stoked with it versus a repeat percussion.

[Madferret]

You got the Negistrem to work?!!  How the..?  Seriously I've played with that for hours and get nothing but a basic oscillator tone out of it.  Looks like I'm not missing much though :)

[GermanCDN]

Built a lot of circuits that never found boxes.  Truthfully, the most disappointing builds I've done are Rangemaster clones - I've built about four of them, fabbed and vero, everytime hoping I did something wrong on the last one, but they all just plain suck to my ears.  That, and about half of the fuzzes I vero.  But they only cost a couple of bucks and an hour, so no harm.

[peeps]

Yeah, 2n5952 were the only jfets that worked.  I left out the switch & the trim pots, then rebuilt with trim pots to see if they helped.  They did, but it has some ticking and unpleasant distortion.  

[Heath]

Ooo...  Let's see...

Fails that are most likely my fault:

Catalinbread Galileo... built it and anguished over not being able to get it to work...  twice.  Spent WAY too much time scraping tracks, reflowing solder, and testing components.  Was not meant to be and it was probably the build I was most looking forward to.  Definitely just my own incompetence.

Big Muff 66 Triangle.  Maybe I've got something wrong, but the sound reminds me of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber "You want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?  EYYYEYEYYEYEYEEYEY!!!!"

Bigfoot Magnavibe.  Tried and tried and tried and all I can get is just a very faint vibe out of it.


Fails that I think I built right, but which turned out shite:

Proco Rat.  It whines, it sputters, it went in the bin.

Little Angel Chorus.  Fuck a stupid PT2399.  I could get it to work right if I periodically stabbed the underside of the vero board with a screwdriver.



I know this sounds negative, but I've built a lot more that sound amazing and made me feel kind of god-like.  I'll list some of those in the other post.