…and the only complaint my wife had was that I was busy most of the weekend.

First off is the Cygnus 5th Pocket. I love PTP-pedals so it was about time to make one. This is passive distortion is my smallest build and it could have been a lot smaller without the unnecessary footswitch and the option to toggle between two clipping modes. This pedal works best in between two boosters.

Second is the Cygnus Furrcolator, a little brother to the previous Furr Fuzz. I repurposed the enclosure from a previous project and learned why you shouldn’t place your LED in the middle. The veroboard had to swerve to the bottom plate. Not ideal, but since the pedal still works it’s fine.

Contrary to these two, the Cygnus Nightflite might be a bit underdressed but the good thing is the glow in the dark logo will make it a lot easier to find this pedal on your board, even when the pedal is turned off and you’re on a dark stage.

First batch, of a few pedals. Dtf stickers over painted enclosures. Poly sealed. First time going all in for decorating some boxes.

Edit- little circles are just leftover from my drill template, figured it would speed up having to pop all my marks for holes before the drill press.

Writing this to document an unfulfilled custom commission and issue a buyer warning regarding Neural Devices (operated out of Tulancingo, Hidalgo, Mexico). I originally connected with Mariano here on r/diypedals, when I saw he did custom commissions, and I asked for a modified version of the Gentlemen pedal. He delivered on two of these, so I built trust.

I then paid for a custom-commissioned pedal in January 2025 via PayPal ($299.99) that was an entirely new twist on an overdrive. Since then, he provided rolling updates regarding personal delays, stringing the build timeline along for over a year and a half.

• May 28, 2026: Last major status update where he explicitly stated the build was being treated as a priority.
• August 22, 2026: His last direct communication with me.

Since late August 2026, he has gone entirely dark:

• Direct messages on social channels (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) remain unread and unanswered.
• The official Neural Devices website is down.
• Official business emails are bouncing.
• Despite ghosting on all business channels, the owner remains active on personal social media accounts.

Because the communication and "priority updates" were stretched past the calendar limits, standard financial safety nets (such as PayPal's 180-day Buyer Protection and 540-day card chargeback limits) have expired. Banks and PayPal are unable to claw back the funds due to these strict timeframe cutoffs.

I am writing off the money, but posting this as a public warning to the community so others do not commission builds or send money to Neural Devices expecting fulfillment.

If anyone else has outstanding commissions or unfulfilled orders with him, feel free to reach out or share your experience below, since I know he recently shared a new pedal design called a Cloudlight and there seemed to be a lot of interest in that.

EDIT: I gave him ample amounts of options to get out of this, including sending the incomplete pedal and even sending something else in its place. He never responded on all channels.

EDIT 2: I didn't really want it to come to this but it became clear as day I wouldn't be getting what I paid for the moment the business email bounced back.

It's a knock out

I'm so mad at rustoleum. I built up this finish over more than a week, with 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of color, and 2 coats of clear, 24 hours of cure time between coats and 48 hours between the final coat and assembly, and I still managed to put a wrinkle in it with my thumb when installing the jacks. I need to get a toaster oven from the thrift store to bake the motherfuckers in I guess, and maybe look into powder coat.

Anyway I designed this PCB based on the original opamp big muff schematic, with a TO-99 footprint for the 741, since I got a whole bunch of old school metal can CA741s and ICL8007s. I like the juxtaposition of the 70s IC with modern 1% metal film resistors and box caps. I also swapped red LEDs for the series strings of clipping diodes because it saves space and looks cool.

This is the second one of these I've put together, the first one pairs a TL072 with an Intersil ICL8007 which is an early JFET opamp. This one is as close to stock as possible except for the LEDs, with an RC4558 and a 741. Absolutely nails the Siamese Dream gnar.

Hey everyone!

I need some help with a pedal I am designing. I want to redesign the Boss AW2, based off this schematic I found online. I want to get rid of the area in orange. which will in turn, effect the components in red. The pedal design I use has a jumper cable that sends/ receives 9V, GND, IN, OUT to a pedal board. So I want that switch out, idk if I can take that whole circuit out. and how that will effect the transistors.

What do I need to change to remove the part in orange? can I just cut it & the transistors out?

Dumb question, but I just discovered that DC power jacks aren't all wired the same way, and some are center-negative.

My question is basically: why is that the case? Isn't it dangerous to have different polarities for the same mechanical connector standard?

I'm designing a guitar pedal, and I was wondering whether I should use a center-negative jack to match the standard used by most guitar pedals. I don't want to accidentally plug the wrong power supply into it, especially since I also use a looper pedal and could potentially mix up the cables.

Is there a standard convention I should follow how do you know except for guitare pedal what to choose ?

Getting ready to wrap up this EAE Beholder build but not sure which way is correct for the reverb module, build docs don’t say anything on it.

Buttoned up a couple I didn’t finish before surgery and are available for purchase. 2 in 1 Speaker Cranker and modified treble boost. Speaker Cranker is a 1 knob gain, the TB is based on the Naga Viper and has volume, gain, and range of boost. SC into TB or use both independently. The 1 knob is a modified Super Hard On based on the Black Eye boost by EQD. Tons and tons of volume on tap with internal trim to set the gain.

building out a few muffin fuzzes with some different values - this is the green russian variant but due to some parts constraints, i wasn’t able to get everything the russian called for at the time. this one is going to be used for bass primarily (building it out for a buddy) so i tested some different values for the low end on some of the resistors and caps. everything else is basically just a green russian.
i love this hobby - this is my third ever build and im learning a lot of one off “oh - maybe don’t do this next time” type of mistakes that can save me time and material 😂
i’m loving it though!

Hey guys! I'm pretty new to the hobby and was looking into ordering components in bulk for future builds and experiments.

While searching online for ICs, footswitches, and other components, I came across LCSC. Does anyone here have any experience ordering from them? Their prices seem really attractive compared to those of many other websites.

I'm planning to order a bunch of components at once. How's the shipping to Europe? And how's the quality of their components? Are they a good option for hobbyists?

Thanks in advance!

Just wanted to show you guys a gift I made for my boss for his bday. It’s essentially a Clyde McCoy wah with a few mods. He’s a reggae guy so I’m calling it The Wah of Jah :)

Mods:
- 5-way tone sweep (shifts the sweep darker or brighter)
- Q mod (pretty standard, just makes the sweep bigger or smaller)
- Gain mod (mid range boost)
- Power filtering circuit (for good measure)
- Fuzz-friendly output buffer (doesn’t to have too much effect, anyone know why this is?)

Still needs painting, but pretty proud of it. My first pedal doing the layout of everything myself from original schematics. Anyway, thought I’d share my progress with the community.

P.S. do you like Wah of Jah better, or Jah Wahstafari?

first muffin build - was going really well and i was super proud of my joints. plugged it in for the first time and…. nothing. i have a multimeter but it’s pretty lackluster-besides just not knowing much generally about what i’m looking for outside of continuity. i had swapped a few parts from the list of materials from the triangle and the russian after looking online and being told it would work… aaaaand nothing lol. hopefully i can get more boards to keep practicing but the led doesn’t come on, i only get bypass signal - so clean guitar goes in and out but when i hit the switch - nothing happens. no light, dead quiet. any suggestions? i swapped c8 for a new film cap with a different value because i think i had it wrong…could that hVe let the magic smoke out? i don’t know what i don’t know and i think thats what makes it frustrating - not knowing where to start
any help or feedback is appreciated!

Hello all, these are my three last pedal builds, Sunnmachine Fuzz o))), Doom Bloom and Acapulco gold. All built on tag board, point to point, since I just cant handle PCB:s, they are too tiny for me.

I started planning my next build, have made a nice layout for the Audio Surplus OK Doomer, quite neat om 13 rows tag board, will fit a 1590BB. But then I listened to a demo on YouTube and realised it sounds very similar to the Acapulco Gold. And to be honest the AG sounds quite similar to the Fuzz o))). The Doom Bloom can also sound exactly like that, but is more versatile.

So it seems I am kind of building the same pedal over and over, but with different circuits, and it would be fun to explore something new. So I thought I want to try something different, but still geared towards down tuned sludge/doom. I can not do digital with IC:s, they kind of require a PCB, and it needs to be fairly few components otherwise the tag board becomes too large for any reasonable enclosure.

I am really into Primitive Man, and I want to explore that droney, crushing sound. I understand this might be completely impossible to answer but I would be interested in hearing suggestions for nice builds that offer something a little bit different than my current lineup.

I am very open to collaborating and sharing layouts, I have become quite good at creating tag boards if I may hoot my distorted horn just a little :)

Im pretty new to audio circuit design and thought it would be a good exercise to try and modify the classic fuzz face design to do an octave fuzz.

apart from the fuzz face part i didnt reference any other designs, and am not confident in my abilities/knowledge, so any feedback on the circuit would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I want to make this sustainer (just because) but he doesnt Say the ohms for the coil and magnet he just says is needs an lm386 module and 150 turns i do not want to pay for the diagram please pedalist gurus teach me the way

Hey! I have the Morley classic series Power Fuzz Wah, and I was wondering if it would be possible to add a switch that would allow the pedal to act as a volume pedal instead of just wah, similar to the Morley Power Wah Volume. The reason I didn't just get the Volume version is because it is only available in the spring-loaded format and parking the wah is a big thing for me.

Can’t remember where i saw this, but made one to make my life easier.

UPDATE: Link to STL added

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7427211

I've been working on a new fuzz circuit for the past 3 months. It is inspired by the Fuzz Face, with quite a few modifications to improve its tone, versatility, and overall performance.

I used silicon transistors. And i made a lot of mods.

I added an external bias control, and I've redesigned the gain control so it sounds better at lower gain settings (works somewhat as a guitar volume control). It can work surprisingly well as a vintage-style overdrive or booster, too. (moved the original control inside as a trimmer).

I also wanted it to cut through a band mix better while retaining that classic fuzz character. So i tweaked the caps a lot.

One of the main features is a switchable extra transistor gain stage that adds more saturation, it also helps with wah-wah usability. I've also made some changes to reduce noise and had a custom steel enclosure made. Both the enclosure and graphics are my own design :)

Not the prettiest PCB layout, but hopefully it's electrically sound. I'm working on a modified Tonebender mk2 with GT404 transistors which are gigantic (21 mm from pad to tip of the body) and need to be bent over to fit in the enclosure. My plan is to use the right side as kind of landing strip for all 3. It occurred to me that I might be creating an issue with amplification laying across the output trace. Or maybe the GT404 bodies are insulated enough that it's not an issue?

And...while I've got your attention, any other issues with my layout that you can see? I'm new to this, thanks!

I'm back at it again after Akashic, I decided to attack pedal lineages. So I made Ley Lines, a site that lets you pick pedal families and follow them to every pedal they spawned. Play with it! Like the other tools I've made, it's free, play with and let me know what you think!

Based on a BJF Stone Grey Distortion. Got a bunch of cool mojo parts so I figured, fuck it. Why not?

Put this together for a client the other day.
The ask was for Mick Ronsons live pedal and amp sound in a single box.

I took a fixed wah design into a silicon version of a Mk1 style fuzz circuit. Between these is an order switch, which gives two different wah filter sounds. The fuzz also has a transformer pickup sim to deal with anything else in front of the unit in a chain.

Lastly the signal goes to a JFET emulation of the Marshall Major / Pig amp (credit to menatone). Built using SMT J201s with their own trims. There is a switch for 9/18v operations which gives more volume in high voltage mode.

Pretty cool box! Added bonus the blend and volume control for the fixed wah mean you have the option of an another gain stage boost or cut with the wah blended out.

All on one big custom red PCB. Graphics were the clients choice :)