GuitarPCB.com has a philosophy of, "Give a man a fish, he eats for one day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." The documentation they provide is designed to do just that, help the builder learn. So some documentation is provided to teach "how to build a pedal" followed by instructions for each project which focuses on "building this specific pedal." This concisely conveys the build-specific information, without those details getting lost in a sea of "how to build any pedal."
General pedal building documents include the following, which are not in pedal-specific documents:
- What kind of soldering iron to use / what type of solder / other soldering techniques
- How to use Part Codes to identify values for Resistors, Capacitors, and Trimmer Potentiometers
- Pin numbers for Integrated Circuits (ICs)
- Why you may need a stereo jack for your mono pedal
- Why there are 3 lugs on a power jack when there is only +9V and Ground
- How to take voltage readings for troubleshooting
- Much, Much More!
If you have never built a pedal, start by reading the GuitarPCB.com Crash Course documents and familiarize yourself with the other available documentation under the "General Pedal Building Instructions" below. Then, before turning on your soldering iron, you should completely read the instructions that are specific to your kit.
If you find a link to a document which does not work, please use the Contact form and let us know so we can update the link right away. All of these documents are also available on the GuitarPCB.com website (see their store for the PCB for your project).
A Note on Printed Kit Documentation: We do not included printed documentation with kits. This is part of our green initiative. Please use a laptop or tablet to view the build document while you build, rather than printing. If this is an absolute deal-breaker for you, please add a note to your order at checkout or use our Contact form before your order ships to request an exception to this policy, and we'll provide a 2-sided printed copy of the latest 'pedal-specific instructions' in the shipment with your kits. General guides/beginners guides are not provided in printed form under any circumstance, so we suggest you study these before you start building.
The following guides are not project-specific but provide a general understanding of how pedals are built, wired, what the components do, and how the circuit boards are marked. These provide the general knowledge needed to build any pedal. Read these first, then read the pedal-specific document for your project.
The Beginners Build Guide courtesy of Trom1.
The Beginners Guide to Components courtesy of Billy
The Crash Course Guide courtesy of several members.
The GuitarPCB Guide – Tonmann Version