Building My First Fuzz Pedal
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This project resulted in a fully finished, custom-built fuzz pedal. The path to that result started with learning electronics from the ground up.
In May of last year, I became interested in electronics and decided to learn it properly from first principles. At university, most of my exposure to electronics had been limited to simulators rather than real hardware.
I started by buying basic tools, including a budget KSGER T12 soldering station. My first build was intentionally minimal: an enclosure with input and output jacks wired directly to a protoboard mounted on top.
I added a voltage drop control with an LED to experiment with how different components affected the signal. It worked well enough to establish a solid baseline.
With that small success behind me, I jumped straight into recreating the Coda Effects Black Hole, a dense and advanced circuit inspired by the Sunn Model T amplifier.
The build involved complex wiring, multiple switches and controls, and rare JFET transistors that are no longer available in through-hole packages. I used SMD versions on adapter boards and soldered everything by hand.
Unsurprisingly, it did not work. The result was a non-functional mess, but it made it clear that the problem was complexity rather than lack of motivation or interest.
Instead of abandoning the Sunn Model T idea entirely, I scaled it back and built a clone of the EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold.
The Acapulco Gold is effectively the simplest possible Sunn Model T–style circuit. I brought the build to a friend’s place, and with his help, I got it working.
That success gave me enough confidence to revisit the Black Hole circuit. With better wiring discipline, grounding, and debugging habits, I managed to get it fully functional.
While still rough and utilitarian, this version worked, giving me the confidence to move on to building a fully finished pedal: a Hizumitas / Elk Sustainer–style fuzz based on a specific Elk Sustainer Big Muff owned by Wata from the band Boris.
This time, the goal was not only sound, but a complete product with a finished exterior and a clear visual identity.
For the graphics, I chose silkscreen printing. I have always liked how silkscreened pedals can feel both professional and raw at the same time, with Death By Audio pedals as a major reference. The frogs, which became the defining visual element of the pedal, were drawn by my girlfriend, while the rest of the graphic was my own work.
Silkscreening required building most of the equipment from scratch. With help from my dad, I built a simple wooden exposure box, used a budget UV light, and assembled wooden frames with screens.
Dialing in the exposure time required extensive trial and error, including multiple test prints used purely to evaluate exposure quality.
Once the screen was properly exposed, the final prints came out exactly as intended. The last stage was mechanical assembly: drilling the enclosures, mounting the hardware, and completing the wiring.
I built multiple finished units and treated them as real products rather than prototypes, including proper packaging.
I even experimented with different interior builds. One used the most common components typically found in these types of circuits, while the other leaned into a beige-and-red component palette with more old school components for some extra “mojo”.
I genuinely love how the final product turned out, both visually and sonically, and I ultimately managed to sell it.
In many ways, this project aligned with interests I had already explored in the browser, such as simulating guitar pedals using React Three Fiber and the Web Audio API in my 3D Guitar Pedalboard.
Translating those ideas into a physical object was a completely different experience. Seeing something come to life directly in my hands made the process uniquely satisfying.