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Do It Yourself

Beeman Kodiak X2 Air Rifle

I’ve had my eye on a .22 caliber air rifle for quite some time now. I’ve seen this type a few years ago in a Cheaper Than Dirt catalog and they were running about $150-$200 which I just couldn’t justify spending on an air rifle when I could very well just pick up an actual .22 rifle for the same price. While I was at Wal-Mart the other day, I seen one of these beauties marked for $99.99 and had to grab it. This kit comes with a break action barrel, reciever/stock, 2 interchangeable barrels (one .117 caliber and one .22 caliber) and a scope.

Beeman Kodiak X2 Air Rifle

This is a professional break-barrel, spring powered, .22 and .177 caliber air rifle.

Walking to the door with this in one hand and a pack of .22 caliber hollow points, I knew I was up for a fun night of cutting thru cans in the backyard. Read More »Beeman Kodiak X2 Air Rifle

Bought a Boss DS-1

I just picked up one of the most famous distortion boxes ever made, the classic orange Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal, on eBay for $25 with an adaptor and original box/info. I’ve been looking on picking up a new distortion pedal for the last few month and this one was a good deal for a great, easy to modify pedal with tons of kits out there. I’ve played around with this pedal at guitar center and really do like it as it is. it has a good amount of range from a nice breaky grit to a metal lead sound, and playing with the tone knob and your pickups can really give you a ton of tones.

Boss DS-1

Boss DS-1

Is it the best I’ve heard, not by far, but it’s a pedal that you can always rely onRead More »Bought a Boss DS-1

Custom Guitar Pedal Travel Case

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This weekend I finally got some time to build up a project I’ve been planning for a few months now. I got enough pedals to where I just don’t have enough room for them on the pedal board I had. Also, all the wires were a pain in the ass and jumbled up. I seen a couple  examples online and they were all around $200-$500 for the size I needed. (1, 2, 3) I’ve had leftover wood from a mirror project I did a few months ago, so I planned something out more to my needs and easier on the bank account. I came up with a 19″ x  29″ hard, powered pedal board / travel case.

All the Plans I need

All the Plans I need

My biggest needs was to be able to layout in a useful manner all of my pedals. Because I have 10 of them, I needed to be able to tap one on or off without crushing another. Also, I had a wireless system that barely got any use so I wanted to incorporate that as well. I decided to go with a 2 level setup to maximize my space available. Read More »Custom Guitar Pedal Travel Case

Custom “Fuzz Monster” Pedal

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I’ve had my eye’s on a Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Fuzz pedal for some time now. It is the quintessential fuzz pedal for rock from the 60’s to today. One of the great things about being such a famous piece of gear is so many people have opened it up and played with the guts to mod their own style out of it. There are hundreds of pages of mods for the big muff you can find just by googling and you can find specs for any version whether you have a Little Big Muff like me or the full size one, Russian, Rams Head, Triangle or any mod already.

Standard Little Big Muff Fuzz Pedal

Standard Little Big Muff Fuzz Pedal

My Custom SUS Audio Fuzz Monster Pedal

My Custom SUS Audio Fuzz Monster Pedal

 

For mine I wanted to switch out three main things after doing a ton of research on the different tones. I love the Muff when it’s at about 10 o’clock Sustain. When you start to turn it up it has a tendency to Read More »Custom “Fuzz Monster” Pedal

Custom Cheap True-Bypass Phaser

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This weekend was a  pedal project weekend for me. I had a Electro Harmonix Little Big Muff Fuzz pedal and a Behringer VP-1 Phaser Pedal (which is a Small Stone clone). I love them both and looking around online I found a few mods for them. The Phaser pedal is a great copy of Electro Harmonix’s Small Stone Phasrer pedal which I think sounds awesome. Has a great tone and can go from a barely there smooth airyness to Hendrix, to Van Halen even to a superquick tremelo effect and anything else you can think of, you can check out a basic here.

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Great pedal but a terrible scheme. Everyone knows which pedal is which so know reason to have to have so much of it dedicated to branding.

Some extra red paint, sharpie and Silver paint pen can do wonders.

Some extra red paint, a sharpie and a Silver paint pen can do wonders.

I found it for $20 on ebay,or you can go $25 new, but you get what you pay for parts wise.Read More »Custom Cheap True-Bypass Phaser

Broadway Style Vanity Mirror

So this project was for a Broadway style vanity mirror. I found them online for $250-600 so decided to try and see if I could custom build one. All the materials I got from Home Depot for about $200.

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It was pretty easy actually, I sketched out about what I wanted to do on a piece of notebook paper, went to Home Depot to see what parts were available then adjusted my plans accordingly. I wanted to have lighting Read More »Broadway Style Vanity Mirror

D.I.Y. Coil Split Project

A guitars pickup is what takes the vibration of the string and makes it an electrical signal that can be amplified. Origianlly guitars had one single coil pickup. These single coil pickups, like those found on a Fender Strat or Telecaster, are noisy. Along with the guitar strings, they amplify electrical disturbances, which creates a hum. Gibson came out with Humbucking pickups, which are just 2 single coil pickups that are run at opposite polarities, which help to cancel out electrical noise.

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Humbucker Pickups

Sometimes, the sound of a single coil pickup is wanted, so if you have a guitar with humbuckers then you have 2 single coil pickups per humbucker already. Coil splits”, which allow the pickups to act as “pseudo-single” coils by either Read More »D.I.Y. Coil Split Project

Big Muff Fuzz D.I.Y. Info

Electro Harmonix’s Big Muff Fuzz Pedal is such a legendary effect. All the sustain and distortion you can want for metal or roll back the levels and get a nice dirty blueshouse sound. Looking around I found a site that has a ton of info about fuzz boxes, including the Big Muff and a ton of other pedals. He even goes as far as mappng out the PCB, schematics and component layout, which is genius and is so helpful to make your own pedal clones, or just to have the info for modifying your current pedal. Read more to see pictures and then check it out for sure over at FuzzCentralRead More »Big Muff Fuzz D.I.Y. Info