When it comes to effects pedal builds I started for two reason. Firstly because I am a massive fan of creating my own things, and secondly because most of the pedals I've cloned are pedals I couldn't possibly have owned otherwise. I never knew I would build as many pedals as I did, nor did I know I would build as many drive pedals as I have. Now I think it's time to move on to more, what I would call, enhancing effects. I did build a Disaster Transport Jr. delay clone that I like quite a bit and the Rub-a-dub Reverb, but it has a weird slapback that I'm not a huge fan of. Beyond delay and reverb I'm not sure what other type of modulation I would ever use. I've never been a fan of octave, phasers, flangers, tremolo or chorus, although the last two I could possibly see myself making and using, sparingly. So I guess that settles that; I'll build more reverbs, delays, maybe a chorus and tremolo, or two, and scale back on drive pedals, although I won't cease completely.
Another thing that I've wanted to build is a clone of old Kali, my Kalamazoo Model 1, or perhaps some other Champ 5F1 clone. The issue there is I'm not brave enough, yet, to deal with the higher voltages. Couple that with specific components I can't easily source, and I just feel overwhelmed and figure I'll have to build up to that sometime down the road. What I'm currently interested in is referred to as the Ruby Tuby. It seems to be a hybrid of solid state with a preamp tube, which sounds like a fairly good starting point to me. Naturally it wouldn't take Kali's place, but if it could run my 4x12 cabinet, strong emphasis on if, then it might take some of the stress off Kali when it comes to final testing of guitar pedal builds.
In conclusion the build year 2023 should hopefully be fun, and filled with new projects and sounds. My honest goal is to have a pedalboard made up of DIY pedals that I can actually write and record with. This year I reached a small milestone in having written and recorded a demo of my very first song. It's exceedingly rough and it has (hopefully) been shared with the person I want to hear it, and will not be shared any further. I do plan to work with that demo and make it better, but hopefully from there more songs will spring up that I can, and will share. I'll just need to see where things go.
