Recent Growth in DIY Kit Pedals gives some of you something extra to do during Coronavirus Self-Isolation

RJ Ronquillo actually introduced me to this brand as he has demo'd quite a few of their pedals - including the Helios - as above! This is a really high quality kit which comes with all components included, and exceptional instructions as far I can see - including guidance on Tools Needed and Component Identification. The instructions appear exceedingly clear and thorough to me - and you get a fully finished enclosure here too - so this is really as good as it gets! Aion also mention Alchemy Audio in their descriptions - if you would rather someone else assemble your pedal for you - which I'm obviously onboard for. This is a great example of extended range Rat style circuit - albeit not using the classic LM308 OpAmp. Aion have a selection of 10 kits - featuring mostly well-known drive/distoriton/fuzz clones and a Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay alternative. They also have a more expansive collection of nearly 80 PCB's - where you need to source all your own components otherwise.

This is another high quality kit with a highly detailed painted enclosure and all parts included. I can't see the manual for one of these without purchase - so I can't say whether it reaches the lofty heights of the Aion / StewMac etc. instructions. This nevertheless looks to be a very decent kit - and you don't typically see that many overdrives with 3-Band EQ. Note that the pricing here though is significantly higher than the Aion - sure the enclosure has quite a bit more detail on it, but I'm not sure that overall the content and substance of this kit is justified at a price point near twice that of the Aion Helios above. All-Pedal is mostly a turn-key manufacturing facility / resource for pedal brands, and to date has only a couple of Kit pedals - the Slamurai Overdrive and Galactavise Compressor.

Alex Ernandez and his Nice-based businesses - Anasounds and FX Teacher look set to make him the Effects Pedal equivalent of Ben Crowe of Crimson Guitars fame. Initially known for their wood-facia boutique Anasounds pedals, the operation launched their first FX Teacher Pedal Kit - the Ego Driver Overdrive (a highly customisable TS808 style circuit) late last year. And in the wake of that introduce a series of pedal-building masterclasses backed by an extensive tool store (on Anadsounds.com) - which enables you to buy everything you need to assemble one of these pedal kits. First came the Ego Driver Overdrive Kit - €79 (assembled = €129), and now we have the even more impressive digitally-controlled Sliver Optical Tap-Tempo Tremolo. It's quite evident that Anasounds / FX Teacher are serious about this medium, and these are really beautiful kits with fairly unusual enclosure details for this market. They held a masterclass at the fairly recent Birmingham Guitar Show, and have done a couple of online masterclasses too (in French and per the above). Actually Pladask Elektronisk do something similar in Norway - where that is the only way of getting your hands on their Form 2 pedal - I dare say Anasounds / FX Teacher may do something similar in the not too distant future - with one or two exclusives of their own. As it is now - you can assemble your kit pedal in the comfort of your own home, but there will be more Masterclasses - obviously mostly based in France, but likely around some of the key forthcoming guitar events too - so if you need help with your assembly - keep checking the Anasounds site for further announcements.

Keith Vonderhulls' outfit 'Build Your Own Clone' has to be the best known of all the DIY Kit Pedal makers and has a long and storied history - where a number of the current crop of pedal builders started out by building and modifying one of these kits. Not all of these kits are equal and most of them come with raw enclosures - there are around 80 of them starting from circa $50 and ranging up to $150 for the Super8 Programmable Looper. The one I've chosen here is my very own Crown Jewel with Dry Blend Knob - expertly assembled by Anastasios of Geargas for $220 - including two Boost modules. This is one of my favourite ever drive pedals and it teaches you everything you need to know about overdrive tone shaping - with Parametric Mids and Q-bandwidth control and 4 variable Soft and Hard Clipping options, and with variable 9V or 18V headroom. This pedal is currently out of stock - I see the occasional one pop up on Reverb.com every now and again. This is your classic every-drive Multi-Drive pedal - it can pretty much deliver near enough any kind of drive or distortion tone, and plenty of Fuzz varieties too - if you deploy a Fuzz Boost Module. BYOC are a stellar outfit - some of the never competition are a little bit more flashy with their enclosures, but you really can't go wrong with a BYOC - I have several circuits - funnily enough all assembled for me, and some look pretty rough and raw, but sound fantastic - which is the main thing. The Crown Jewel is one of a handful of BYOC kits that comes with a fully finished / branded enclosure.

Some of you may recall the DST LTD E-magazines that were delivered to your inbox for a number of years. That same outfit's principal business was/is the creation of Pedal Kits - while it still does the occasional pedal review / feature every now and again. There are 5 pedals in the range - from $50 to $70 including our featured Harmonic Percolator style circuit in plain yellow enclosure. I added the logo to the visual just for brand reference purposes. This is another complete kit where everything you need comes in the bag. There is no public access to guides / instructions - so I can't weigh them up against the Aion ones which are my current favourite looking ones - albeit I can't vouch for full context and syntax as I've not built any of these pedals. These pedals appear to be mostly sold out currently, but this is a notable brand which I thought important to include in this overview. I'm hoping that the magazine will come back in some format eventually - along with one or two new kits!

Of all these featured here this is probably one of the best to start with - a relatively simple but neat Overdrive/Boost at the same time. Again a complete kit with everything included and looks like the instructions are every bit as good as the Aion / StewMac ones too. Excellent video above also which shows you the build process. I believe this is a fairly new venture for Lawrence, but if it goes well I dare say there will be more options in the future - for now this is the only Kit on offer on the LPD store. I of course still have a few LPD pedals still to acquire including the Seventy 4 and hopefully a future 3-Band EQ edition of the Sixty 8! Note that I added the logo to my visual - simply for brand identification, You can see above and per the video that there is a labelled facia plate, but no official branding.

This is something that passed me by until recently, but Zach Broyles has dabbled in Pedal Kits too - with a $50 Boost Kit, and this $75 Silicon Fuzz Face Kit references above - using a pair of unspecified BC variant Silicon Transistors - would be good to know whether 107, 108, 109 or 183 variety. This is a complete kit with everything in the bag, while the enclosure is somewhat raw, with no facia plate - I added the logo for brand identity purposes in the visual. Also the instructions are not quite on part with Aion, StewMac and Lawrence Petross, but this is a very simple circuit - so you are highly unlikely to get lost. Obviously as the climate is at the moment these seem to be largely out of stock currently - so if you're looking for something to occupy you more imminently then you had best look somewhere else. I'm guessing these may well be back in stock at some stage in the future or possibly some other variety. For my own purposes I don't necessarily need a fully branded / with graphics enclosure like some of the more polished examples featured here, and you could argue that with two knobs you really don't need any labels - but it would be still a nice touch to have some sort of finish / lacquer on the enclosure. That said I have a number of these raw style enclosures for some of my BYOC pedals! There is no video reference for the Fuzzy Face Kit - so I've used the one for the seemingly earlier Boost Kit - as above.

This is a somewhat different proposition of far higher complexity than most of these others as PedalPCB just provides you with the Circuitboards and some facia plates. In fact for its circa 300 circuits, there are only official facia plates for 7 - including the one featured here. The instructions are also not as straightforward and detailed as say most of these others, and you will need to buy and drill your own 125B enclosure - as in fact Flint Amplification did for my build of Heterodyne Receiver. This is really for more expert builders as there is so much that can go wrong here - and you need to buy in all the components separately - and yes it occasionally happens you get sent out the wrong components - so this is typically far better suited to existing builders who already have a few parts bins on the premises with suitable components. I still think the scope and variety of really quite feature-rich circuits is highly impressive - and the Mini Heterodyne is quite likely the most full-featured of any PLL pedals for its compact dimensions. This is more for you advanced pedal-builder hobbyists! I was unable to find a demo / reference for the Mini / Compact version and so I've referenced the larger Superheterodyne instead - as per the above.

I've included StewMac here as they do a number of collaborative pedal kits with brands such as Earthquaker Devices, Dunlop/MXR and JHS Pedals per the example here. They also have a cheaper range of their own branded pedal kits - not sure if they are discontinuing the brand collaborations as most of those seem so be on sale or sold out currently. In any case when I was first looking into this topic I came across the JHS All-American - which was actually sold by JHS itself for a number of years under its own brand. In fact you can occasionally get the originals in their sparkly red enclosures with Captain America shield-style outline graphic. For the StewMac Kit version you simply get supplied with the raw enclosure, and the clipping switch is in a different place to the former official version - or above rather than below the far right Distortion knob. For visual and brand referencing purpose I overlaid the appropriate graphic onto the raw enclosure - but note than on the Kit version you just get the raw enclosure. The StewMac kits are noted for having some of the best, if not the best instructions / references out there, and supposedly in every way bar the outer branding and finished enclosure these are the same actual parts that JHS uses / used in its own builds. I'm not sure how many of these kits are still floating around out there. There's also an interesting comparison here between this and the first mentioned Aion Helios which are based on the exact same ProCo Rat circuit. I would probably go for the more completely finished enclosure of the Helios if building myself. While as a Rat fan, I will likely just rather scoop up an official JHS variety whenever I come across one at the right price and right time.

I almost forgot to include this first Korg kit which has been doing the rounds recently. It is a slightly unusual medium-enclosure 4-knob overdrive pedal featuring one of Korg's hybrid NuTube valves at its core - and having both Circuit Gain and Tube Gain Control knobs alongside Volume and Tone. This is a slightly more highly finished kit - where the circuitboard components are already assembled - so you skip a lot of the trickier parts here, and don't need a soldering iron as far as I am aware. This goes some way to justifying the significantly higher price of the kit - as most of the heavy lifting has been done for you already. Instead of having 100 or more parts - this only has around 35. In fact if this was a more compact enclosure I might very well have had a go at this myself.