This past week I cleaned up my home recording rig. I wired up some old outboard gear I’ve been neglecting. I organized my cables and I was in the market for a Re-Amp box. The cheapest ones around were $100. I can’t imagine they’re that complicated, so I looked online for a schematic. I thought I might be able to just build one myself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find enough information about the transformers required.

Then I found DIY.RE ! For $50 they’ll send you a kit to build your own passive re-amp. I ordered one last week. It showed up yesterday. When I got home I put it together.

A post shared by Johnny Nichols (@johnny__nichols) on Jun 26, 2017 at 6:12pm PDT

It took more time setting up my tools than assembling the box (an hour total). I plugged it into my rig last night and it works! I’m excited. It’s going to be a big help, mixing down my record.

I guess I’ve been bitten by the pedal-mod-bug. I’m not sure how I feel about turning into one of THOSE guitar dudes –the ones that are always tinkering and coveting gear. That’s life though, you watch yourself slowly turn into the people you used to make fun of.

Anyway after working on my old phase 90, I wanted to try more projects. When I worked at RadioShack back in 2011, I was able to breadboard a distortion pedal. It had been a while since I studied schematics, so i wanted to start small.

I’m not sure where I stumbled upon this diagram, but it looked simple enough for me!

The only thing was that I had never heard of a voltage starver. So I looked up what they did and how they sounded, and I dug it. I ordered all the parts off eBay and waited for them to show up. While I looked up other voltage starver pedals I found this blog talking about putting a voltmeter on the pedal. http://theukuleleblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-build-dying-battery-simulator.html

So I found a digital voltmeter on eBay and tested it out…

A post shared by Johnny Nichols (@johnny__nichols) on Mar 7, 2017 at 8:32pm PST

I didn’t have a drill so I used my soldering iron to melt the mounting holes in the plastic case. That’s why it looks so sketchy.

A post shared by Johnny Nichols (@johnny__nichols) on Mar 18, 2017 at 2:53pm PDT

I plugged the starver into my VOX distortion booster and loved it. The sweet spot is just under 5 volts with all the knobs slammed. You get this crazy fuzz. There are only two issues with putting this pedal on my board now. The “ON” led doesn’t light up when the voltage is dropped down and the pedal is noisy even when it’s off. So I’m going to be building a true bypass looper.