Show: Building custom effects inside a 1590A enclosure

Smol™ Woolly Mammoth 🦣 fuzz effect

I was looking for a fuzz guitar effect and I really liked the sound of the Woolly Mammoth, but I also wanted something in a small 1590A enclosure format. As not much was available, I decided to build it myself. I did some research on schematics based on the classic Woolly Mammoth fuzz pedal and I started building it on a perfboard with not much planning. 1590A are much smaller than standard enclosures, there isn’t much room inside, so knew I had to use SMD components where I could. Most components are from Tayda Electronics which I highly recommend, they have many parts to build your own pedals which are very cheap and could be hard to find elsewhere.

A preview of the finished pedal, I’m pretty happy with the result :)

I started by adding a couple of pots and enlarging some holes on the board to fit the shielding stabilizers.

Drilled some holes in the 1590A enclosure to fit the knobs.

I started fitting the first SMD components between solder joints, they are the right size to fit nicely in between.

Added more components, I added an IC socket which will be used to fit the 2 transistor in case I’d have to swap them out at some point.

Some jumper wires and more SMD components between solder joints (they can be hard to spot).

More drilling for DC power, input and putput 6.3mm jacks, a LED and the main knob. Ilso wanted to give an antique look so I sanded with some grainy sandpaper and left all the imperfections, I even added some more by beating it with some tools. I then sprayed some matte black spray paint onto a paper towel and brushed it onto the surface. I then removed the excess paint with fine grained sandpaper and polished the edges a bit more.

All components are now there plus wires for VCC, GND, Send and Return. At this point I also cut the perfboard to length.

Not the prettiest soldering job (I was also missing some eqpipment) but I guess if it works… It wasn’t the easiest either.

I prepared an amber LED with a 330ohm resistor hidden inside the red heatshrink.

Test fit, I don’t have a single millimeter to spare.

Gut shot before closing, I also insulated the inside of the bottom plate with some Kapton tape to avoid shorts.

Aaaaand it’s done!

Fits right in :) After some thesting I’m convinced that this is the best sounding effect on my pedalboard, so I’d call it a s success! 🎸

Smol™ Tentacle 🦑 octave effect

In the same week I finished the fuzz pedal I also started building a Tentacle, an octabe effect based on the Green Ringer / EDQ Tentacle. Again, I wanted to build it inside a 1590A enclosure.

I’m still not sure how to use this effect honestly but it seems fun combined with other effects, it does sound better from about the 10th fret and up on the neck pickup.

This time I did try something different with the enclosure by giving it a matte look. I also added the image of a squid by using a toner transfer method: I printed the image on a piece of glossy newspaper and then transferred it on the enclosure with the heat of an iron.

Two euro coin for scale. This is the perfboard top side. Don’t mind the transistors as some were in the wrong orientation, I fixed this later.

And this is the bottom side, this time there are no knobs.

Combining through-hole and SMD components - while it might look strange - can solve a lot of routing problems. This was a work in progress so some joints were still not soldered.

Gut shot before closing it up showing the 6.3mm jacks and a lot of wiring.

And the finished product. I really like the effect of the quid eyes lighting up on this one 🦑.