Onion Madder's Mess O' Pedals
DIY electronics, built to be readable on any device.
I build guitar pedals, synths and circuit-bent noise machines, then write up how they work so somebody else can build one. I also rebuild DIY electronics pages that were going dark, because I kept chasing dead links to guides I actually needed. On those the words stay the original author's and only the HTML is mine.
My Guides
I write the guide I wanted when I was starting out. Pinouts are monospace text you can zoom into or have read out loud, not a blurry photo of a datasheet. Wiring is a table with one row per solder joint. And the parts list tells you how to recognize the part in the drawer, not just what value it is.
Dead-Bug Hive
Six oscillators on one CD40106, dead-bugged into a tin. The most complete guide here.
Read the guide »Opto Duet
Two 555 theremins on one board, coupled by nothing but light. My own design, and it is built and boxed.
Read the guide »Copper Bottom
I built my own stripboard editor, because every other one wants a schematic before it will help you and I do not think in schematics. Copper Bottom works the other way round. You draw the board and it reads the copper back to you: where the cuts fall, what sits on each strip, and what that adds up to electrically. It knows that two legs of one part on one strip is a short, that a CMOS input left floating is a problem, and that an unused output is fine. No schematic anywhere.
It runs in the browser with nothing to install, and it is a single file, so you can download it and use it at the bench with no internet at all.
The Bench
Build logs for the things I actually made - a singing skull, a Gooey Louie head turned into a looper, a toy guitar that got opened up and never quite closed again - and now a Grumblies monster that screams at the light. Photos, mistakes, and what I'd do differently.
My Store
One-of-a-kind pedals, glitch boxes and tape loops. Everything is hand-built and there is exactly one of each - when it's gone, it's gone. Sold with a repair-or-refund promise, because these are prototypes and I'd rather fix it than argue about it.
The Archive
Other people's work, kept reachable. Every mirror is credited to its author, keeps their text exactly as they wrote it, and gets real headings, described images, and text that survives being zoomed to 400%.
-
Ray Wilson · 1957–2016
Music From Outer Space
Ray taught a generation to build synths from scratch. He died in 2016 and his site has been fading ever since. The Weird Sound Generator, the Mini Mixer, the Micro Sample & Hold - rebuilt here, schematics and all, with his own words untouched.
-
Darren C. Shaw
Lo-fi sampler & PT2399 delay mods
The two mods behind half the noise boxes on this site: turning an ISD1820 voice-recorder board into a pitch-bendable sampler, and breaking the controls out of a PT2399 delay.
-
Andy Murkin
Radica UCreate Music multi-FX
A deep teardown of a discontinued toy, turned into a real-time effects unit.