Custom-Built Anime Guitar Pedals

[LastVanguard]

Maybe some of you electronics guys or electricians will get a kick out of this, or someone who finds this interesting might be inspired to learn more about micro-electronics and how to build this kind of stuff.

One of my summer projects for the last couple of years has been to built some anime-oriented custom guitar effects pedals. They're specifically designed to be modeled after the sound from a specific anime's OST. The point of this originally was to further my understanding of electrical circuits and how components affect sound in an electric signal chain, but transitioned over time into a matter of: "Hey, people actually think these are really cool. Maybe I should make some for a profit?"

Learning this has also given me the opportunity to realize that I can build my own equipment to get my own signature guitar sound, instead of slowly spending thousands of dollars over time on gear trying to find the "ultimate tone", I can build pedals and amps to my own specs to get the sound I'm looking for right off the bat. It's saved me a ton of time, and a lot of money learning to build electronics this way.

Feedback for the pedals has been pretty stellar among my clients, and I use a bunch of them on my own guitar pedal board when I play live because they sound exactly like I want them to. It's also really neat to pull up to a gig and have people compliment me on my sound, to then find out that I've built most of my gear myself.

In any case, pictured below is the Kirito pedal I completed this year, and the Angel Beats pedal that was last year's project. A few people on OS have commissioned me to built them some pedals modeled after the sound from Danmachi, Noragami, Log Horizon, and other animes. Those other pedals will be in the works in over the next month or two.

Cheers,
Caleb (LastVanguard)

[karmakeddon]

Those pedals looks awesome! Couple of questions though. What is their priority on your signal chain? Do they work well with a gate?

I would love to hear em in action. If you have a video of it, I would like to see and listen to it.

[LastVanguard]

Those pedals looks awesome! Couple of questions though. What is their priority on your signal chain? Do they work well with a gate? I would love to hear em in action. If you have a video of it, I would like to see and listen to it.

Thanks for your interest; I don't have any videos of them yet. I'm scared to make demo videos at this point because I was in a rut for a while where building these for clients was consuming all of my free time, and I had to start cutting people off to get some of my life back. XD

At the moment, they're the entirety of my signal chain. My entire pedal board is comprised of these, with the only exception being my tuner pedal. I haven't tried running them with a gate at this point, although the Starburst Scream has enough gain/volume that if you were diming it a gate wouldn't be a bad idea.

[NyteStalker]

Those are really cool! It's too bad I don't play guitar, otherwise I would totally want a Girls Dead Monster one.

[karmakeddon]

Well I do love the look of them. It is actually awesome to have a whole board of those boutique stomps which stands out from any other stomps. The ultimate quest for tone stops there since you can actually just make any pedal for any other tone that you would want to achieve.