Making a Stomp Box (Pt II)

To make sense of this post, you’ll want to read this post.

My son and I were out with the rest of our tribe this afternoon, and happened to be walking past Maplins. He and I decided to pop in and ask some stupid questions about piezo transducers.

Specifically, could I have bought a dud one, and should it be doing what I wanted? Also, could my plug connections be bad?

We looked up the item in question, and relised that it’s a surprisingly versatile piece of kit, quite capable of providing the kind of thumping sound we were after.

So we purchased a chassis mount 1/4″ socket instead of the in-line one we’d been using, and came home ready to try again.

It quickly became apparent that the connection in the socket was at fault, so we stripped out the socket, and prepared to remount the whole kit and kaboodle into the box.

First, we drilled a hole to mount the new socket, then fitted it and the piezo transducer in the correct places.

Next we wired up the two, the one with the other, simply twisting the wires for now to allow for quick changes if it didn’t work.

The inside of the Stomp Box – piezo transducer held in place by gaffer tape and wired to the socket.

We plugged the box in, and cranked up the gain…

SUCCESS! We have a working stomp box in need of one or two minor modifications.

I have already glued in the top (originally the base) of the box to reduce noise in use, and I need to solder the contacts properly once we’ve decided whether to fit tone and/or gain controls.

The top of the Stomp Box showing the glued edges

Not bad for a fiver, eh?

Best of all, my son is so pleased, he’s practically begging me to write this post and also let his crazy uncle know about it. He’s wondered already if this will impress his new “industry friend”, Rich from Line 6.

I’ll tell you this, it’s been a lot cheaper than that Variax guitar he’s after for Christmas…