BJFE / BearFoot fx Guitar Effects Community

This thread is being made to provide a place for folks to document their builds and a place to ask technical questions. I will start it off by providing the build docs and reference materials for folks.

I haven't finished the wiring diagram and need to confirm a few things before I upload that. For now, the schematic, parts list and some reference info are included below.

Good luck and take your time, trust me, it will save you from having to debug later



Wiring Diagram for Common CATHODE LED


Wiring Diagram for Common ANODE LED

Yay! I'll be starting on this tomorrow night!

Does it matter what you put together first? Or, is there a set order like resistors first then caps, trannys, pots, etc?

I fixed the footswitch on my MHvT yesterday, so I am building up my confidence!

It's best to do smallest to large. Resistors, diodes, IC socket, smaller caps then large. Make sure you don't solder the IC socket with the IC in the socket

All great advice

Another suggestion -- TAKE YOUR TIME! Seriously, I never do and I've made silly mistakes on nearly every pedal I've built

Wiring diagram (which probably could have been planned out better ) is now included in the first post!

Annnnd here we go!

Buster building! This is how I think you should do it! (But It´s probably not the best way .)

Unpack your beautiful Buster!


Throw everything on the table and poor yourself a glass of wine.


Mark all the resistor up so you get a good overview. Take a sip of your glass of wine.


Solder everithing to it´s place and hope everything will turn out ok!


Sip some more wine.

BTW, doesn´t the IC direction matter?

OhMyDear wrote:BTW, doesn´t the IC direction matter?

Yes, it does. Orient it with the dot in the upper left corner.

This appears to be how you already have it in your photo

OhMyDear wrote:Solder everithing to it´s place and hope everything will turn out ok!

By the way, this looks awesome You seem like you've done this before...

I´ve done it a few times. Can´t get the led to work though! It´s always something . It sounds great! I´ll upload some other bouild pics later on!

OhMyDear wrote:I´ve done it a few times. Can´t get the led to work though! It´s always something . It sounds great! I´ll upload some other bouild pics later on!

Well, I think I know what the problem is. My wiring diagram may be wrong as I haven't gotten to use the bicolor LED yet and am not sure if it's common cathode or common anode. If it's common cathode, the wiring diagram is correct. If you followed that and your LED won't work then try the following wiring diagram for a common anode LED.

Changes are...
-- Center lug of switch goes to LED pad
-- Center LED leg goes to ground

Sorry for making you the guinea pig



Please let me know if this fixes it.