Build Your Own Clone 10 band EQ

nevr got a sound out of it. Unlike most BYOC kits, the instructions are hard to follow, out of order, and in some cases, just wrong.

the most satisfaction I got from this pedal was smashing it with a large crescent wrench. Never got it to work, so i have no idea what it sounds like.

The PDF instructions for this kit are horrible, unlike the other BYOC kits. After ruining my pedal during the build process, I think I found out what went wrong, but I'm not going to buy another kit to find out.

Kit includes LED backlighting, but does not tell you how to install- only implies that it CAN work, and that there are instructions online (there aren't, by the way) and to attempt to built at your own risk.

Now, who isn't going to try to install the backlighting on a kit from Build You Own Clone? Isn't that the whole point?

The instructions are horrible- they are out of order (so that you install taller components before the shorter components, making it a nightmare to install the other, shorter components), poorly explained- the PC board is poorly labeled as well. It's hard to build this kit, unless you know how to build the kit before you start.

There are also components layered under other components, which are very difficult to remove if you need to go back and fix a mistake. BYOC loves to use those little tiny MXR sized bud boxes for their projects, which makes things a bit of a tight squeeze, even on their simple projects. The EQ definitely tries to squeeze 10 pounds of junk into a 5 pound bag.

Unlike every other BYOC kit, the box for the EQ was poorly machined, and full of burrs.

It would be nice if the box was twice the size, better machined, and did not layer the nearly impossible to desolder sliders directly on top of the actual guts of the pedal.

My main reason for the low rating are the faders. Maybe they're supposed to be this way as I don't have a lot of experience with EQ pedals, but I find that most of the faders do all the changing of your tone in the very top or very bottom of the slots and don't do much of anything in the biggest part of the space in between. You can move a fader up or down and hardly anything happens until the very end and then they change dramatically in the last 10% of movement. This makes it VERY difficult to dial in that perfect tone. The slightest, and I mean SLIGHTEST movement of a knob at the top or bottom end of the slot will ruin your "ideal" setting. This will get really annoying if say, your pedal board goes into a case and the faders get bumped or you accidentally bump one or more with your foot or a cable. I really wish the overall sweep of the individual faders were more evenly spread across there respective slots. If that's the way EQ pedals are supposed to be, then my apologies for the low rating. I think the black fader knobs are kind of a bad idea, too.

I have been able to dial in the "tone in my head" with this pedal. I use several guitars and a variety of Pete Cornish distortion pedals in concert with a Dallas Rangemaster type clone and a made in England 1982 JCM 800 Marshall(50 watt) to get a classic 70's British rock sound (ya'know, Page, Bolan, Ronson, even early Brian May type stuff). I've always wanted to combine that tone with more of a modern high gain sound and this pedal gives me that in spades. And, because it has true bypass, I don't lose the vintage 70's vibe either, which is exactly what I was hoping for. It's also pretty transparent to my ear. However, if you set the volume fader high and the gain fader low to get a nice snappy pick attack and a tight, clear bottom end, you will get a good bit of hissing which is a drag. Thus an 8 and not a 10.

It appears to be very well constructed and most of my gear is pretty high end so I never really back up anything at gigs except my guitars. If it crapped out on me during a gig I'd just bypass it for the rest of night.

Haven't dealt with them yet other than they were very speedy getting this pedal to me.

The true bypass is great--the tone is great--the small footprint on my pedal board is awesome. But the tedious faders, black knobs and noticeable hiss that accompanies the clean setting are not so great. At $150 it's a good value but I really wouldn't have minded spending more bucks to have no hiss, a better spread on the faders, white knobs and any kind of markings for levels.