About General Guitar Gadgets
Where it started
General Guitar Gadgets began in 1998 as a labor of love. JD Sleep had been building his own guitar effects since the mid-90s, trading notes with the early DIY stompbox community online and learning from the books and forum posts that defined the hobby. The community had plenty of reverse-engineered schematics of classic pedals in those days, but almost no layouts: if you wanted to build one, you drew the board yourself. JD was already doing that for his own builds, so he put his layouts on a free web page and called it Guitar Effects Projects.
It was a product of its time. The site was plain text and GIFs, written to load fast over a dial-up modem, and JD's own description of it ran: “Java free, frames free, fancy useless graphics free, cookie free, cost free.” His stated reason for building it was simpler still: to give back some of what he had taken from the people who helped him learn, among them Craig Anderton, R.G. Keen, Jack Orman and Mark Hammer. As far as JD knew, it was the first site on the internet devoted to guitar effect PCB layouts.
The early years
The site grew faster than a free host could carry. By 2000 it had thirty projects and was being hosted by the good people at Ampage, who listed it on their front page alongside Aron Nelson's Stompbox Page. When even that was not enough, JD bought a domain of his own, and the site went live as General Guitar Gadgets in 2002.
The habits that still define GGG were set in those years, and they are written down in the site's own pages from 2002: every document carries a revision date so you can tell if your printout is current; every pedal gets true bypass; switches, jacks and pots are full size and good quality; ICs and germanium transistors go in sockets; and GGG does not clone boutique pedals that are still in production. In January 2002 JD started etching and drilling ready-to-solder circuit boards and selling them from the site, so builders no longer had to make their own.
Going full time
JD left his job at IBM in 2005 to work on GGG, and in 2006 General Guitar Gadgets became a full-time business: complete kits joined the PCBs, and board production moved to a manufacturer making double-sided, through-hole-plated boards that could survive a beginner's first rework. The free project documentation never went behind a paywall. It is still here, and it is still the reason most of our customers found us.
What started as a reference for hobbyists became a family-run business offering complete pedal kits, ready-to-solder printed circuit boards, wiring diagrams, drill templates and parts lists for classic fuzz, overdrive, distortion, phaser and modulation circuits. Thousands of builders learned to solder their first pedal from a GGG document, and many came back for their second, third and tenth. Through all of it, the goal stayed the same: provide the best do-it-yourself guitar effect information on the internet, and give builders everywhere the resources to make their own gear. Twenty-eight years on, that is still the goal.
A new chapter
In 2026, JD stepped back from the day-to-day running of General Guitar Gadgets and handed the reins to BJ Miller, his neighbor and longtime friend. JD is not going anywhere. He now focuses on what he has always loved most: research and development, and technical support. New circuits, new kits, and the deep troubleshooting help GGG is known for still come from JD.
BJ handles everything else: orders, packing and shipping, inventory, the website and store, and the first line of customer support. The two of them live a short walk apart, so if a question lands on BJ's desk that only JD can answer, it does not have to travel far.
For customers, nothing about the experience changes. Same kits, same documentation, same care in every package. Just a new name on the shipping label.
Meet BJ Miller
BJ Miller lives just down the road from JD in rural Missouri with his wife and their two children. BJ has had a love of music and electronics his entire life. Since he was a boy, growing up in Montana, he was fixing his parents' VCR, and soldering wires together for his custom car stereo that hit just under 140 dB without distortion. That's not much compared to current competition models of today, but back in 1996 in Montana, it was a big deal. These days, BJ doesn't "bump his system" like he once did, but he still loves a good bass beat, which explains his choice of electric guitars.
Over the years of being neighbors and sharing a faith, JD and BJ spent enough time talking circuits, tools, the Bible, and the business, that when JD was ready to retire, BJ was the natural person to pick it up.
GGG is a family effort, the same as it was under JD. It provides for two families now, the Sleeps and the Millers. BJ's wife keeps the books, and keeps BJ in line. Their children are already both guitar players, so they are really excited about starting the GGG journey! When you order from General Guitar Gadgets, one of the Millers packed your box just after eating breakfast and feeding their chickens.
What stays the same
General Guitar Gadgets is still a small family operation run from a homestead in rural Missouri, USA. There is no warehouse, no call center and no corporate parent. Kits are stocked, counted and packed by the people whose names are on this page, and your question is answered by someone who has built the pedal you are asking about.
We will keep doing what GGG has done since the beginning:
- Offer well-documented kits and PCBs for classic effects circuits, with the schematics, layouts, wiring diagrams and drill templates to build them right
- Keep the free project documentation on this site free, because that is how most of us learned
- Answer support emails like neighbors, not like a ticket queue
- Ship every order with the care we would want for our own
Thank you for building with us, whether this is your first kit or your fiftieth. We are glad you are here.
The GGG family