I took the plunge a few weeks back and ordered an Orange Squeezer clone from General Guitar Gadgets. Sure, it's not the best compressor for the bass guitar, but the kit was on sale ($45), looked fairly simple and was complete. I had thought about the BYOC Confidence Boost - which I may still build - but I wanted an all-in-one with an enclosure at first.
I am very pleased to report that it works! I do like the sound of the compressor itself, although I will probably replace it with something a little more full-featured at a later date. In the meantime it works.
I was very happy with the kit with just a few minor gripes:
1 - the bottom of my enclosure seems to be a tad bit warped. It still works fine, just cosmetic.
2 - I had to print the instructions off at work in order to get them in color (a must for me as I'm rusty as hell with color codes). Having the wiring diagram in color helped too.
My soldering isn't very good, although it was better than I had hoped and improved as I went along. Fortunately the PCB wasn't so jam-packed that I risked damaging one component while soldering another. I actually had more trouble with the paint on the enclosure than with any other part of the build (gloss Krylon didn't react well to my clearcoat). I labelled the enclosure with a few small letters using my wife's scrapbooking stamps. Professional? Heck no. Works? Yep.
All in all, a good first experience. I will probably take this pedal apart and make some of the suggested bass-only mods at some point, but for now I'll leave it be. Now to scour BYOC and figure out which pedal I want to tackle next. Anyone have experience with their Chorus on bass?
