where's a good place to start? I'm getting a lot more proficient with my soldering and feel I'm ready to tackle something more serious.... gimme some tips
BYOC (build your own clone) and GGG (general guitar gadgets) make the best kits I've tried. Fuzz pedals are the easiest to start with.
madbeans is solid for boards
I've built a few of the byoc. Good quality components, stellar instructions, and a forum for troubleshooting. If you can solder and have a bit of theory it's really easy. The leeds fuzz is quite a populated board though. Wouldn't call it a really easy one but easy enough.
I've found Musikding kits to be cheaper than BYOC for the same amount of service. They're German as well so I don't have to pay the same amount for shipping compared to ordering from BYOC, depends on where you at of course.
I've heard Dwarfcraft offers a Great Destroyer kit, Devi Ever might have a kit (?) and Catalinbread offers a couple kits now.
http://www.catalinbread.com/Kit (http://www.catalinbread.com/Kit)
Devi has some kits, yeah. Almost all of them can make one of a number of pedals. If you're looking to get everything, though, her kits don't include an enclosure (the kits that show an enclosure don't include prefabbed pcb's, fwiw.)
http://www.etsy.com/shop/deviever (http://www.etsy.com/shop/deviever)
Mammoth is offering kits with guitarpcb.com boards, too:
http://www.mammothelectronics.com/category-s/118.htm (http://www.mammothelectronics.com/category-s/118.htm)
I used GGG for my first build or two, and that went well.
I'm guessing once you do enough kits, you'll be able to read schematics and source the parts yourself. At that point, basically every pedal ever built has it's schematic posted online.
As for myself, I have two BYOC kits sitting on my shelf unbuilt, they have been sitting there for years :(