Howdy, I’m looking to learn more about building and designing hardware for professional and hobby purposes. I’ve been working in embedded software and what I know about hardware design is lacking, so I figured lets do this.
I am interested in possibly making weird and messed up effect pedals for guitars and other instruments as sort of a hobby/practice area.
That’s a great starter project, especially the simpler ones like fuzz / distortion effects. Be prepared to pay a lot for connectors and potentiometers though! 
Nice! I am also interested in messing around with making some guitar effects pedals in the nearish future.
That sounds like a cool project! I know that SparkFun released a product around creating these kinds of effects a few years, but I don’t think it’s sold anymore. The tutorial is still up, though, and might offer a good starting point: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/proto-pedal-assembly-and-theory-guide