Ernie Ball VP JR string repair & buffer mod

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Mods & Repairs

Nov 04 2013

Common and annoying problem with Ernie Ball volume pedals is the string breaking down…usually in the middle of your amazing volume swell delay solo. Here is how to fix it for cheap. Take the black box holding the jacks out of the pedal. Unsolder three cables coming from the pot. Buy some mason’s line (mine was a few euros for 50m!) and if you have the old strings still in the pedal, take them out and measure carefully how long they are. It takes a bit of tweaking to cut the new strings to correct lenght and it has to […]

Line 6 DL4 footswitch repair

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Mods & Repairs

Oct 22 2013

The legendary Line 6 DL4 delay modeler. Very versatile and decent sounding unit is one of the favorite delays in hard working guitarist’s rig. It doesn’t come without faults though and one of them is poor quality footswitches. This unit had switching problems and I decided to replace the feeble actuator-activated mini pcb switches with one of the best footswitches around; Carling. They are not cheap but they are very good. To replace the old ones you have to take the unit completely apart. Potentiometer knobs are very tight so I had to pull them out with pliers. Rest of […]

VHT Special 6 mod & repair

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Mods & Repairs

Oct 06 2013

This amp came to me to be repaired and if possible modified to sound nicer. Problems it had included popping noises and hum. Opening it up revealed a nicely laid out eyelet board with through-hole components which was a bit surprising (this amp is made in China and costs way under 200€!). First I took out old tubes and re-soldered all tube socket connections. Many times these have cold solder joints or just loose wires. Next I cleaned all jacks and pots. Re-tubed it with Tung-sol 12ax7 (+tube cover) and JJ 6V6S and tried it out; no pops or hum. […]

Peavey rockmaster retubing

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Mods & Repairs

Sep 25 2013

This 1U Peavey preamp came over for a retube since it sounded weak. I had never even heard of such a preamp and holy smokes it has a very nice distortion for hair rock! I installed a new set of tubes, Tung-sol 12ax7 for V1 and V2-V4 JJ EC83S and tried how it sounded. More punch definitely but could have a bit more character. After a lot of tube swapping I settled for JJ EC83S in all other positions except V2 where I used a Sovtek 12ax7lps. Much more mesa-like breakup and fuller sound. While it was open I cleaned […]

DOD 250 reissue grey spec’d

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Mods & Repairs

May 25 2013

This classic pedal has had a few incarnations along the years but most sought after seems to be the original “grey spec” version. Differences are subtle but they are there… New reissue version is pretty close to the original and only few components are different. To get grey I changed the following: 1. Change opamp from 4558 to 1458 Original grey has LM741 opamp but 1458 is basically the same chip, just a dual version of it. Advantage of using a 1458 opamp is that it’s also pin compatible with 4558. 2. Remove 25pf This was added to the reissues […]

Ibanez SM-9 volume mod

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Mods & Repairs

Mar 10 2013

This is a metal pedal made by Ibanez in 1983-1984, good sounding and quite rare. If you’re not afraid to lower it’s vintage value you can make it better by few simple changes. It has low volume (even when maxed) and is getting unclear and fizzy at high gain settings. To fix this I replaced clipping diodes D3, D4, D5, D6 with 3mm red leds and made them switchable so you can take them completely out of the circuit if wanted. With leds it has more volume, plenty of gain and balls, eq is also more powerful. When they’re out […]

Boss SD-1 bass mods

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Mods & Repairs

Mar 02 2013

This classic overdrive is a good base for a lot of modifications. If you like the sound and just want to add some more low end all you got to do is change 3 capacitors: C2, C8 -> 100nF and C3 to 150nF. BOOM! More bass and stoner vibe at max settings :) Old capacitors are held in place with some glue-like substance (at least in this version) so you need to use some force to pry them out.

Boss DS-1 bass mods

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Mods & Repairs

Dec 03 2012

This is one of the sleeper guitar/bass pedals out there. You can buy these for 30-40€ (here in Finland) and with some modifications it turns into a versatile and great sounding distortion pedal. In it’s stock form it has a very bright and harsh tone which I’ve fixed by changing tone shaping capacitors and clipping diode type. Now it can do crunch tones also and has much more pleasant high end. Capacitor values were chosen for bass use and it has massive low end now. This pedal was modded for Electric Fox Studios to be used as a bass distortion […]

Marshall 1960a rear panel fix & mod

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Mods & Repairs

Nov 29 2012

If you’ve ever owned one of Marshall 1960a cabs and it has fallen while something is plugged in the back you’ve probably seen what can happen… Broken jacks and fractured panel. Shit. No sound and the gig starts in 1 hour. First things first: I took out both jacks and replaced them with new ones. This cab has never been used in stereo so I decided to take out the switch completely and bypass it with jumpers. These switches start acting up when old anyway so this is a good mod. First input now serves as a 4ohm input and […]

Bogner footswitch repair & mod

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Mods & Repairs

Nov 29 2012

A friend who does a LOT of gigs brought me his Bogner footswitch for repairs. Cable was obviously broken and we decided it would be better to install a detachable cord so it’s easy to replace on the road if needed. Since the amplifier controlled with this footswitch doesn’t have a reverb, a stereo jack is enough to control boost and channel select functions. To fit in a stereo jack for the new cable I had to cut a piece of the pcb off with a dremel and install a jumper wire. I buzzed out with a multimeter which cables […]

Boss GE-7 noise mods

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Mods & Repairs

Aug 31 2012

This EQ suffers from high noise floor and sounds gritty, cold and even more noisy when you bump up the mids and high end. To improve noise performance I took out the JRC022D IC’s and replaced them with good old TL072’s. If you compare the datasheets of these two chips you can see that TL072 has high input impedance like JRC022 but much better noise performance. TL072 also uses more current but if you use a psu this isn’t an issue. Some people have replaced their chips with NE5532 which has even better noise performance but that chip has even […]

Danelectro Fab Echo mods

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Mods & Repairs

Mar 31 2012

This pedal is a sleeper. It is dirt cheap (~18€ in Finland) but has an SMD-version of PT2399 delay chip which is the same chip I used in my Time Machine and Hyperizer pedals… Originally Fab Echo doesn’t have an adjustable delay time and is fixed to just slapback echo. If you take out a resistor connected to pin 6 of the PT2399 and replace it with a 50-100k pot to ground you have a delay time control! I used a 50k mini pot to make it fit nicely beside the other pots. Just had to drill one hole for […]

Lovepedal Super 6 repaint

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Mods & Repairs

Feb 14 2012

This request was so crazy and good I just had to do it: Repaint a Lovepedal Super 6. Pink. Add red hearts. Here’s what I did in short: 1. Disassembly 2. A lot of sanding 3. Primer (waiting) 4. Pink color (waiting) 5. Some incredible stencil work 6. Red color (waiting) 7. Vinyl cutter wizardry 8. Clear coat (waiting) 9. Repeat steps 2-8 because of bad quality clear coat. Second try worked. 10. Reassembly The cutest lovepedal in the world! I got some invaluable painting experience while making this one and I plan to paint more enclosures in the future. […]

Fender American Vintage ’57 Strat mods

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Mods & Repairs

Feb 09 2012

I had wanted one of these guitars for a looong time and last christmas I finally decided to buy one! It’s a 2007 Fender American Vintage ’57 Stratocaster Reissue. Beautiful, lightweight instrument with bright vintage tone and classic 2-tone sunburst colour. Being a vintage reissue it comes pre-installed with a 3-way pickup switch but the previous owner had already replaced it with a 5-way upgrade switch (included in kit). Ex-owner also used really light string gauges so I needed to set this up to my own specs. Of course it never ends to just changing the strings and doing a […]

Racking it up

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Stompboxes

Jul 28 2011

A fellow bass player asked me to make his live setup simple and neat. Instead of carrying stuff in plastic bags and having cables tangled up all across the stage he now only has to worry about a single 6-unit rack :) Starting point was a Hartke HA5500 bass amp which I unbolted from it’s original frame and installed rack ears to it’s sides. This fitted in neatly to the bottom of a second-hand 6-unit rack case. Next plan was to rehouse an old bass distortion pedal to 1-unit rack enclosure to go on top of the amp but this […]

EHX Holy Grail dc jack mod

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Mods & Repairs

Jul 01 2011

These are propably the most common modifications for EHX pedals. Simple enough, drilling a hole and installing a new jack. I also installed lock washers to input/output jacks and the footswitch because they loosen up quite easily.

Big Muff clean blend & mid switch mod

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Mods & Repairs

Jul 01 2011

I wanted to make my NYC Big Muff reissue more versatile and bass-friendly so I decided to add a clean blend to it. I’ve used Buff’n Blend circuit by Joel Purkiss in the past with good results so I built one and slapped it inside the box. Now I can blend in clean signal to the distorted muff sound which helps me maintain bottom end. And while I was at it I changed the dc jack to a “normal” boss-style jack. Since the enclosure is HUGE I also decided to add a switch to select between different eq shapes, one […]

Bass pedalboard v0.1

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Apr 17 2011

Ok, so I got tired of setting up & wiring pedals each time I got to rehearsals and gigs so I put together a pedalboard inspired by this page. All I needed was some Ikea Gorm shelf parts, some velcro, some dark stain, angled metal plugs, cable, cable holders and an aluminium case I had lying around. And voilá, diy wooden pedaltrain! ;) I cut the wooden shelf pieces to fit tightly into the aluminium case because I didn’t want the board to move around when the case is thrown around. Then put in long screws to hold the shelf […]

Dunlop Rotovibe problems

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Mods & Repairs

Nov 01 2010

This was a tough cookie! It didn’t make any sound when engaged.. so I started looking for bad connections and found many of them! Input/Output/dc jacks were badly soldered and one pcb trace was broken. Resoldered bad joints and jumpered broken traces. Slowly it started to come back alive and all chips measured ok! It sounded like a rotovibe but made occasional ticking sounds when engaged.. Again going through the circuit and poking around to find a hint to fix the problem. Then I noticed the led indicator part of the pcb had lost proper ground connection on one point! […]

Hotrodding a telecaster

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Mods & Repairs

Nov 01 2010

A friend offered me a Tokai Telecaster so cheap I just had to buy it..of course new gear makes my modding sense go wild! So..I got some second hand texas special pickups and got to work..ended up changing all pots, switch and wiring to “boutique” specs :) Sounds HOT! Update 13.11.2011 I have been experimenting with acrylic and polycarbonate printing/cutting and made a “wood-a-like” pickguard for my Tele. Graphics are printed in reverse on the backside of 5mm acrylic. Works for me :) Update 16.12.2011 I wanted some more classic tele “twang” and sustain out of this so I decided […]

Strat rewiring & setup

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Mods & Repairs

Oct 31 2010

This was a 30th birthday present for a good friend. I redid ALL wiring, pots, switch and jacks on his first guitar (Stratocaster). You should have seen the look on the guy’s face when he got this ;)

Crybaby bypass surgery

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Mods & Repairs

Oct 31 2010

Dunlop Crybaby true bypass mod. Adding a 3pdt switch, snipping off some extra parts and redoing some wiring. There’s still room in the switch to add a led indicator afterwards!

Ampeg Sub-Blaster led mod

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Mods & Repairs

Oct 31 2010

Adding a led to Ampeg Sub-Blaster for Mika Ränttilä of Misleds. Had to drill a new hole to the enclosure, remove the old footswitch, install a new 3pdt switch and steal some power for the led.. :)

Russian Big Muff dc mod

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Mods & Repairs

Oct 31 2010

Simple enough..drilled a hole and installed a dc jack. Thing with this russian muffin is that its power is reverse polarity of typical pedals. I reversed the dc jack wires compared to a normal connection. This lets you use normal Boss-style adapters BUT it has to be a separate one if you’re powering other center negative pedals in same chain! Lasse of Mätt is using this one.

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