October 4th, 2009
I finished modding my Epiphone Valve Jr. head yesterday, installing BitMo’s Trio modifications. The amp now has a beautiful mid-range presence, has dropped is muddy bottom-end (especially before noon on the volume), and sounds like a much more high-end tube amp.
The new knob on the left adjusts tone (and works very well), and if you pull it out will give your signal a nice boost.
The toggle between the input and volume knob acts as a voicing switch; low-gain (very clean!), mid-gain, and high-gain (almost Matchless-like).
If you have one of these heads sitting around, do yourself the favor of getting the BitMo Trio mod kit and believe me when I say that you will not be sorry. It’s my main amplifier now. And when combined with BitMo’s 10-uattor, I can play at bedroom levels or line-out to ProTools.
by Preston | Posted in
DIY |
No Comments » | Tags:
amps, DIY, valve jr
September 30th, 2009
Over the last few days I’ve deconstructed a wooden shelf from Ikea’s GORM line of storage units, and rebuilt it into a Pedaltrain-like home made pedal board. Here’s the result of about three hours total work:
The GORM shelves come from the factory just begging to be made into a board. There are several size options for the shelves, however only two are really suited for pedal boards. I have chosen the wider of the two shorter shelves, which is close to the size of a Pedaltrain 2. The other, smaller size is almost a near match for a Pedaltrain Mini.
While I was comparing the sizes of the shelves in Ikea, I noticed that the GORM shelving system, because it was modular, was also sold as individual height extenders. These height extenders are essentially a 2×4 with holes drilled in specific increments. When I saw that two long planks were only $3, I snagged them and decided to use one as the back of the pedal board; the pre-drilled holes are perfect for zip-typing power supplies and cords underneath. The planks were also close in width to what I wanted the rear of my board to be in height.
Alright, now that we’re done breaking down your purchases from Ikea, it’s time to start building the actual board…
September 13th, 2009
Click to enlarge.
I bought the notoriously bland, famously on-the-edge-of-being-a-great-overdrive DOD 250 on the cheap recently. I picked it up with the sole intention of modding the circuitry. There are some great mods out there:
For instance, Analog Man has a page up giving a brief explanation of the circuit, and the differences between the reissue and the original pedal. It’s a good place to start for modding this pedal.
Also, a quick Google search will turn up half a dozen or so forum threads like this one, detailing people’s trial and errors with parts replacement.
I decided to start with true bypass.
One of my favorite things about this pedal is the use of a pin connector to easily separate the PCB from the actual hardware in the pedal. It’s a feature that will make it a hundred times easier to modify and test the circuit on a trial/error sort of basis. One snap of the connectors and I’ve got the circuit in my signal chain. An easy separation and I’ve got a stand-alone PCB to play with on the bench. Cool.
The signal path coming from/going to the white, female side of the connector is as follows:
From left to right, looking down on the opened enclosure.
Black: – output from circuit, coming from the second pin of the level pot.
White – ground
Green – positive
Grey - output
A quick diagram to show the wiring from the pin connector to the jacks & switch: Read the rest of this entry »
July 11th, 2009
Yesterday I posted about ripping the guts out of my favorite fuzz pedal, the Electro-harmonix Big Muff Pi. Today I show you how to do it.
The pedal has a really classic harmonic distortion sound- everything from woolly muffling to bee-hive droning. I must use the thing more than any other pedal on my board. But its sound might not be the only reason behind that; the thing takes up the space of two standard-sized pedals, dominating the real estate and sticking out like a big bully.
As I add more pedals to my board, the size of the Big Muff just gets more and more obnoxious. This is compounded by the fact that its electronics only take up about 40% of the housing! Look at the picture to the left- you can see all the free space that’s left after that tiny circuit board is installed. Electro-harmonix has themselves started housing their pedals in smaller, more manageable-sized enclosures, but I bought mine long before they ditched the nostalgia of these bread boxes.
So what was I to do? Well, rehouse it myself, of course. I wanted to share how easy it was (it only took me an hour or so, including drilling the new enclosure), in case you felt the urge to shrink down your own pedals. The techniques I use can be applied to a good bunch of the pedals out there, especially the ones in enclosures as easy to open as EHX’s.
The first thing I did was bring the guts of the pedal with me to Fry’s Electronics to find the right sized enclosure…
Read the rest of this entry »
July 7th, 2009
My home-made pedal board
Hi there,
It certainly has been a while. You might be interested in one of the things that has distracted me this last week or so. I needed a pedal board, I couldn’t afford one, and so I built one.
Most pedal boards- especially those that don’t come with a power supply- are pretty over priced for what they are: board, carpet, case. I decided to cut out the cost of labor and the middle man by building one myself. I ended up saving over $100 when compared to the retail price of lower-quality boards.
I wanted to document the build, so I took some pictures along the way and I’ve written a detailed account of the process. So if you’re looking to build your own pedal board, you’re in luck- the photos and build notes can be found here.
