BLOG 888

We were in the studio mixing again last night. It sounded finished while we were there, but nothing is certain the world of psychoacoustics.

Fingers crossed, eh?

Hi, I thought I’d share one of my few hobbies with you. I have a fetish for ripping open Boss DS-1 pedals and modifying them. Boss DS-1s are great for modifying because they are solidly built, and they sound like shit. This means that many people give up on them, so you can usually pick one up second hand for around £20 on eBay or Gumtree. The reason they sound like shit is because some of the components used in the newer pedals are not ideal. The circuit however is pretty much identical to the vintage DS-1s which sound incredible.

These factors combined make the newer DS-1s ripe for modifying. By changing a few components you can have something that sounds decent with very little outlay and effort. Best of all, you can experiment with components and their values to find the sound that you’re after. It is possible to achieve anything from a bluesy breakup to over the top screaming leads by swapping out certain parts.

There is a wealth of information on modding DS-1s on the internet. A great starting point is this pdf which features several decent sounding popular mods you can try: http://www.diystompboxes.com/DIYFiles/up/Build_Your_Own_DS-1_Distortion.pdf

Anyway, I am no electrician, and I have learnt a lot of lessons the hard way. DIY electronics is not rock’n'roll. The most important lessons I have learnt are:

1. Don’t try to solder when you’re drunk and/or on drugs. You’ll just make a mess of it and have to throw your beloved pedal in the bin. You also run the risk of spilling superglue all over your flatmate’s tablecloth (still haven’t told her, but I’m sure she knows).

2. Do it in steps. Decide on an easy goal for the day, and then stop when you’ve finished. Try your pedal out for a couple of weeks and then if you’re still not happy decide what you’re going to change next and do that. If you’ve been hunched over the same pedal for six hours at a stretch you’re likely to run out of patience and start making mistakes. I’ve gone from having working pedals to working doorstops in the space of a few hours through overzealous tweaking.

3. You don’t need to change an awful lot of components to have a big effect on the sound. The temptation can be to change every little thing on the board, but this is not really necessary. Start small.

5. Keep your soldering iron clean, and try to make sure you don’t hold the iron on the board for too long. There is a very real risk of burning the tracks off your circuit board. Use a solder sucker and solder wick when desoldering, and work quickly. If you do burn off one of the tracks, it may be possible to trace it back on using something called Wire Glue. This little trick has brought at least one of my pedals back from the dead.

4. Read the forums. There are some very clever people who know what they’re talking about (unlike me).

5. Test it with a practice amp to make sure it works, but remember it will sound completely different though a bigger amp. It is possible to modify the pedal to make a tiny amp sound huge, but this will turn into mud at stage volumes.

Anyway here is what I was up to this morning:

It is my first mod to feature a replacement chip, using an SIP-8 to DIP-8 adapter. The chip I decided on is a Texas Instruments TL072CP op-amp. I think it sounds good. The chip adapter has a socket soldered into it so you can audition different chips quickly and easily.

In the clipping section I decided on asymmetrical clipping using germanium diodes. I also soldered a small value ceramic disc capacitor in parallel to the diodes on the underside of the board, as per the popular Keeley mod. This apparently smooths out the distortion but many say they can’t hear the difference. A 47pf ceramic disc only costs a fraction of a penny or something stupid, so I did it anyway. Lastly, I swapped a few of the stock caps for yellow boxes, and put a couple of tantalum caps in the tone control section.

I’ll try to get it recorded so anyone interested can hear what it sounds like.

Here’s some useful links if you want to get into it. Usually you can find what you want on eBay but I prefer to get my bits from Doctor Tweek as his service is second to none and his prices are very fair:

Doctor Tweek – specialist in electronic parts for guitar effects
Brown Dog chip adapters – you have to get these from the states.

If anyone knows of some good information resources or retailers of geeky bits and bobs, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

I will stop boring you all to death now. Happy soldering.

Finally sorted out my pedal board. I use the Whammy with my left foot, but it comes first in the chain. This meant all my other pedals were fucking miles away to the left of the mic. Will eventually shorten that longer lead so it goes around the edge of the board, but this will do for now.

Chain goes Gtr -> DT-10 -> Whammy -> ’84 DS-1 -> ’88 ProCo Rat -> DD-3 -> Amp

Good mixing session yesterday! Shaping up nicely. Should be some new stuff to feast your ears on soon.

Went through some charity shops this morning looking for crappy old video cassettes from which to rip snippets and make into a montage for a music video. Here is a selection:

Will continue the hunt in Camden tomorrow.

We took some photos of ourselves going to Estonia to play at Tallinn Music Week because our manager has been encouraging us to generate content.

Here is our party at the Wetherspoon’s in Stansted airport. The time is 6am. Everyone was smiling so I told them to look sad because we’re supposed to be in a band. From left to right are Scott, Stu, Matt Riviere, Napoleon III and Napoleon’s co-conspirator Nestor.

We were relieved to get off the plane because it was filled with lager louts on a stag do drinking Stella in the isle. The stewardesses didn’t sit them down because the Stella is €4 a can. We were met by a man called Tauno off the plane who took us to the venue in a taxi van.

Tauno must have known where we were going because our names were written on a green sign when we got there. We felt welcomed to land in a country where we’d never been and see our names anticipating our arrival.

Then we did our soundcheck, which was the first normal thing we’d done all day. Here is Scott testing the drums. They were fine. I forgot to take a photo of the room which is a shame because it was spectacular. At the time it didn’t seem as interesting as the massive PA and the dormant stage lighting, possibly owing to the fact that I need glasses.

The picture in the middle is of the hotel we were staying at. It was really tall, which was appropriate. In order to give a sense of scale, the picture on left is of two short things. The window of the hotel didn’t open wide enough to fit the TV through. After the hotel we went to the Apollo book shop to do an acoustic set. They sold beer at the book shop, but the security guard wouldn’t let us drink it once we’d bought it. I thought my beer would be safe with me on stage, but he came and told me off in front of everyone so I had to hide in a cupboard and finish it there.

Here is us doing what we set out to do. We didn’t know what to expect when we arrived at the venue because we had hardly seen a soul in town. Thankfully it was busy. Everything went smoothly and we seemed to go down well with the audience.

After we finished playing we stuck around to watch Napoleon III and drink all the complimentary beer. When the beer ran out we went and got a burger and then went back to the hotel. We had to be at the airport by 7am. All in all it was an exhilarating and exhausting experience. We are very glad to have been invited.

We played John Kennedy’s club night at the Tram & Tooting Social the other week. We had lots of fun and our set went down well. The night is held regularly and it’s free entry, definitely recommended if you’re in the area. Here is a photo of us performing:

When we got there we realised we only had one set list to share between us. It’s the white square in the middle of the rug.

Marathon session tracking and mixing a new song today. Here’s a picture of me screaming something unintelligible in the general direction of a microphone that probably cost about as much as a small island in the pacific rim.

We’ve been selected by John Kennedy for his top five exposure acts this week! Haven’t heard it played, hit is up with link if you manage to find it online.