ZMD #3 - Russian Fur

ZMD #3 is done and out the door!

This is a clone of a Civil War Green Russian Big Muff Pi. The printed circuit board came from General Guitar Gadgets. Enclosure is a blem from Pedal Parts Plus. The electronics components were purchased from Small Bear Electronics.

This was a big improvement over ZMD #1. The layout was improved and all the internal wiring is shorter and more direct. Still plenty of space for an internal battery. A "starve" control has been added for an old school "dying battery" sound.

Prickly Pear Finished!

The Prickly Pear has been sounding awesome! It's been used live and in the studio.

It was finally time for some hand lettering.

The MODE, VOLUME, TONE, and SUSTAIN controls have been labelled MO' BIG PRICKLY FUZZ.



ZMD #1 is completely finished!

Guitar Parts in the CAN!!

Guitar parts for 4 songs were tracked the other night. Four songs in 4 hours. Had a false start on Sunday night. Had listened to the songs for about 8 hours during bass tracking. Got the guitars set up and spent about 2 hours playing stuff that wasn't worth keeping. Had to come back another night for a fresh start.

Things fell into place a couple of nights later. I rode my bike to work just like on regular practice night. Wore my usual sweaty bike shorts that I usually wear to practice. Brad and I tracked at the same time.

Gear that I used:

* Fender Strat through Marshall with custom TubeScreamer.
* Jazzmaster through THD and custom TubeScreamer.
* Les Paul through THD and Prickly Pear/Beaver/Muff Clone.
* Les Paul through CRANKED Bassman and custom TubeScreamer.

Drums done, bass done, guitars done. Next is vocals.

Happy Anniversary to Zorro Devices!!

Happy 1 year Anniversary to Zorro Music Devices!! Well almost...

Actually it was about a year ago that I had just gotten the boot from my previous employer. One day out of the blue I got escorted to the front door. Found about 25 other fellow employees out on the sidewalk too, stumbling around in a confused state. This was right after I had moved into a house and I was stone cold broke. As usual, I've worked like a demon to set things straight.

Tons of resumes going out the door daily didn't pay off until a resume workshop. Things picked up after that.

In between is when I started to get BACK into music electronics. It would be tempting to thank my previous employer for helping me get on this road...but they don't really deserve it. I'd been migrating from acoustic to electric music for the LAST 3 YEARS!! I'd already been purchasing mod kits before my "slow time".

Fortunately I'm employed again. That's how I can afford my "hobby".

Better yet is that I've been in a band - for more than 6 months. Still way short of a 1 year mark with "The Country Gentlemen". But things are looking stable.

My plan is keep at it with the music electronics slow and steady for years and years to come.

Zorro Devices #1 - Prickly Pear

Zorro Devices serial number 001: THE PRICKLY PEAR. Here's my first pedal build.

Big Muffs have totally captivated me. I've been obsessed with FUZZ ever since I worked on a couple of civil war Russian Sovtek Big Muffs. Way cool - and hella pricey on Evil-Bay.

I decided to purchase and build a clone kit. The BYOC Large Beaver is widely reviewed as a reasonably priced Muff clone.

Of course, I made some minor changes to the circuit and put it in a copper colored housing purchased from Pedal Parts Plus.

The Prickly Pear is the name of this box. Named after the cactus with edible fruit.

Summer/Fall Update

Things went downhill during the summer. My car broke down on the freeway coming home from Folklife. Lost power crossing the Ship Canal Bridge and had to coast off the freeway. Got the car back from the garage the day before my cat had to go to the vet for her last visit. She had been with me for 14 years. Intestinal cancer made her miserable at the end. Two weeks later my landlord called me to tell me that I had to vacate my rental house because the owner wanted to sell. Goodbye workspace garage and goodbye drumset. Goodbye to the garden that we had just planted. Threw out all the living room furniture - long since destroyed by the cat.

Managed to find another house in the neighborhood. Set up the workshop in one of the bedrooms but I have to go outside for drilling. Managed to build my first clone, the BYOC Big Beaver which is a clone of the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff. I made some changes to the circuit and put the clone in a custom enclosure. I call it the Zorro Prickly Pear. Sounded good enough to use for a show at the Shipwreck.

FOLKLIFE ON SUNDAY

JORGE ZORRO be playing some rocking Mexi-Ska at NW Folklife.

Sunday 11:00 - 11:30,
Fisher Green Stage.
Big stage just south of the fountain on the east side of Key Arena.

See you there!

NW FOLKLIFE

Next Electric Show

Next show with Brad Yaeger Band is Thursday, May 6, 2010. Venue is the illustrious BLUE MOON TAVERN in the U-district.

Also on the bill are Colby Imus and the Good Lieutenants and the Betty Ford Falcons.

See you there!

Installing a Lace dobro pickup

The Lace dobro pickup is a snap to install! This job took about 5 minutes! Just a little bit of double stick tape and it's good to go! Much easier than the piezo install.

Installing a Fishman piezo pickup in a resonator

This resonator has a spider bridge but the Fishman pickup works with either a spider or biscuit style bridge.



First thing to do is remove the strings and the bridge cover.




Pull out the bridge and cone from the guitar.




Drill a hole through the end and install the jack.




Connect the piezo to the underside of the cone. Make sure that you have the correct side of the piezo touching the cone. This guitar didn't quite match the instructions provided by Fishman.




Install the cone and bridge. Put on a string and connect the guitar to an amp. Adjust the tightness of the cone nut until there is optimal output from the pickup. The pickup was sensitive to this adjustment. Too tight or too loose and there was hardly any output.




After the nut is adjusted, pull the string off and install the bridge cover. Put the strings on and you are ready for some electrified resonator.

Modded Digitech Hot Rod Distortion Pedal

This Digitech Hot Rod Distortion pedal has been a good workhorse for me. Mods on this pedal are bit difficult because of the surface mount technology. However I was able to upgrade some caps. The evil green monitor LED was a nice upgrade. Sounds way cool.

Modded DS-1 distortion pedal

A recent pedal modification project was this BOSS DS-1 Distortion pedal. I went through a complete cap upgrade and also worked on the bass response and cleaning up the high end. One of the toggle switches selects between a standard symmetric clipping and a more aggressive asymmetric clipping. The other toggle switch selects range in the tone - I found that I wanted a brighter sound when playing through a Fender amp. There is also a new bright yellow LED.

Simple Pedal Board

A "plywood and duct-tape" style of pedal board is low tech yet effective. I've been low on cash so I decided to build a simple pedal board instead of purchasing a commercial board. Power comes from a 1-SPOT supply.

The board is a particle board (my favorite!) shelf that I spray painted green.


I installed another piece of wood on the underside in the front - this makes the board sit inclined instead of flat. Not really necessary, just a little extra touch.


For a little padding I put down some closed cell foam - normally used as weather stripping. The boat cleat is the "handle" for moving the board around.


The pedals are fastened with the usual method of Velcro (TM). But that stuff doesn't always hold. I wanted something really bombproof so I installed some loops for cable ties for every pedal. This photo shows the tie-down loops for the footswtich for the digital delay.


The first version of the board: Tuner -> Wah -> Tube Screamer -> Distortion -> Chorus and a footswitches for the delay and for the amp.


A more recent version of the board: A tremolo and analog delay are added after the chorus. The footswitch for the digital delay has been removed. The pedals are a little too close to each other - some "rearranging of the furntiture" might be next.

Chorus as vibrato

Much as I hate to say it the sound of a chorus pedal is just not as popular as it used to be. However you can get some spacey sounds out of a chorus pedal by turning it into a vibrato.

The chorus effect is usually a mix of a dry signal with a vibrato (pitch modulated) signal. Many stereo choruses provide a split signal with a dry signal coming out one output jack and a vibrato signal coming out another output jack.

On the Boss CE-3 it's as simple as setting the mode to stereo and only using one of the output signals. The standard setting is a mono mode. In stereo mode the vibrato signal comes out of output jack A.


The modulation rate was a tad slow for my tastes to I modified the oscillator circuit to increase the maximum rate. While I was in there I also upgraded some electrolytic caps to film.

Tightening the play in the Snarlin Dog Wah

I was getting some good use of the Snarlin Dog Whine-o-Wah. But then the pedal started to have some loose play. The pedal wouldn't stay in a fixed position. When I took my foot off it would flop down into the full toe position.

Hmmm, time to fix it. Taking a look at the wah, it looks like there is a leaf spring that holds the pedal in position by friction.


So if the spring were a little tighter there should be more friction. Looking at the underside of the pedal I noticed a small hole in the heel. So I took the rubber heel pad off the pedal. Ah, we now have access to a screw.


Tightening the screw pushes down the leaf spring onto the rod that crosses the pedal. After a few adjustments I could lift my foot off the pedal and it would stay in the same spot.

BOSS ACA to PSA power supply mod

The older BOSS pedals may not work correctly with a modern AC power adapter (like a 1-Spot or Boss PSA). These older pedals required the Boss ACA adapter and they have a sticker on the housing right next to the power supply jack. The ACA supplied a higher voltage than the PSA. The ACA voltage is unregulated and the PSA supplies a regulated voltage. The ACA-style pedals have a series resistor (and diode) that drops some voltage from the power supply. The pedal might not get enough voltage if you use a PSA power supply on a ACA pedal.

In my case I had a CE-3 chorus that worked fine with a battery. But when I used a PSA supply the LED wouldn't light up when I engaged the pedal. I also had a HM-2 that sounded really terrible and ratty with the PSA supply.

There are two workarounds:

1. Daisy-chain the power supply (in parallel) to some non-ACA pedals. These will drop the supply voltage.

2. Modify the ACA pedals to accept the PSA supply.

The mod is simple: jumper the series resistor. The newer Boss pedals do not have this series resistor. This mod has no effect if you are using the battery - the resistor is cut out of the circuit if nothing is plugged in to the power supply jack. The jumper can be placed at the numbered wire connections at the end of the board near the control knobs.

Here is the ACA sticker on a DS-1 Distortion pedal.



For all the pedals in my stash, the mod is to jumper the blue wire that goes to the power supply to the yellow wire that goes to the input jack. On the CE-3, that's holes 2 and 3.



Here's the jumper for holes 2 and 3 on the CE-3 chorus. I just used part of component lead for the jumper wire.



For the HM-2 Heavy Metal the holes are 4 and 5.



Ah, the DS-1 has two sets of blue and yellow wires! Joy! But by looking at the connections to the power supply jack and input jack you can see that holes 10 and 11 should be jumpered.



Here's the jumper between holes 10 and 11 on the DS-1.



The pedals can now be used with a single modern AC adapter power supply. They also sill work fine when daisy-chained to other pedals. And they still work fine when power by an internal battery. Joy!

This article by stinkfoot provided some very useful background information on the ACA/PSA issue.

Morley Wah sweep mod

There are a lot of things to like about the Morley Classic Wah pedal: rugged construction, spacious circuit board with abundant labelling, and most of all no scratchy pots. The Morley is famous for the "electro-optical" coupling in their pedals. In the late 70's this was a very innovative and radical design. However, the sweep on this Classic Wah was engaging much too rapidly. All the modulation was happening back near the heel position. Fortunately, the sweep can be manipulated to be a little more smooth.

Here is the pedal before opening it up. Another thing that I like about this pedal is that the on/off switch is off to the side so you don't activate the device by pushing the pedal in the full toe position.

Flip the pedal over and undo the four screws holding the bottom plate. There are two screws on each side.

You might have to open up the battery compartment to give yourself something to grab onto while pulling off the bottom plate.

Instead of a potentiometer, the Morley's use an LED and an LDR (light dependant resistor). A tab allows more light to hit the LDR as the pedal is moved forward into the toe position.

Power up the pedal (I prefer a battery when I'm working on pedals). Keep it on its back while you hook up the pedal to a guitar and amp. You can still work the foot pedal while the device is on its back. GENTLY push down on the LED. Moving the LED down means that the pedal will have to be in more forward position to pass the light. Try working the pedal after each adjustment. This should help smooth out the sweep.

Overall, the sounds of this Morley Classic Wah are comparable to a Dunlop Crybaby. It's a straightforward wah sound, not too radical, and a bit noisy. The pedal is solid but not high-end. OK if you're on a tight budget.

Modding the Screamer

The Ibanez Tube Screamer has always been a classic distortion pedal. Especially when modded back to the TS808 sound. I applied the Monte Allum modification for the TS9.

Here's the TS9 prior to any modifications.

Removing the battery cover provides access to the four screws that hold in the bottom plate of the pedal.

I followed the instructions and tested the pedal after each part was changed.

Two toggle switches are added to the pedal for this mod. Here is the pedal with the new holes drilled for the new toggle switches. These two holes could have been a scootch lower in the pedal, nearer to the crease.

Finished pedal! Monte Allum provides mods for several common pedals.

Taking the Scratch out of the Snarling Dog

My Snarling Dogs Whine-O-Wah started to "scratch" when I engaged the wah pedal. It would make a "scritch-scritch" sound whenever I moved the pedal up or down. This was a classic case of a dirty pot.

Most of the time, the usual fix is to apply some contact cleaner and work the pot until the dirt is worked out. It made sense to remove the pot from the pedal to provide access. In addition, the inside of the pedal would stay clean and free of contact cleaner. Here are the step to access the potentiometer and apply contact cleaner:

1. Flip the dog on it's back and remove the machine screws that hold the rubber feet on the bottom plate. It might be helpful to also remove the battery cover to have something to grab onto to pull off the bottom plate.

2. Carefully lift off the bottom plate. You'll want to be careful that you don't lose the lock washers between the bottom plate and the pedal housing.

3. From the topside remove the nut and lockwasher that hold the switch in place. Flip the pedal over on it's back again and remove the footswitch. Use a flat head screwdriver to work off the pinion gear from the pot. You can then loosen the 1/2 inch nut, the lockwasher and the flange that hold the pot into the housing.

4. You now have clear access to the pot. I put a paper towel behind the pot when I sprayed the contact cleaner into the pot at the shaft. Then I worked the pot and removed the excess grimey grease from the pot. Here I was able to plug in the pedal to a guitar and amp. I had to repeat the process a few times until the pot was cleaned out and wasn't making a scratching noise.

5. The only real trick to reassembly is to get the shaft in the proper position relative to the rack. Loosen the screw that holds the rack support in place. The support is the white plastic thing against the rack. Rotating the support out of the way allows you to move the rack around and get some clearance. Now put the pot back in place with the flange, the lockwasher and the 1/2 inch nut. The pinion gear can go back on with some help from a screwdriver. Turn the pot completely counter clockwise. Then put the pedal in it's fully forward position bringing the rack into the housing.

6. Put the rack support back in place, as shown in the photo below. Put the switch back into the top of the housing. Last thing to do is reassemble the bottom plate.

7. Time to WAH!!

Greenwood Harvest Festival

Many wicked witches, pirates, spooks and some ladybugs and Zorros played some games and partook in some free nachos. The Greenwood Harvest Festival was buzzing with activity. This festival was a lot fun for the kids and for Jorge too! Greg Spence Wolf played for 3 hours and I played along for part of that time. Paulette tapped for over an hour as well. Many thanks for a fun part of Halloween in Greenwood!