What are some of the most dramatic and noticeable pedal mods?

[fredcapo]

I would like to offer effect pedal mods as part of my repair business. I would like to setup a small display in the music shop that includes a few original and modified pedals, side by side so players could do an A to B comparison. I realize that most mods are quite subtle in effect, and improvement is subjective. That being said, can you guys suggest any mods that have a dramatic noticeable improvement over the original pedal? Thanks.

[Mark Hammer]

A great many envelope-controlled filters (i.e., autowahs) provide insufficient control over the time constants (attack/decay) of the sweep. They may sound great, but the speed of the sweep is a poor match to the tempo or feel of a song. It's a bit like having a delay pedal with tone, mix, and feedback/repeat controls, but no delay time adjustment; great for what it does but not a great fit to the individual song.

Decay and attack-time adjustment can make a heap of difference to the usability of the pedal, and is certainly one of the reasons why EHX finally included them in the Enigma and Riddle filter pedals.

Of the two, variable decay time is often the easiest mod to implement on a wide variety of filter pedals, since it generally only involves running a pot and series resistor (for minimum decay time) to ground, in parallel with the averaging cap. You can run a pot and series resistor in series with the envelope signal, leading up to the averaging cap, to vary attack time, however in practice I've found that this interacts and interferes with sensitivity. Attaining a musically useful range of attack times often eats up so much drive current, that at longer attack times the sensitivity control has to be dimed all the time to even have a hint of sweep. Adding a decay control proves to be much less trouble in most circustances, even though a nice slow attack would be wonderful.

Most autowahs will have rather slow decays, suitable for rhythm guitar. Making the decay time faster will make the sweep sound more synth-like, allow for basses to have a more percussive feel, and also make the sweep fast enough that any envelope ripple is much less audible or objectionable. If space does not permit a pot/knob to be installed, a simple 3-way mini-toggle with fast/medium/slow decays will still provide for a pleasing range of feels and make the same tired pedal seem like a new toy.

Assuming the pedal uses some means to fully bypass the circuit when not in effect mode, a dry-lift switch can add new life to phasers, chorus and flangers, by providing a vibrato option. Unfortunately, a lot of commercial pedals do not completely bypass the circuit, but rather use JFET switching to simply lift the wet signal and cancel the effect, rather than fully bypass the circuit. There IS a way to implement vibrato while still using e-switching, but it can start to get complicated to explain and implement, so I'll just leave it as recommending dry-lift in pedals that use TB.

Another mod I generally do to chorus and flanger pedals, which may not be as totally obvious as the two above is a bass cut on the wet signal. This is especially useful for bass players. Both flangers and chorus produce audible pitch wobble as a byproduct of the time modulation; choruses moreso than flangers. While not a great problem for guitar, the bass holds down the pitch of the tune, so the bass fundamental needs to be rock solid, and some choruses can interfere with that. What I do is track down the last cap in series with the wet signal, just before wet and dry get mixed together (usually at an op-amp output stage), and reduce its value so that I have a bass rolloff starting around 300hz or thereabouts. This leaves the chorus effect intact and provides all the swirl in the mids and highs, but applies much less of the chorus effect to the low end. Makes the pedal much more usable for bass.

Finally, virtually ANY modulation pedal with an LFO can produce quasi-ring-modulator sounds by speeding up the LFO into the audio range. So, if one has a phaser that sweeps from once every 10 seconds, to 10 times a second and the rate-determining cap is .47uf (I'm making up numbers here, but you get the idea), switchng that cap to .047uf will bump that LFO rate from .1-10hz up to 10-100hz. Once you get above 20 hz or so, you start to get audible sum/difference products. Works with vibrato, flanger, chorus, phaser, and tremolo pedals. Easiest way to implement is to replace the stock cap with the smaller value and use a SPST toggle to add in the large value.

[Enzo]

Try asking all your customers that use FX units what they wished their effects did but currently do not. Sometimes knowing what the customer needs suggests things to offer.

[eschertron]

Try asking all your customers that use FX units what they wished their effects did but currently do not. Sometimes knowing what the customer needs suggests things to offer.

Ack! Give the people what they want?!

...why on earth would anybody do THAT?

[Mark Hammer]

In principle, a great strategy, and a very democratic one.

Having said that, however, musicians are often not the most articulate lot, nor are they always aware of what is technically possible or feasible, whether it is the surprisingly feasible transformation of a humble pedal, or their desire to turn a pedal into something it simply cannot be. So, while there are certainly many exceptions, relying on musicians to dictate what one's mod business lines should become, is likely to be a little frustrating.

On the other hand, once a palette of mods that the service person deems satisfying, useful, and easy to implement and repeat (pop a X-inch hole here, install this model of SPDT toggle with wire lengths of X inches) has been identified, certainly the market can be relied upon to inform you about what business lines should be retained and flaunted.

I think if one examines the mods provided by one of the earliest and most successful purveyors of mods - Robert Keeley - many of the mod services offered are not the sort of thing that musicians would have suggested themselves in a million years; largely because they a) didn't know it could be done, and b) had no idea how it could be done.

For instance, of the many thousands of analog delay owners/users out there, what proportion of them know, or would spontaneously suggest, that a mod which progressively shaves off just a little more top end from each successive repeat would be useful? I suspect less than 1%.

Sometimes you have to stick a mod in front of potential clients, let them hear for themselves the difference it can make, and entice them.

The trick is to identify a population of potential users, based on the numer of folks owning a given pedal, or type of pedal, identify some simple changes and accompanying pricepoint, that would justify both their expenditure (would YOU pay $100, after shipping, to mod a $30 Behringer pedal to replicate a Boss pedal you can buy used for $80?), and justify the investment of your time (would you advertise mods for $30 that take 6hr of your time to do?). Make some demo videos that provide strong validation of the value of the mods (e.g., compare not just one, but TWO stock versions of the pedal against the modded version, and demo it under a variety of conditions and settings), don't promise more than is delivered, and provide quick turnaround. Heck, if one wants a stellar reputation, record a brief sample of their pedal pre- and post-mod, and send it to the client with the modded pedal, so that they know what has been changed.