Need Mod Ideas/Advice

[Incognitus]

Well I have a Digitech Hothead distortion that I don't use and I opened it up to repair the battery connection and I was wondering to myself, "Self! What can I do with this here useless pedal?"

This is the question I now pose you. What exactly can I do to change this seemingly dud of a pedal into something that I can benefit from? Either from pedal modding experience or changing the properties of said pedal.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Note: I have never modded a pedal. This is the first time I've actually opened one up. Yes I have some experience soldering.

Alex

[i2k]

It depends to what you don't like about the pedal. I have no idea on Hothead, never played , owned nor saw the guts, but in general, you can do following mods to a distortion pedal :

• Change the opamp to something else, which could be: different flavours of 4558, TL072, NE5532, OPA2604, etc, etc this will change: the distortion character, noise & gain level.
• Change the clipping diode to LED (crunchier), germanium (softer, more tube like).
• Change the input coupling cap to tune the bass response.

[bongomania]

+1. Also, if the pedal happens to have a "tone" or "EQ" control, you can adjust its response by changing the resistor and capacitor associated with that control.

[kringle77]

I use my bad monkey pedal in the effects loop of my Billy sheehan modded pearce preamp simply for the speaker simulated out which is very good. It makes the distortion channel sound smooth through a tweeter. I used to use it with a loop pedal as my main "freak out" distortion sound. It's really great for that. Someone makes a modded version called the BADDER MONKEY pedal.

[i2k]

ah..I forgot the greatest mod of all : change the fx indicator LED to bright blue to make the pedal looks like those boutique pedals...LOL

[Tomass]

Originally Posted by i2k

ah..I forgot the greatest mod of all : change the fx indicator LED to bright blue to make the pedal looks like those boutique pedals...LOL

+1 on that. Its a well known fact that anything with a blue LED will always sound amazing

[Incognitus]

The only problem is that I have no clue as to how to accomplish any of this. Any resources y'all can point me to?

[bongomania]

Do a search here on "DIY" for links and info.

[Swimming Bird]

Well, if you're into really weird sounds, then I suggest you circuit bend it.

That involves 1) running it off battery 2) opening it up to expose the circuit board with the unit on and a signal running through it 3) using a test wire to touch different nodes (unused solder points on the board).

When touching two nodes makes a weird noise, mark those points and find another. Once you've found all of the points you can, solder a wire to each node, then to a breaker switch with the other node that creates the short you like. Drill a hole through the case for the breaker switch(s), screw it in and you're done.

[i2k]

If you can post a hi-res photo of the guts of the pedal...maybe we can try to help you