Blue Box without Volume Drop

[Sockgazer]

I did this mod, it was pretty simple, and it sounds so much better. I'm unsure why they made it sound so muddy to begin with, maybe to make it sound "smooth" and appeal to retro heads. It's much better this way and has loads of volume on tap.

http://www.box.net/shared/2i1xckvoe3

My Mic generally doesn't capture a lot of bass so I might have overcompensated there, but I think it sounds good. I got the Blue Box mainly for the Industrial style Fuzz, not just the bleep de bloop, so I'm glad it's now a usable distortion that can also boost whatever it's going into.

[nbabmf]

Hmm... now I'm glad I didn't do that to mine. It doesn't sound to me like a Blue Box anymore... no glitch, no unpredictability, no character. I think you probably could have just picked up a used Boss octave pedal and achieved the same result, but to each his own.

[Sockgazer]

Huh? All it does is make it louder and less dark. No impact on the glitchiness of the "character".

[nbabmf]

It sounds much different than mine. Was there another pedal before it? Hot pickups?

[Lintybits]

Is that the C11 clip?

Did that to mine and it changed the tone a little. I put it on a toggle to make sure I wasn't crazy. Glitchiness is still there just made it sound less fat to me.

[Sockgazer]

The C11 cap is a resistor so it'll sound brighter, and probably less warm to you. However this is the kind of sound I wanted it to do, basically, nice and trashy.

[McSpunckle]

The C11 mod doesn't make it less glitchy. It's literally just removing a treble cut capacitor at the output. It gets a little louder, and opens up quite a lot.

It's a great mod, and it's pretty easy to make it switchable. With a pot, you could also make it variable. But MXRs circuit boards aren't good for modding, so you gotta be careful.

[Lintybits]

But MXRs circuit boards aren't good for modding, so you gotta be careful.

I'll 2nd that. I clipped the cap, then later decided I wanted a toggle. That went so well I said hey, maybe I'll try a rotary pot....



...and that's when I burned the traces off the board

[nbabmf]

Do you still have the pedal, Linty? You can solder wires to the legs of the (electronically) adjacent components. It's not pretty, but it works. You should see some of the repairs I've had to do when people try to mod their own shit and fuck it all up.

My favorite are the chip swaps. Usually all of the traces end up burnt and I have to run 8 little wires all over the board.

[Lintybits]

I still have the guts somewhere, put some wire where the traces lifted and had it sort of working again. Never used it much in the 1st place, ended up having a friend paint the case and used it in a Jawari build.

[Jero]

That looks awesome! I could have a ton of pedals painted like that, with different colors, nvr get old.