Someone good with modding...

[Rygot]

PM me.

Doing some work but I'm going to end up frustrating myself/regretting if I don't ask a few questions first.

[moose23]

Could you post the questions up here?

[McSpunckle]

Yeah, bro, post your questions here. Shoot me a PM if there's a reason you don't want to, but there's a few awesome modders here on the forum, and combining their forces = better chance of success.

[Rygot]

Forgot about posting this thread...

Anywho, I'm modding a zg. Trying to get chaos, noise, GZ/ZG toggle, and power starve.

Now, I did what I thought I should do but they really don't seem to do anything except for the power starve.

spst on the 2.2m resistor does nothing but gate it bad enough that no noise comes through, spst on the .1 cap does nothing noticable, dpdt on the C and E with the base still in the pcb on the 2n2222 does nothing.

So...need opinions on what I should do, maybe I put switches on the wrong shit, wrong legs on the transistor. It would also be greatly appreciated if someone sent diagrams or just explain as to how all the switches should be wired, to make sure I did that right as well.

[McSpunckle]

The ZG doesn't have chaos mode.

On the SM circuits, the non-chaos mode basically reduces gain of the first stage so that it gates off oscillation and noise. With the ZG, it's so gated you have to have it or it's hard to get anything out of it. So, to turn a GZ into a ZG, you have to put it in Chaos mode and flip the transistor.

I seem to recall noise mode working for the ZG, though. But it's been a while.

For the transistor, I always get new ones because they so fragile. Make sure you haven't broken a leg or something. And remember, the emitter is the side with a tab sticking out, and if that's on the bottom, the base is in the middle (just like it looks in a schematic).

Without knowing exactly how you wired it, it's a bit hard to say what may be wrong.

[Rygot]

Okay so even though chaos mode does nothing in ZG, I still need it to turn it into a GZ.

And I'll check on the transistor to make sure I have it in correctly, I made sure I used a new one as well.
I'll also replace the 2.2m resistor because they have caused problems for me in the past.

What is the correct way to wire a spst toggle? Maybe I overthought something, or maybe simplfied it...

I'll keep this updated with any other questions I may have.

Until then, thanks for the help.

[McSpunckle]

With a SPST, you just keep one leg of the component connected to the board, run a wire from the other leg of the component to either lug of the switch, and run a wire from the other lug to the other hole the component connects to.

A cleaner way is to do it in reverse... connect a leg of the component to the switch, with the wires going to the board instead.

The way I do it is with a SPDT. Run wires from the holes in the board, and to the common lug of the switch, and one of the outer lugs. Connect the component to the common and the other outer lug. It's cleaner, I think.

[Rygot]

Alrighty, thanks again sir.

I'll replace some stuff and check it some more and get back to this.

[McSpunckle]

Let me know if you need diagrams or something. I'm pretty busy, but I can make time during coffee breaks or something (I drink A LOT of coffee).

[Rygot]

Well, I don;t think I'll need a diagram...but...

Maybe I could have attached the spsts to the wrong components?

I don't really have a ZG or GZ Schem so I went off of the SM/VFM. The cap and resistor that I removed are right next to each other, I know for sure that the resistor is 2.2m so I'm guessing that is correct, but idk about the cap.

[McSpunckle]

The VFM/SM schematic should work. It's just an SM with a 2N2222 instead of 2N3907. The Godzilla I modded had two of the exact same board.

You can't be removing the wrong cap, honestly. Any other cap would basically break the circuit. You might get noise, but no guitar signal would go through.

THE PLOT THICKENS.

The SPSTs are -breaking- the connection, right? Not shorting them. That's very important, but then both switches should basically do the same thing.

Otherwise, I'm a bit perplexed.

[Rygot]

Well today I looked inside to find out that the resistor leg broke so now its not getting any signal through whatsoever.

But before that, the switch on the cap did nothing to my knowledge as well as the transistor switch.

I'm not at home at the moment, when I get home I can post exactly how I have everything wired that way you dont have to guess.

[McSpunckle]

It does sound stock, right? The switches that seem to not be doing anything just leave it sounding stock?

[Rygot]

Actually...no not really.

A lot smoother now that I think of it.

[McSpunckle]

Alright, now we're narrowing things down.

First thing's first: Triple check that the components you chose are correct and that the switches are wired properly. Also check for solder bridges.

The smoothness could be caused by the transistor being in wrong. If it's not activating (or broken), it could be acting as a diode, which would basically make it do the same thing flipped, and that could smooth out the signal (like the diodes in a big muff).

Removing the capacitor doesn't change the tone much, generally, just causes oscillation. It basically just limits a LOT of high frequencies. If the signal is clipping off enough because of the transistor, it could be stopping oscillation anyhow-- making it seem like it's not doing anything.