schtaf wrote:Hey 5thumbs great document you've got going here. I was hoping you could help point me in the right direction here.
I did the keeley mods a while back and liked the obvious improvement, but i found that i could really only get one setting out if it, and the controls were limited to maintain reasonable noise floor and gain. ie. tone could never go past noon and anything past maybe 2 oclock on the gain was metal territory. Level was unity around 10:30-11:00.
So I decided to try the AMZ phat mod, and it really improved the noise floor and made the controls do what they were meant to do. (Keeley + AMZ at this point.
however, my problem now is that the gain knob provides very low gain in a smooth fashion from minimum up to around 2:30, where it quickly ramps from there and gets wild distortion and strong noise floor. I want to be able to get that searing tone of the high gain range as well as the really good crunch that the amz mod seems to make possible. However, I'm not getting great sustain/distortion from the upper registers as well as with bass notes.
So, is there something I can do to bring it back a few steps from the phat mod? Or can I move forward a few more steps to smooth out the gain knob from crunch to scream... or is that even possible??
Thanks for your help! you seem to really know your way around this 40$ bundles of modding joy.
schtaf
The Huevos Grandes (HG) Mod was my attempt at "cleaning up" the Vintage Ripper, which, in turn, was my first mod incorporating Jack Orman's DS-1 Phat Mod. If you have a big, open-treble type amp like a Fender Twin/Bassman, the HG is great. If you have a smaller, tight-treble type amp like a Fender '57 Deluxe (or Roland Cube 30, etc), then the original MIJ or my MIJ Mod are great.
That aside, if you want a less-fizzy sound with more bass, clarity and drive, then my next two mods are probably up your alley.
The first is the '5thumbs HMG Mod', which adds switchable soft-clippers, Crackle-NOT-Okay! (CNO) replacement of Q2, active tone booster to the HG Mod. The objective is additional clarity and bass while maintaining saturation.
The second is similar to the '5thumbs HMG', except that I wanted to use a CNO to drive the hell out of the NPN booster in Q2. (That combo produces a nasty, metallic, splatty fuzz as you get increased clarity out of the CNO, then use the gain of the CNO to overdrive the merde out of the Q2 NPN. This mod will be almost the same as the '5thumbs HMG' mod, except Q2 stays stock as an NPN transistor and I replace/mod Q1 and Q3 with two CNOs.) This mod is weird in that it removes the ability of the DS-1 to be bypassed in the conventional sense and makes it an always-on sort of pedal. Why? This mod will allow you to switch the distortion circuit on/off with the footswitch, but when the distortion is off, the dual CNOs are still in the signal, kind of like a
ZVex Super-Duper 2-in-1. The objective of this mod is to add the clarity/boost of the CNO as the input stage, but then use that gain to overdrive the Q2 transistor. The name of this mod will be "CNO-EV1L".
I've got parts ordered for the final '5thumbs HMG' build and need to do the same for the CNO-EV1L, plus finish daughterboard layouts and doc text for the latter. I hope to get these done in the next few weeks (certainly before June 1), so you might want to wait and see if the new mods tickle your fancy.
As for the Keeley mods, there is a bit of an overlap between most of my mods and his. I'd recommend comparing the mods to see what's the same. I'd then de-mod the Keeley mods that don't overlap, then add the mods from mine that are unique as well. Why? I have no idea what any intermediate, mixed-together mod between Keeley's mods and my mods would sound like. I can't really recommend more in that area because I can't tell you what to expect.