My little ZT Lunchbox packs a heavy punch. So much so that I can’t crank it past 1/4 of the way without my family alerting me to the noise. 

The solution? Salvage my old guitar amp and build a Ruby Amp.

The ZT Lunchbox is awesome! So awesome in fact that it’s hard to get a good tone out of it without waking up half the neighbourhood. The Ruby Amp designed by runoffgrove.com (the Ruby amp located here) is a 1/2 watt amplifier. It’s low part count and easy to follow schematic makes it an ideal first build for budding DIY’ers and is relatively cheap to make. That is if you keep it on the prototype phase. Being a 1/2 watt amp, don’t expect to take it to gigs or band practices but for solo bedroom jams it’s more then efficient. 

Most people will house the complete build in an enclosure, some people replace their old amp’s PCB with this one. Crazy people make amps out of crazy things. I ripped apart my old amplifier to get to the potentiometers inside and I ended up with a small 6.5” speaker in an amp enclosure. So I decided to create the cutest stack amplifier ever!

The stack amp stands at about half a metre and at it’s loudest, its probably the same level as a casual conversation.

The PCB

Why haven’t I painted the front? 

Simply put. I’m not finished. I’ve still gotta add a tone control (not in the original schem) add a footswitchable bazz fuzz, add a switch to go from normal ruby to bassman clone and finally add a tube pre-amp. Yes. A real 12AX7 tube. Keep your eyes on this post as it becomes updated.

- Timothy 

When I was about 15 I the track “Plug In Baby” by Muse and wondered how the hell Matt Belamy achieved that high pitched squealing. At the same time I had this Muse obsession and was totally in awe of the whole band. Needless to say, Matt Belamy and Chris Wolstenholme were the reason why I started to practice 6 hours a day on bass and start researching and lusting over effect pedals. 

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Stock DS-1 sounds rather tinny and empty. To top it off, it doesn’t sound rather natural at all. As you know, distortion pedals are made to emulate an amplifiers speaker being overloaded. With the DS-1, you get this harsh, shrill sounding thing that’s rather fake.

A Quick internet search lead me to a few solutions.

- Buy a kit from Monte Allums

- Replicate a certain mod that everyone knows

- Find different mods and perform them

Being the cheap ass that I am, I opted to go for the 2nd and 3rd options seeing I already had the parts I needed. 

For this I did a Keeley All Seeing and Ultra Mod. To fix the shrills, I socketed the input cap so if I wanted more roll-off, I just have to open the DS-1 up and replace the caps.

That’s all done. And as always, signed and dated. Just in case I decide to sell it/

- Timothy

P.s. Just go to instructable and type in DS-1 mod keeley. It should come up straight away.

Yes. In an attempt to whore myself out and get some more attention I’m gonna announce a little competition. 

Basically if I get 1,000 followers by December 1st, I will make a booster or a bass fuzz pedal for the 1,000 follower. Here’s a twist. 

If the 1,000th follower tells me who refereed them to my blog, that person will also recieve a handmade pedal for me.

Yes thats right. If you refer someone and they’re 1000th person, you get a handmade, hand painted and signed pedal by me and your referee get’s a pedal for you. I also get more readers.

WIN, WIN, WIN! 

There is no strict guidelines when it comes to pedal arrangement. It all comes down to each persons specific tastes. That’s the beauty of pedals. You can build a pedalboard according to your specific needs and tastes. Some people will just whack pedal after pedal with no thought to any layout. However, some of us who need to adhere to a specific guideline can rejoice. In this post, I will outline what pedal goes where, how it sounds, patching them up and powering your electronic monstrosity. 

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I somehow came into the possession of an Ibanez TS-7 that was in need of some desperate repairs. Liking a good challenge I decided to take the plunge.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that the color of the TS-7 was different to mine. Strange. I flipped the pedal over, peeled off some of the velcro and had a peek at the serial number.

As I suspected. A low serial number. Why is a low serial number important? The lower the serial number, the closer the pedal is to the original date in which the pedal was made. This is why vintage tube screamers can range from affordable (don’t know if $250 is affordable though) to the down right absurd (I’ve seen it go for $500 to $600 tops) no matter what the condition. Seeing the serial number is in the 6 digits, it could be a second or third revision. If my mate is really lucky, he could be holding a first run TS-7.

The Repair

My mate had informed me that the pedal wouldn’t go into overdrive with the switch down. But bypassing works normally. With those few words, I had already diagnosed the problem. It was a bad switch. If not, I would have to delve deeper into the rabbit hole and try to find the source of the problem. As soon as I got the pedal. I opened it up.

I was right. The switch is absolutely hammered. The Hulk must’ve owned this because the switch has been smashed to smithereens. This is why the pedal wouldn’t go into overdrive. Because the switch is gone, the switch that tells the tube screamer to engage is broken. So the tubescreamer waits for the command, but it’ll never come because there’s no one to tell it to. Next thing to do is to rip out the PCB and start replacing the switch.

Holy hell Batman! There’s 5 PCB’s in that pedal. It sure was a pain in the ass to pull the whole thing out. The T shape PCB is where the switch is located. Below is a picture of the PCB without the switch and the 2 switches below it.

The next picture is the switch in place.

Now. The moment of truth. Was the underlying problem the bum switch? Or will I need to pull out the good ol’ multimeter and audio probe (a guitar effect DIY’ers best friend!) and go poking around?

SUCCESS!

And yes, it was the switch that was the problem. Next is to convert this baby to a TS-808.

The Mod

This next part should be shorter then the repair. To convert the TS-7 to a TS-808 we need to replace 2 resistors. If you’re planning on doing this you need 2 resistors. Make sure they’re 1/4, 5% resistance and are CARBON FILM. Not the blue metal films.:

- a 100ohm resistor (reistor code: BROWN, BLACK, BROWN)

- a 10k resistor (resistor code:BROWN, BLACK, ORANGE)

Where do you find R55 and R58? It’s on the output jack PCB. How to find it?

- Flip the pedal over so the back is facing upwards

- Make sure it’s facing the right way e.i. The writing on the back is not upside down.

- Unscrew the back plate. 

- Unscrew the main PCB. Be careful not to lose the spring. 

- Pull the PCB out. It’s socketed to the Potentiometer PCB but be careful as there are wires that you could pull out. 

- The output PCB is located on your right. There are 2 screws. The first one is on the right. See a hole in the output PCB? The last screw is there.

Whip out your screw driver, put it in the hole and twist away.

using the following image as a reference, you need to take out R55 and R58. 

See the R58 label? The R58 resistor is located directly underneath. Replace that with 100ohm

Next to R58 is  a large round black thing. That’s a capacitor. above that there’s a piece of wire labeled W28. Next to that is R55. The colors on the rings for R55 if you can’t see it are yellow, purple and brown (or is it orange?). Replace R55 with 10k. When it’s done. It should look like this:

Screw back the output jack, the main PCB (make sure you plug the main PCB back in to the potentiometer PCB at the top.) and the back plate in and your done! Before I put the back plate off, I went ahead and wrote some stuff in the back plate. As a boutique pedal and DIY’er I like to know that people have actually had a part in building or modding something. So I wrote down what I did, put a serial number and signed it off.

Just let them know that someone put their time, effort and love into something they’re passionate about :-).

Voila! A TS-808 at half the price. But in my friends case, for free.

Lucky bastard.

The Demo

Curios as to how the mod stacks up against a stock TS-7? Want to know what it sounds like before you purchase a TS-7? Look no further! 

RIG: 

ZT Lunchbox Amp

Squire Tele with Seymour Duncan pick ups.

The TS-7 on the left, next to the amp is the TS-7 with TS-808 mod. Next to it is a stock model.

I’ll let your ears be the judge. I’m impressed. I’m sure you will be too!

- Timothy.

PRO TIP! The TS-7 superseded the TS-5. Around the 1990’s Ibanez produced the Soundtank series. These where meant to be a more economical versions of their pedals but with lower build standards and plastic housing. If you can find a TS-5. The TS-5 again is basically a re-housed TS-9 so the same TS-808 conversion can be done on a TS-5.

DISCLAIMER! 

I take no responsibility what so ever if you attempt this mod and horribly screw it up. The way I wrote it is the way I attempted it. So don’t even try to pin me with this “the instructions are wrong” BS. If you can’t do it. THEN DON’T. Get someone else to do it for you. 

I can do the mods and repairs. Just email me for a quote.

I can mod a brand new TS-7 and ship it out to you. I charge $140 for the mod. $60 for the TS-7, $60 for parts and labour and $20 for shipping. A brand new TS-7 from here cost the same amount so what are you waiting for? That $140 isn’t solid. The TS-7 comes from USA to keep the price down and is subject to change. 

A little warning on the comment system. If you have nothing constructive to say, don’t write anything. 

I do not wish to feed the fat hungry trolls and will result in an instant email and IP address ban.

And yes, I do have the patience to ban every IP address you happen to churn out.

- Timothy

Ever noticed how if you have a bunch of pedals, your guitars signal just isn’t the same? It’s got all to do with bypassing and the cables you use to connecting them all up. In this blog post, we’ll look at the bypassing offered by the market, as well as an in depth look at some reasons why tone is lost due to bypassing and cables.

What is True Bypass?

True bypass is done either through mechanical or electrical means. True bypass basically means that your guitars signal is taken out of the effect PCB. In the most simplest of terms your signal when the effect is OFF goes directly from the input jack to the output jack. Mechanical true bypass is done via a 3PDT foot switch. The most common application here can be found on most boutique (I say most because some of them out there can be switched from 3DPT and buffered. Visual Sound does true bypass but it’s a propriety system done electronically.) Where a 3PDT is wired to allow true bypassing. Electronic bypassing doesn’t utilize a 3PDT foot switch but allows true bypassing through the use of electronic components. 

What Is Buffered Bypass?

Buffered bypass means that whilst the pedal is off, your signal is still in the effect PCB. Something amazing happens to your guitars signal. It gets “buffered”. It’s not noticeable on 1 pedal. But line up 4 and hey presto! That sparkle in your tone is gone. I’ll explain why a little later on. Buffered bypass is found on cheaply made pedals (they usually have the WORST buffered bypassing), mass produced pedals. Higher quality buffered bypass can be found in boutique pedals as well. 

In Review Before We Continue?

Just remember this when the effect is OFF

TBP: Guitar signal is out of the pedal

BBP: Guitar signal still in pedal

True Bypass, Buffered Bypass and The Mystery of The Missing Guitar Tone

For those of you out there. Have you noticed how if you plug in dry your tone is very full but when you run it into a large pedal board, it sounds very flat? It’s all got to do with impedance and cable length. First off. Impedance. Impedance is electrical resistance in a circuit. Electrical guitars have low impedance the exception being active pick-ups (pick ups that need batteries e.g. EMG humbuckers). What buffered bypass does is that in order to avoid your tone from sucking due to impedance, the input from the pedal will bring your signal up to a higher impedance and once it leaves the pedal, the output will bring it down to an impedance low enough to let the signal sound as if it was unaffected.   

Can you imagine what would happen if you had 5 buffered bypass pedals all in a row? With your impedance going up and down, it’s bound to effect it. 2-3 of the good buffered bypass pedals in a row, it’s not so bad but once you start adding more and more and more, you’ll notice that your tone is gonna start to suck big time. 

Cable length plays a big part in this as well. say you have two 30’ cables. One going from your guitar to your pedals and the other going from your pedals to your amp. Next up, nine 1’ patch cables to hook up all your pedals. All up you have 69’ (that’s an accident I SWEAR!) of cables for your signal to push through. That’s 1/5 of a 100 metre sprint. Your guitar has to push it’s signal through 20 metres of cables. Your high end frequencies are gonna get lost in that mix. Why? Capacitance my friend. Simply put, capacitance is how much electrical charge is stored.

The smallest of capacitance build up can really affect your guitars tone. To make this really easy to understand, the longer your guitar cable the more capacitance will build up and the more your high end frequencies are going to be lost. This is because high end frequencies get affect more by capacitance then the low frequencies. Not only do your cables carry capacitance, but your patch cables as well. Now if you have a rig that’s all true bypass, then with all the pedals bypassed, the capacitance in the patch cables will add up, further taking away from your high end frequencies.

The Best Offence, Is A Defence

There are some ways in which you can avoid the dreaded “tone loss”. Some involve spending some cash, some not at all. I’ll list them in order of cost.

1. Re-arranging pedals

This one costs nothing at all but could potentially drain your piggy bank. This only works if you have a combination of TBP and BBP pedals. One thing you could do is put the buffered bypass pedals first so that the impedance is set already. At this point, some tone will be lost. Next in the chain put the true bypass pedals in the middle. Then finally put one buffered bypass pedal. This helps fix the impedance mix match, put the sparkle back into your tone and help drive the signal through how many odd feet of cable your running. This is the method I’m currently using now. 

2. Use your amplifiers FX loop

Using an FX loop splits your pedal rig in two (that’s if your doing it right). In a usual FX loop set up, your compression, EQ and dirt pedals go in normally. Your modulations, delays, pitch etc. will go through the loop. This set up allows you to use your amps distortion in your pedal rig, rather then kicking in the amp distortion and adding gain to all of your pedals. Some of the more expensive amps (Mesa Boogie comes to mind) will have a wet/dry mix and allows you to dial in the amount of effects you want mixed in with your guitars tone signal. This hopefully puts less strain on your guitar. I use this method when I play on the church amp. 

SEND goes to INPUT of your first pedal

OUTPUT of your last pedal goes into RETURN

Sounds stupid but it took me a while to figure this one out.

3. Convert your pedals to true bypass

Fair enough if you want to do a few, but converting a whole pedal board is reserved for the masochistic! To convert a pedal to true bypass you have to first, bypass (LAWL!) the input buffer by re-routing the signal path or taking it out all together, disabling the switch, wiring it up to the 3PDT and then find a place to drill and mount the foot switch. It’s a lot of work but the results are nothing short of amazing. 

4. Use an Input Buffer

As the heading suggests, using an input buffer will up the impedance, adding some high end sparkle back into your tone. This is really useful if you run really long cables into a bunch of true bypass pedals. Can also be used in reverse. So if you have a short guitar cable, but one long ass cable going from your amp to your pedals, you can use this to put the impedance up and drive your signal through the cable.

5. Build/Buy A True Bypass Strip

A true bypass strip looks like a very long pedal with foot switches in it. Every footswitch has it’s own channel. You can turn each channel on and off. The idea is to put each of your pedals on it’s own channel so you can turn them on and off. Why would you do that? It’s called running a parallel effect loop. 

When you plug in your guitar into your pedals, and then into your amp your running it in series. Your signal is running in a straight line. Remember parallel lines in maths class? Two lines that never meet? That’s what’s happening in a parallel effect loop. You have 2 signals running but they never meet. You have your guitar signals tone running through the true bypass strip. Remember that in a TBP set up, your guitar signal remains untouched. A TBP strip works like an effect loop on an amplifier. Your guitar goes into the input of the TBP strip and then output of the TBP strip to the amplifier. WIth no pedals plugged in, your guitar signal will run straight through the strip, into your amplifier unaffected. 

Your pedals run through send and return. Each 3PDT foot switch controls it’s own channel with it’s own send and return. Say you have a 8 input TBP strip, you will have 8 foot switches, 8 send and 8 return. All 8 of your pedals will take up one each. So now you have 8 pedals controlled by your TBP strip. When you engage the the pedal on the TBP, your guitar signal get’s mixed with the effect. When you disengage, you go back to an unaltered tone. 

This setup is really, really useful if you have a lot of buffered pedals as you can have a true bypass set up without having to resort to converting the pedals to true bypass. It also saves you from tap dancing as you have the on/off switch right infront of you. The more elaborate true bypass strips will have wet/dry mix, tuner out with mute/ master mute, boost and input buffers.  

In Conclusion?

In my opinion, both true bypass and buffered bypass do their own thing but at the end of the day, it’s what works best for you. At the moment, I have a mix of TBP and BBP pedals and I’m quite happy with my set-up for now. In the future I do plan on building a TBP strip but that day isn’t any time soon. Expect a full work log for that! 

It’s up to you to make an informed decision and the steps you need to take in order to tackle this issue. All in all, I hope that I’ve explained this problem throughly and hope that the information has at least helped in some way. 

- Timothy

P.s. 

COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT! Even if you don’t follow me or if you have nothing to say. Comments let me know that this blog is being read and will lead to more frequent posting (and better writing :-D)

Coiled cables are known for their distinct voicing giving your tone a bell like chime. Although this does come at a price. There’s quite a bit of background noise on the vintage coils and your highs do get rolled off a bit (or so I’ve heard :-)). With the Fender Koil Kords, Fender stays true to the vintage coil chords but with some modern improvements. 

First off, the cables come in 3 different flavours. Patch, standard and premium. The patch cable comes in 1 foot. The standard has 15’ and 30’ and the premium at 30’. I’ll be reviewing the standard 15’ as I can’t seem to find a 30’ premium anywhere. Upon inspection, the cable is much longer then it looks. It’s about 3’ coiled but stretched it will go the full 15’. The connectors are right angle and straight. What’s neat about the connectors is that it shows an arrow pointing in which the signal should flow, although I doubt that it matters.

The plugs themselves however is something that bugs me. Instead of using metal plugs like most cables in the lower-mid range of the spectrum, Fender has opted to use moulded plugs just like the Fender Tone Masters. The Tone Masters are cheaper and longer and to be honest I’m kind of dissappointed that Fender over looked this. Fair enough if they don’t use Switchcraft or Neutrick plugs but moulded plugs on a $30 cable? You’ve got to be kidding me. Down the track, it’s probably best to replace them with Switchcraft or Neutrick (depending on your taste) plugsto extend the life of the cables although it will void the warranty. Hopefully, the premiums don’t have this problem (and I’ll most likely do a review when I track them down).

Durability seems to me like it will be a problem. It’s rather thin and flimsy and I can see the wires breaking near the start of the connectors. On the looks, it’s got that vintage mojo and really takes you back to the 50’s and the 60’s when rock ‘n’ roll music is just starting to emerge.

TEST RIG

Tele both pick ups -> Fender Koil Kord -> ZT Lunchbox -> Fender Tone Master -> Garageband (for recording)

I’m going to compare this cable to a handmade one my old church sound tech made for me.

BREAKING NEWS!

I just got sold a broken cable. I should’ve suspected it when it was a bit knocked up and flimsy. 

Okay, let’s do this again with a brand new cable unnamed music store gave me :-)

First thing that you hear will be the cable made for me, the second will be the Fender Koil Kord (please excuse the terrible playing ><)

It’s quite a subtle difference. The first cable is quite bassy and punchy (if there is such a word) compared to the coil. Just as it’s advertised the coil does highlight most of the highs and mids, but the bass does suffer quite a bit. A bit of EQ on the amp or by pedal will fix it, which I do do on the amp I use at church (Ashton GA100. Hey don’t knock it. It’s fitted with a Celestion 12”).

LOVED

+ Vintage vibe without the vintage problems

+ Flow indicator for the technologically challenged

+ No buzz!

HATED

- Questionable build quality

- PVC Moulded plugs  

VERDICT?

This doesn’t get a picture. Why? For some people it’s awesome. For some, not so much. I can’t approve this cable because it’s not something people should rush out to buy. It does it’s job for me and it helps achieve the tone I want. But for some people i.e. shredders, the highlighting of the highs will be a problem. 

Actually, it does get a picture

WANT ONE?

You can get the standard over at Allans Music. I think I saw the premium at Billy Hydes. If you want something that’s built a bit better then you can give the Bullet Cable coils a go