Rehousing cheap pedals

A forum devoted to mod, tips and suggestions for upgrading and rehousing your VERY CHEAP commercial stompbox to near boutique excellence.
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teddy
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Post by teddy »

Rehoused a Danelectro Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive and Drive in the same unit, as I like how they cascade into eachother but hated the original stomp switches. I don't know if I'll decorate it properly, but I had a marker pen to hand and thought it lookedl ike a cat face, sooo.... ;)

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Props to Super Velcroboy, whose blog was quite useful and inspired my idea of a rehouse!

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Manilus
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Post by Manilus »

fazen wrote:
black dalek wrote:
doctorums wrote:i tried searching but couldn't find what i was looking for. could someone help me rehouse my french toast step by step. apologies for total and utter n00bness, i've only got one build under my belt and it was from a kit. schematics are like greek to me, maybe someone has a pictorial or layout or something. thanks in advance.

https://supervelcroboy.wordpress.com/page/2/
Nice picture.

Looking for some help on doing the rehouse. Any step by step directions or tutorials for rehousing a French Toast?
I just picked up a French Toast and am looking to rehouse it as well. I have searched through all the posts about doing it, but have not found anything conclusive. I've seen everyone being directed to SuperVelcroBoy's site, but it appears to no longer have the information for this and redirects to his Flicker page which only has pictures. I've looked at some of the more thorough guides for other Dano pedals and think they could help to some extent, but it would be great to have one specifically for the French Toast. I also plan on swapping out some of the components to match the Foxx Tone Machine clone from http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/foxx.php .

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Greenmachine
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Post by Greenmachine »

That crazy cat pedal is hilarious! :lol:
"[Y]ou want sketchy, dude? I breadboard on a door." -- RnFR, 2011
"This amp is freakin loud, like crazy, I'm going to kill pets loud." -- mich, 2011

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bcjek
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Post by bcjek »

teddy wrote:Rehoused a Danelectro Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive and Drive in the same unit, as I like how they cascade into eachother but hated the original stomp switches. I don't know if I'll decorate it properly, but I had a marker pen to hand and thought it lookedl ike a cat face, sooo.... ;)

Props to Super Velcroboy, whose blog was quite useful and inspired my idea of a rehouse!
teddy: Could you post an inside shot of your pedal - so cool. Are the two cascaded into each other, and if so, in what order?

Thanks in advance, BCJek

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bcjek
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Post by bcjek »

bcjek wrote:
teddy wrote:Rehoused a Danelectro Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive and Drive in the same unit, as I like how they cascade into eachother but hated the original stomp switches. I don't know if I'll decorate it properly, but I had a marker pen to hand and thought it lookedl ike a cat face, sooo.... ;)

Props to Super Velcroboy, whose blog was quite useful and inspired my idea of a rehouse!
teddy: Could you post an inside shot of your pedal - so cool. Are the two cascaded into each other, and if so, in what order?

Thanks in advance, BCJek
OK - I found them over on the Orange Forum. Thanks.

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simonallaway
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Post by simonallaway »

I am almost done on my own rehouse of a Coolcat Vibe. Just the decal to go. This thread was very helpful, so thanks to all. :) Here's my post about it:

https://hotbottles.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... lcat-vibe/

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Post by cctsim »

simonallaway wrote:I am almost done on my own rehouse of a Coolcat Vibe. Just the decal to go. This thread was very helpful, so thanks to all. :) Here's my post about it:

https://hotbottles.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... lcat-vibe/
Very nice looking job. How did you manage to fit the main pcb in a 1590B enclosure ? Did you file the sides ?

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sp3k
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Post by sp3k »

Squigglefunk wrote:
Cow4prez wrote:Well almost, you still have to apply the power filter and some minor stuff. Just use the schematic and you'll be dandy.
maybe this is my problem, I was trying to wire it straight up to the main board... :blackeye
Did you made this work? do you need the "power" board?

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sp3k
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Post by sp3k »

i got the french toast working on my breadboard using the colours thing on page one.
I didn't do the "power thing" around the power suply, do i really need it? i did only use a battery.
Why are there 2 R's on the 3dpt?!
btw, starving this pedal makes some great sounds

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thieves
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Post by thieves »

this is my girlfriend's rehoused french toast :)
with true bypass
new pots, a footswitch for the octave,LEDS and the D sign on it:wink:
now i'm ok for this pedal to be on her pedalboard :applause:
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Image

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Greenmachine
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Post by Greenmachine »

Looking gooooood.
"[Y]ou want sketchy, dude? I breadboard on a door." -- RnFR, 2011
"This amp is freakin loud, like crazy, I'm going to kill pets loud." -- mich, 2011

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sp3k
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Post by sp3k »

looks good! can you post some inside pics?

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thieves
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Post by thieves »

sp3k wrote:looks good! can you post some inside pics?
how to rehouse the french toast (and other dano effects)
remove all the pots-switches-leds-jacks
only two pcboards remain
the board attached with the footswitch is useless and should be removed (it's for bypassing purposes)
next step is to connect the new pots(metallic),switches,that are found on the main board
the 2 boards are connected by some cables
blue=send
green=9V
yellow=ground
orange=no bypass send
red=return
brown=led control

for the french toast remove brown and orange so that we are left with the in,out,9v,ground wires
http://www.tonepad.com/getFileInfo.asp?id=76
according to this you can now normally connect the 3pdt switch and led :D

sorry for the messy guts
Image
Image

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sp3k
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Post by sp3k »

thieves wrote:

for the french toast remove brown and orange so that we are left with the in,out,9v,ground wires
So, i've connected the in, out, 9v, and grd to a breadboard. But i'm having some kind of ground problem. When i connect the thing to my amp and guitar, i get a lot of ground noise (that's what i think it is), if i connect it to my ipod and play with amplitube i get no noise, except when i touch the metal back of the ipod e get some crazy sounds!!!

Anyone has any idea what's going one? do you think that when i connect everything in a box with switches and pots and all that stuff, the ground problem will be gone?

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thieves
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Post by thieves »

sp3k wrote:
thieves wrote:

for the french toast remove brown and orange so that we are left with the in,out,9v,ground wires
So, i've connected the in, out, 9v, and grd to a breadboard. But i'm having some kind of ground problem. When i connect the thing to my amp and guitar, i get a lot of ground noise (that's what i think it is), if i connect it to my ipod and play with amplitube i get no noise, except when i touch the metal back of the ipod e get some crazy sounds!!!

Anyone has any idea what's going one? do you think that when i connect everything in a box with switches and pots and all that stuff, the ground problem will be gone?
have you connected all the grounds properly?
yellow wire and jack shields and 9v ground must be all connected to each other

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sp3k
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Post by sp3k »

Yep :/

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thieves
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Post by thieves »

sp3k wrote:Yep :/
check your soldering and your connections

i'll post some pics in a couple of days

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electrafrench
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Post by electrafrench »

hello

planning to rehouse both a danelectro black liquorice/beyond metal and a french toast (not in the same box!)

For the beyond metal i'm planning to add 2x 3dpt with leds (effect on/off & octave on/off) and a third momentry footswitch because the beyond metal is not the most useable effect for me in it's current state. My french toast is second hand and with the octave switch turned off the volume drops to almost nothing so is just gonna get the one switch...

Whats currently putting me off is that i dont fully understand the danelectro diagram posted somewhere above
download/file.php?id=460&mode=view <<---- (this one)
I get it all apart from the dc powerage schem, does anyone have a photo or diagram of one they have done? i'm crap at reading schems and i do know i need to learn! ** also confused because the above 'how to' for a french toast doesnt mention adding anything extra for the dc..

i've read through loads and loads and havent really seen what i'm looking for, also people seem to have done dano rehouses using different methods so it's all a bit confusing!

oh the 2nd thing i was going to ask was... instead of desoldering the pots (all of the poles have broken off of both of the pedals!!) would it be ok to cut the legs where they connect to the pot body and solder the wires to connect to external pots on to those legs? Basicly trying to avoid desoldering as much as i can because i dont want to fry the boards, i dont have a desolder pump!

any advice would be great, i'll do some photos as i go along if someone can steer me in the right direction as it seems like a lot of people are still a bit confused about rehousing the smaller pedals.

some gut shots of the beyond metal for funsies and because the 2nd board seems to have a lot more stuff on it than the french toast... will any of it be necessary?

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee2 ... ch/top.jpg
https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee2 ... CF3007.jpg
https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee2 ... CF3006.jpg
https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee2 ... CF3005.jpg
my hand printed t-shirt ----> www.electrafrench.com

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Drzeus
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Post by Drzeus »

Just got a cc vibe with my total guitar mag sub.No need to mod for vol boost when on.Under the battery,when in its compartment,is what they call a 'saturation' trim pot.U can use it together with the 'bias' trim,to mellow out the vibes edges and the vol boost when on
Maybe the next 25 years won't go by so fast,when my soul is free at last

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Kaiser Kluge
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Post by Kaiser Kluge »

Looking to have this guy rehoused. I contacted a few places, but they say that they have an agreement with Visual Sounds to not rehoused their pedals. Any idea who doesn't have this agreement and would do this?

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