Cool Cat Vibe Rehousing and Mods
This is a great univibe type of pedal. But....
The enclosure looks very ugly (for me). The position of the knobs is very impractical. There is a volume boost (at least this is the case on v1). There is a 2 seconds delay before the vibe effect is engaged.
The rehousing addresses the first two problems and the mods the remaining two.
Materials needed:
One clear blue LED (could be any other type too)
One 10k resistor for the LED (If you use different LED type this need to be adjusted)
One 120k resistor for the volume boost removal mod
One LED bezel
One DC socket (for the 9V adaptor)
Black Hammond 1590SBK box (or similar but large enough to fit the circuit)
Red and black wires of about 30cm length.
Depending on the skills the mod will take you about 3 to 5 hours.
The Rehousing
Step 1: Take the electronics out of the enclosure. Remove the 4 screws from the bottom plate, take the knobs off of the potentiometers and take the nuts off of the input and output sockets.
Step 2: Take off the potentiometers of the board (patience here is vital). Apply a bit of solder to the pins before trying to take them of. I used a desoldering pump for this step with good results.
Step 3: To reuse the audio sockets you need to cut the pcb board they are on. Mark the points to cut across and use a handsaw.
Repeat for the same procedure for the other audio jack.
Step 4: Add wires to the potentiometers. I used a small veroboard (3x3) to make the connections more robust and added also a bit of hot glue for mechanical grip.
Step 5: Drill the new enclosure. I used a Hammond 1590SBK enclosure (dimensions 110.5mm x 81.5mm x 44mm), cost ~ £12 from rapid.
Step 6: Take the old LED out. You need to take the metallic box off and delolder the LED from the top of the pcb.
Once the LED has been removed put back the metallic box cover.
Step 7: Install the potentiometers, the dc socket and the LED bezel.
I put the mix in the middle position, the rate on the right and depth on the left (top view).
Step 8: Connect new grounds on the audio sockets.
The wire the goes away will be connected to the ground of the dc socket.
Leave enough length on the wire so that it can reach the dc socket.
Step 9: Connect 2 wires (red color) for the battery and 9V connections from the input audio socket to the dc socket.
The top right wire will go the the battery connection of the dc socket. The top left red wire will go to the 9V connection of the dc socket.
Step 10: Connect the potentiometer wires to the pcb board. Keep track of the colours so that the are connected correctly.
I put a bit of hot glue on the pcb to give more mechanical grip to the wires.
Step 11: Connect the battery wire from the input audio socket to the dc battery connection.
The Delay Mod
Step 12: Cut the two red wires shown below:
Put a heat shrink tube and solder together the top 2 red wires. Afterwards apply heat to the tube using a lighter or a heat gun.
Step 13: Connect the other 2 remaining red wires.
The first one will go to the 9V connection on the dc socket together with the other red wire from the input audio socket.
You need to extend this cable using a long enough red wire and heat shrink tube as in step 12.
Step 14: Connect the two red wires to the 9V dc socket connection.
Step 15: Connecting the LED. I used a new clear blue LED and a 10k resistor for this purpose.
Solder a black wire on the - connection of the LED and a red wire to the + connection of the LED. The red wire should be ~ 7cm the red wire ~3cm.
Step 16: Solder the 10k resistor to the black wire of the LED and another wire that will connect the other side of the 10k to the ground. Cover the 10k resistor with heat shrink tube.
The 10k resistor is inside the heat shrink tubing.
Step 17: Connect the red wire of the LED to the remaining open wire on the switch pcb and the black wire of the LED to the the ground of the output audio socket.
The Volume Boost Removal Mod
Step 18: you will need a 120k resistor. Solder two wires on the two sides of the resistor and cover the resistor with heat shrink tubing.
One wire needs to be connected on the opamp pin shown in the left picture above. The other side of the 120k wire needs to be connected to the pad shown in the right picture above. This will put the 120k resistor in parallel with the 47k smd resistor in the feedback loop of the opamp and create an approx. 33.8k resistor, thus, reducing the gain of the opamp. This will take care of the volume boost.
The 120k resistor is inside the heat shrink tubing.
I used also a bit hot glue to give the wire some mechanical grip.
The final step is to assemble the pedal. I put a bit hot glue on the LED leads so that they are isolated from each other.
The final product of the assembled pedal. I have used some protection for the battery (if I ever use one) and the dc socket.
Top View (I am still thinking about better knob types...)
How does it sound ? As before but without the annoying delay and volume boost. The ugly enclosure is gone and the pedal can be switched on/off much better. The knobs are also much easier to set and explore the different sonic options.
