Reverse Taper on vintage Ernie Ball Volume Pedal

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scovell001scovell001 Frets: 60
Hello to all on the forum.

I have an 80s Ernie Ball volume pedal & 'very simply' I want to reverse the taper exactly as the this article from Ingo Raven here  I have actually contacted Ingo a couple of times asking if he can mod my pedal, but have had no reply.

Thanks very much to the advice of Adrian at ThorpyFX I switched round 2 of the wires on the pot which reverses the taper, but, yes you guessed it. Now my pedal works backwards. I guess the next stage is to figure out how to change the string so that it pulls the pot in the opposite direction when working the pedal normally ?

I just wondered if anyone had any input at all or had done this mod themselves.

Thx in advance & here's a pic of the same era pedal I have.


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Comments

  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71959
    Yes, the string needs to wrap in the opposite direction around the brass wheel, so it's below the wheel at both sides.

    Hours of fun :).

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • What does this do exactly?
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  • scovell001scovell001 Frets: 60
    edited November 2018
    ICBM thanks so much for the reply. Yes, I'll have to figure out the string wrap I suppose, not really looking forward to that.

    Jimmywings. OK, in a nutshell, the bulk of volume is coming in right near the end of pedal travel (foot nearly all the way down) in the existing setup.

    What I'm looking to do is basically reverse this so that it comes in at the beginning of the pedal travel so that its possible to do fast swell-ins but also very easily back off a cooking amp into light overdrive territory aka Mark Knopfler.

    Swapping the inputs has the desired effect but sucks treble. What I've done so far is leave the white pin alone but swap the 2 red leads around.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71959
    What does this do exactly?
    Basically it’s a way of simulating a reverse-Log pot, which is what the originals had. Presumably these became unavailable at some point, and they changed to a standard Log rather than swapping to a Linear - which would have been a better compromise.

    Getting the spring and string arrangement hooked up correctly can be quite a faff if you haven’t done one before. You’ll need a hook of some sort - a scrap long thin screwdriver that you can bend the end of over is ideal.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • Well I did it ! Fortunately I had a couple of large paper clips kicking  around so used those. What a faff though! I haven’t had a chance to fully test yet but I think just swapping the 2 red connections around had resulted in treble loss. When I was messing around with the connections before I m sure I swapped the white and one of the reds around & that fixed it. I’ll report back with a final update after full testing over the next few days 
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71959
    Swapping the two outer wires on the pot is correct. The middle one should still be connected to the output jack. 

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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