My Danelectro Rocky Road is moving house.

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After I completed Lucy, I finally managed to get my Poodle Pedal Parts Hot Cake clone working, so now I need a new project.

I've decided that this little pedal deserves a new home...

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Comments

  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    Got started with this today. The pedal has been playing up at gigs recently - cutting out or not turning on, so I wanted to get it to a more secure and reliable state.

    Started by removing one of the plastic pcb mounted jacks. I melted the solder and used a combination of braid and a solder sucker to free the legs then soldered in wires to the pcb. 

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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    With both jack sockets removed and new jack sockets attached via wires, I plugged it in to check it still works. And it does!


    The mini-circuit board at the top there holds the footswitches - I've removed the rubber pad from one of them in the photo. Hardly sturdy looking is it?
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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    Next up, I removed the little on off switch and again soldered wires in place.

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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    New switch in place and it still works.

    The original was a momentary switch, I guess there's some kind of relay arrangement so I've replaced like with like. (Actually I'm using DPDT rather than SPDT, but I'm just using one side.

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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    Next up I removed the crappy little trim pots they use in these. So far, here are the crappy components I've removed. The tiny thing in the middle, believe it or not, is a footswitch. No wonder the damn thing was on the blink!

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  • dean2371dean2371 Frets: 139
    edited April 2014
    this is really useful, i have one of these and would love to re-house it.'ll look forward to seeing the rest of this (hopefully) sucessful transplant
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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    edited April 2014
    Hi Dean,

    I'm really no expert, but I hope this helps. I'm just replacing components like-for-like with better quality stuff, but there are more sophisticated things you can do with these Dano pedals. I'd already done the 'Unity Gain' mod on this pedal. It's a simple jumper on the pcb that stops the hike in volume when you switch the pedal on and makes the pedal a lot more usable.

    I toyed with the idea of dispensing with the 'in/out' board altogether and making it true bypass, but I wanted to keep it simple for this project.

    I got all the bits from http://www.doctortweek.co.uk

    I found useful information while researching from these pages:




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  • dean2371dean2371 Frets: 139
    thanks DannyP. i've already done the unity gain mod. i also have a Chicken Salad with both pedals wired to a remote triple switch; makes it easier to control. Still tempted by re-housing them though.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71960
    DannyP said:
    I toyed with the idea of dispensing with the 'in/out' board altogether and making it true bypass
    Good to see you didn't. True bypass using a mechanical switch in the signal path is a crude and clunky (literally as well!) solution. What you've done is to improve the buffered soft switching by using a better switch… which is the right way. You could make it even better by paralleling the two sides of the switch. (Just extend the wires across to the two opposite pins.)

    "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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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    edited April 2014
    Dean - I have the Chicken Salad too, which will probably be next on the project list. In fact the Chicken Salad stepped in for the Rocky Road at last night's gig! It's still a bit of a heart-in-mouth moment when you step on these things mid-gig. I'll be glad when I can rely on them a bit more!

    I opened up the Chicken Salad recently and the footswitch is quite different to the Rocky Road. The enclosure-mounted, spring-loaded depressor thingy presses a weird plastic lever -  but still a momentary switch by the looks of it.

    ICBM - Glad to hear I'm doing it the right way! I'll take your advice and parallel the two sides of the switch.
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  • thermionicthermionic Frets: 9499
    I have a Chicken Salad that I'd like to rehouse - the main reason being there's an internal trimpot that affects the sound quite a bit (I think it biases the light source, i.e. the mid point between darkest and brightest). I think there's a tricky to get hold of pot though, 50k dual gang or something.
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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    I got my Chicken Salad second hand and the bloke who had it previously had 'modded' it so you could adjust the internal pot.

    When I say 'modded', I mean he'd drilled a hole in the enclosure through which you can shove a screw driver to adjust the pot!
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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    edited April 2014
    Today I managed to remove and replace the toggle switch and connect the wires that will eventually connect to the LED (the twisted red and black ones in the photo).

    I've connected the wires for the new LED in slightly different places in the circuit from the original in order a) to have it flashing to indicate speed and b) to bypass the current limitting resistor to make it brighter.

    NB. the pair of LEDs involved in the diode clipping for the 'drive' feature are stil in their original place in the photo.

    http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt192/p1eces/Mobile Uploads/20140428_223423.jpg
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  • thermionicthermionic Frets: 9499
    DannyP said:
    I got my Chicken Salad second hand and the bloke who had it previously had 'modded' it so you could adjust the internal pot.

    When I say 'modded', I mean he'd drilled a hole in the enclosure through which you can shove a screw driver to adjust the pot!
    Yes, I've seen that one and considered doing it myself!
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  • DannyPDannyP Frets: 1667
    .......Aaaaand I've f*cked it.

    It worked with the new sockets and switches and it's screwed with the new pots and LED.

    DAMN!

    When I first fired it up, there was intermittent shouty distortion noise, but other than that it was fine. Bypass was fine, 'on/off' switch was fine, ramp was fine, the pots worked and the LED was flashing in time with the speed of modulation when the effect was on. When the loud distortion was not cutting in, it was fine (although, it could have been my imagination, but maybe the modulation sounded slightly different?).

    Then the switching seemed to fail, so I thought I'd fix that before returning to the other problem.

    I'd lost continuity between ground on the main board and ground on the daughter board that hosts the switches. Given that the daughter board contains no other components, I decided to ditch it and wire the switches directly to the main board.

    Now it allows now signal through in, won't turn off/on, and the LED (which I moved back to the original position) is on constantly.

    I will carry on tinkering, but I don't have a schematic for the main board. The surface mounted tiny components and what appears to be 2 layers of copper track are making it hard for me to tell what's going on.Plus I'm a novice at electronics anyway.

    I might just buy another Rocky Road!!
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