Guitar Pedal Repair

The Ibanez TS9DX is an upgraded “deluxe” version of the Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer. It houses the original TS9 circuit, along with 3 additional modifications. The modified versions can be selected via a selector switch. In this post, I cover how I repaired one of these TS9DX’s, and the process behind how I did it. Ibanez […]

There’s the birds, there’s the bees, and there’s reverse polarity protection. Always protect your circuits. The Electro-Harmonix Bassballs is a twin-dynamic envelope filter. This particular unit ended up on my bench as a result of plugging in the wrong polarity power supply. In this post, I go over the repair process and how I got

The Line 6 DL-4 Delay Modeler has proven to be one of the most useful delays of its’ kind. The DL-4 was first introduced in 2000 as a convenient combination between digital and analog versions of delay in a single unit. Today, we have a case of sudden death! This particular unit functioned perfectly in the past, but one

Today, I received a Korg Poly 800 that much less than pitch perfect. This unit was almost a whole step out of tune! So in this post, I go over a tune-up procedure for tuning the Korg Poly 800 to the correct center pitch. The Korg Poly 800 Since it’s release in 1983, the Korg Poly

The Hermida Audio Zendrive is based on a classic overdrive circuit with one additional feature: a Voice control. Espoused by guitarists like Robben Ford, Sonny Landreth, and Nalle Colt, the ZenDrive by Hermida Audio continues to live up to overdrive connoisseurs. In this post, I’ll detail a repair that was done to a Hermida Zendrive, as well as

This round of Repair Room features the 6-channel Furman HDS-6 Headphone Distribution System after a mild power surge incapacitated 5 of the 6 channels. In this post, I discuss what the HDS-6 system is, along with the process for how I fixed it. The Furman HDS-6 Headphone Distribution System The Furman HDS-6 utilizes Cat 5 cabling to distribute

This blog series usually deals with repairing guitar effects equipment. Today, however, we will turn our attention to a popular synthesizer from 1984 – the Roland Juno-106 Analog Polyphonic Synthesizer. This particular post deals with the popular Juno-106 acetone treatment. The Juno-106 Voice Chip Problem The Juno-106 is an absolute beast of a synthesizer. Recently,

The Delta Labs Super Timeline ADM2048 is quite possibly the most interesting circuit I’ve worked on so far. I’ve always wondered how an old-school digital delay works, and this late ’80s digital IC-based technology allowed the opportunity to reverse engineer the general concept. This particular unit showed up without the ability to power up. In this article,

The iSP Decimator is one of the best noise reducers I’ve come across. It has virtually no tone-suck and works to cleanly remove the buzziness in your signal. It’s extremely simple to use, with only one knob for setting the noise suppression threshold. In this post, I attempt to “stop the pop”. That’s right, a

Electro-Harmonix came out with the Nano line in 2006, complete with the Small Stone Nano, the Small Clone Nano, and the Muff Nano. Around this period, Electro-Harmonix and other large pedal companies started using surface-mount components in their pedals. The Small Stone Nano on the bench today is one of those pedals! Join me as