Modded inexpensive pedals.

[Bill Moore]

I have picked up a few Boss pedals, and been trying to learn how,(and when) to use them. I have a BD-2, CS-3, and a DS-1. In their stock form I see limited usefulness. All are either shrill or boomy, the BD-2 would overdrive the amp inputs well, but was hard to dial in the exact sound I was looking for. The CS-3 was very noisey on high settings, and the DS-1 was mainly a fuzz pedal.
I have now modded them all, (2 with the Keeley mods), and they are much more versatile. I put the DS-1 back together last night, and it sounds great. You can dial a lot of the dist. setting before you get fuzz. Prior to that it makes the little 12" combo sound like a full stack!
I just wonder why the manufacturer doesn't include these mods to the production pedals. They are all quieter, have more tone adjustment, and whatever effect they are intended for seem much more controllable.

[CzarSketch]

I think some of it has to do with which patents they hold and which they don't.

Also, despite how limited a lot of these pedals are to us, the "power users" of musical equipment, I think a lot of people are buying them and are satisfied. Otherwise, they wouldn't keep buying them. Keely and a handful of other mail-order modders are doing great business though, so I think there's a sizable segment of the population who would agree with your assessment (myself included).

[curtisstetka]

Yup. I too have done some mods on Boss pedals and come up with better results than the stock pedal.

It really is all about selling a product to a particular market. It would cost Boss money to retool their production and continually update their designs. If the pedals are selling, why would they do that?

The boutique builders are selling to a different market. For them to change a design and retool production is a relatively simple, inexpensive thing.

[Bill Moore]

Most of the mod consist of better grade caps. (Some of the R/C values are changed of course).There would be no real problem with using a push/pull switch on one of the controls instead of the add on toggle. I think the DS-1 "seeing eye" LED should be on the circuit board, if I did another, I probably wouldn't drill a hole for it.
I'm just amazed what probably $3 worth of parts can do for the sound. (I do realize Keeley, and others, spent a lot of time figuring where to put those parts!)

[CzarSketch]

General Guitar Gadgets has a fun term for those $3 mods: "Very Expensive Boutique Pedal Mods."

It's true, Keely and others did find spend a lot of time tweaking these, but it seems their genius was in marketing it to those people who were either unwilling to put in the time or do not have the skills to figure it out themselves.

You'll note that their idea has been co-opted by many imitators. Such is the free market! Long live competition!

[cdw2000]

I have a Boss DS-1 in which I incorporated Robert Keeley's "Seeing Eye" mod. BIG improvement in my opinion. I put in a DPDT switch to change from non-symmetrical clipping (Seeing Eye) back to symmetrical, the other side of the switch throws a resistor into the output volume circuit to level the volume change between the two clipping settings.

Truth be told - I leave it in the Seeing Eye mode almost all the time.

Most of my other pedals are modded as well:

Boss CE-2 - added switch to change clock timing to give long Super Chorus delays

Ibanez TS7 (TS9 ToneLock version) - Keeley's "Hi-Fi" mods

Ibanez DE7 (delay/echo) - changed out linear Level pot to audio taper - improves control of wet/dry mix level

Ibanez CF7 (chorus/flange) - changed 2-pole filters on input and output of delay chip to 3-pole filters with same corner frequencies as Boss CE-2. Improved pedal greatly and Flange effect is good, but chorus still not up to par with a CE-2.

The rest are home-made, scratch-built (non-kit) clones: TS808, ProCo RAT, Big Muff Pi, Ross Compressor