Filed under: danelectro

Pedal Fix

You may recall that I bought a lovely new Dan Electro echo pedal last year. Tonally and effect-wise, it was great, but it kept cutting out on me in the middle of practices. I did a bit of background reading and discoveed that Dan Electro pedals have a bad reputation for the quality of jacks used in their otherwise brilliant pedals - the build quality of the unit is sturdy and reliable, the jacks are made of plastic and prone to failing.

Danelectro Dan-Echo

I couldn't return my pedal because I got it cheap and unboxed, so Simon and I set to work repairing it. My plan was to hard-wire some make your own George L patch leads directly onto the circuit board and lead them out of the jack holes in the pedal housing, then fasten replaceable George L jacks at the other end, so the pedal could be plugged directly into other pedals/units. Simon has the electronics skills so I let him figure out how to do it.

Inside the pedal the jacks are conveniently located on a small easily removable circuit board. A ombination of solder, four hands, and elbow grease saw the end of the retched plastic jacks.

Simon solders the joints of the plastic jacks


One down


After successful removal of the Jacks we then had to figure out which part of the George L lead was the signal and which was the ground - we guessed. After soldering the right bits to the output part of the circuit we discovered our guess was good.

Fixing George L to the circuit board


Fixed


The second lead was much harder to replace - trial and error saw us solder the signal and lead to various permutations of points. I think the complication was in the fact that jack triggered a power switch when a a connection was made - I'm sure Simon can explain better. We got there in the end though.

Impotent evil - the second jack pwned


Possibly the winning connection - I can't remember


Next we put it back together and shoved the exposed wire ends through the jack holes before screwing on the George L jacks.

The coolest looking pedal I own


I've now filled in the holes with blutack to stop the leads getting wrenched off the board. The good thing with George L is that if the connection goes at the male end of the lead you can snip off some wire and re-make the connection.

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Posterous theme by Cory Watilo