Wah replacement electronics - what do you think?

[micha]

Hey, I just found this site and wonder wether the replacement electronics might be worth a shot:

http://uk-electronic.de/onlineshop/product_info.php/products_id/1656?osCsid=408a57cffbccaa97b1f63cfd139d6f67

What do you think?
It says it's identical to the GCB-95 board, but the pics I found of the GCB-95 board seem to have at least one transistor less, but since there's probably more than one version and many mods out there I'm not sure wether this means a thing...

My 535 just broke down mysically and I'm not able to find the defect. It just won't switch on anymore, from one rehearsal to another. Really weird....
Anyway the pot is replaced already and measures just fine (~98kOhm), the current reaches it's connectors on the board, the switch is still working the inductor seems to be fine, there's no damage to be seen on the board, capacitors all look good...

I know this board won't be a true replacement for the electronics I had (including Q-control, boost switch etc), but I just want to get it working again, and 15€ isn't that much of a risk.

What do you think?
Anyone tried aftermarket electronics like these already?

[micha]

I gave these electronics a try, and they work just fine.
I spoke with the guy at uk-electronic, and these circuits are not MIG as the page says above, these are from a chinese overproduction.
The MIG refers to the effects and moding kids available at his shop.

Anyway, it took some time and plenty of dremeling to get it inside my old pedal.
The in and output jacks were too big to pass thru the dunlop housing and too long to get it inside there anyway, so I had to drill some bigger holes and cut of a few mm from the jack, everything was good.
It sounds pretty much like it did before on high-frequency-setting.

Once I had it opened, I thought about giving it some mods as well.

I always found the idea to switch a wah² on by simply putting a foot on it great and didn't like having to always start wahing from the treble side as well.
So I thought about putting a push-botton underneath the pedal to replace the knob in front of the pot.

The Boost LED was good for nothing now anyway, so I put too superbright LEDs in place to indicate power supply.
Once started with LEDs I added some useless but fun LEDs lighting the ground to indicate wah is activited.

Now the LEDs reached too far into the Wah and the whole thing wasn't really solid anymore, so I put some plexiglass between wah and baseplate to solve both problems.
The switches were too weak to push the wah back up again, so some springs were needed to help the switches handle the weight.

I'm sure you know this, you start with a simple repairjob and end up with days of this and that...

Well, here's some pics:





The result ended up with 10 red LEDs (5 in a row each to sum up for battery voltage).
Further a batterybox was dremeled in and the (now anyway useless) Q-Control wheel disconnects the battery.



The switches were probably the trickiest part. I had to drill a hole on top to get some shims attached to keep the springs in place. I used some self-tapping ( ? ) screws to keep everything together.



Here's the power-indicator LEDs. These things are really brutal. Can't look into them for very long...



And here's the final lighting. Both switches are wired parallel, so each is able to activate both, lighting and wah.

It's a bit cheesy maybe, but it was a fun project nonetheless.
Only thing I had to get was the cutting screws and the switches, the rest was to be found somewhere in these boxes of garbage that surround me...

Next week I'll take it back to rehearsal-room and will see how it handles the job on the long run, but so far it's working like a charm.
It's not done really clean, the plan kept on growing thru the whole process anyway, but it feels really solid.

I like it!

[dg]

That looks cool, Micha! You should add a mini fog machine next!

[micha]

Yep, that would be cool...