Re: Anyone here modded their BD-2 Blues Driver?
This little excerpt is a thing that I found online about 4 years ago (it's basically what robert keeley used to do with blues drivers before he started adding the little fat switch), when I did my blues driver mod. If you are handy with a soldering iron, this isn't really all that difficult to do and it makes your pedal sound pretty cool.
Once you get the back off of your bd-2, you'll see a whole bunch of numbered electrical components on a circuit board. Just go down to your local electronics store (not radio shack, they probably won't have the stuff you need) and buy the various diodes/ resistors/ capacitors. I just heated up the legs of the old components and gave them a little pull and they came right out of the circuit board. Then I sort of pushed the new components into place while heating their legs with the soldering iron (give a little dab of solder at the bottom of each one).
The only problem that I ran into was that I forgot to put back the little piece of plastic that was inbetween the circuit board and the metal casing. Don't forget to put this in, as the circuit board will ground out and not work untill it is placed back in.
Anyway, good luck and happy modding your BD-2!
D3 -> Change this 1SS133 to a different (1N4002) diode for asymmetrical clipping. This adds second order harmonics. This adds to the tube type sound. I like the sound of this change.
D7 and D10 -> Change these diodes from 1SS133 to 1N4002. More second order harmonic distortion. Although the change is slight, I like it.
C1, C7, C6, C12, C13, and C15 -> Change this electrolytic capacitor to a 10uF tantalum. Tantalum capacitors sound better than electrolytic capacitors. It would be best to have a non-polarized cap here. I like these anywhere there is signal coupling at this high a value. Tantalum capacitors are easy to find in this range.
C14 -> Increase input coupling capacitor value to 0.1uF for increased bass response from your guitar.
R1, R2, R18 and R19 -> Here is some magic. Change the resistors to carbon composition. These old resistors probably have some frequency dependent component, which means that there is a capacitive element to the resistor. This is because of the spacing in the material. Add these for vibe, MOJO, and magic.
C100 -> Here is where we can affect the tone control. I prefer a little more lower-midrange and bass frequencies through the tone section. You can increase the lower frequencies by increasing the capacitor value to 0.033uF.
