Tubescreamer after mods causes internal injury/switch help

[javacody]

OK, I have a TS5 that I took apart and "improved". I replaced the two tant caps with film, replaced the two np electros with film, did the TS808 resistor swap, did the more distortion/less distortion cap/resistor swap, and swapped out the input resistor to ground with a larger value (I think 510 to 600 something) to increase impedance. Now I have a tubescreamer that seems much more transparent, but also very shrill. How the hell do I fix the shrillness? Should I put that input resistor to ground back to its original value? I also read that Keeley, in his baked mod, changes the input buffer transistor to an MPSA18, but I could not get this to work. I tried the pins in every which way possible, but no dice. Any ideas?

This thing is making my ears bleed! I put the tone all the way up and used my bridge pickup, and I started convulsing and vomiting, its so shrill.  Help!

Last but not least, I read that the switching mechanism with the JFET's adds harshness to the TS, how would I go about modding this to true bypass? Are there any small 3PDT switches that are PC mount? I was thinking I could make a mini board out of perf, and simply hot glue it in place of the current switch.

[brett]

Try a 0.001uF cap across lugs 1 and 3 of the volume pot.  If that's not enough, try a 0.0022uF cap (film type).  Should do the trick.
cheers

[javacody]

Thanks for the tip Brett! 0.001 uf wasn't enough, nor was 0.002 uF. I didn't have anything in between that and 0.01, so that'll do for now. It sounds way better. I'm thinking that 0.0047 will be just about right. Will this tip also work for my piggyback Fuzz Face? After playing it for a week, I noticed it is significantly brighter than Germanium.

[brett]

Yeah, this works for most pedals.  You must have had some serious oversupply of treble in that pedal, because usually 0.001uF or 0.0022uF trims enough treble.  I've also sometimes used a 220pF cap between the base and collector of Q1 (and/or Q2) in silicon FFs to curb the "harshness" of a full-range frequency response.  Old germanium transistors naturally had very high junction capacitances (and hence limited frequency response).

Good luck.