Botique schematic ethics... re-re-re-visited

[ExpAnonColin]

So I have my email on my website, and it's not uncommon for people to email me and ask me about modding certain things here and there...  This guy emailed me and asked if I could mod his Danelectro Black Coffee.  He now explains how easy it would be to modify danelectros...

im sure if you found the resistors in certain parts of the circuit , you could swap them for pots, and have control over the different parts, and also add or subtract from certain parameters, but that might bea bit tooo much work. i dont know. do you know of any circuits that raise you an octave with outh the clipping?

Fair enough, at least he knows what a pot is...  then I explain that this is much easier for analog non-SMD pedals.

You'd be perfectly right if the pedal was analog. However, it's not, so most things are quite pre-set, and changing resistors would not only be hard to predict the outcomes, but it would also be a huge hassle because they are made SMD.
-Colin

He replies...

i thought all the dano pedALS were analog.  but if you upped the
value of the resistors, wouldnt tha increase the effect? and if you used pots, wouldnt it give you variable parameters?

Well, he sort of gets it...  upping the resistors wouldn't "increase the effect", at least not in all cases.

Dan-o pedals are about as digital as you can get.  
Yes, changing resistor values MIGHT change the effect, but as I said, the chips are programmed internally in a certain way, and the resistors are SMD, so they are not easily replaceable.
-Colin

that doesnt make any since, how are they digital, they dont sound it, ive opened them up and i know what everything in them does. ive opened digigtech pedals and peed myself....sorry ikeep bugging you...

Wow.  He knows what everything in a dan-o pedal does.  That is not a thing many of us forumites can say.   OK, so now that we have an idea of what he's like, let's skip a few emails where I basically repeated myself that danos would NOT be easy to mod...  He then asks about the Parallel Universe.

is it (the parallel universe) in a sturdy casing? are able to play guitar through it, or just
"noise"/ feedback... i am seriously considering buying one....also the harmonic transformer and soundsaw (death by audio) are they good pedals? i have alot of money to spend and all i want is pedals, raging, roaring, noisy, insane, vomit inducing pedals, any suggestions?  

Well, I certainly think the PU is a good match. At the end of january or so about 10 will be available for sale. It's in very very sturdy casing (you can drive a truck over it), and yes, you can play anything through it.
DBA products are pretty cool but they seem overpriced to me, at least for their function and versitality.
-Colin

And finally, here's the part about ethics.

yeah, they are pretty overpriced, im sure that scems will show up
sooner or
later....


Drawing schematics for in production botique pedals is a terrible thing to do, I think it's been done once, with the Z Vex fuzz factory, which was quickly extinguished, because quite simply there's no reason to smite another DIYer who is trying to make money out of the hobby (or in the case of Z vex, a profession).  
-Colin

but selling a pot, switch, box and a few jacks for a couple hundred dollars
seems kinda greedy. as genius as it is.... maybe they could sell
schematics? i dontknow....i dont reall care, i just dont wanna spend $200
dollars on a pedal just to find out its a fuzzface with a razor jammed in
it... danelectros arent digital.

I love how he interjected "danelectros arent digital" at the end.

So anyways, thought I'd share that with you.  And to clear things up beforehand-I know that not all of the dan-o's are digital, the spring king uses real springs, I believe, but most are.  There sure aren't BBD chips in the Corned Beef Reverb

-Colin