Boss DD-6 High Cut Mod

[12StringStratMaker]

Hey guys,
I was wondering if any of you knew how to do a high cut mod to either of these delay pedals. I've heard it will make them more analog and I know analogman does something like this.
If anyone knows which parts to change and to what, that'd be great.

[smoguzbenjamin]

Maybe a cap across the wet signal path, with a switch to turn it on and off, or something. I donoo I don't have the schematic...

[Mark Hammer]

Ben's right.  You can implement a quick and dirty hi-cut mod to just about any delay pedal/box by running a suitable cap value between the hot lead of the pot and ground (i.e., the two outside lugs of the pot).  My gut sense would be to start with a .01uf cap and work from there; laregr if you don't here a drop in treble, smaller if you hear too much.

There are two places to carry out this intervention: the recirculation/repeat/feedback pot, and the overall effect level pot.  When treble cut is imposed on the feedback control, each repeat becomes less crisp than the previous one.  This actually mimics reverb in the real world quite nicely since early reflections preserve more high frequency content than later ones.  Note that this will have no impact on the *first* repeat, though, since that does not pass through any sort of recirculation path.  When a treble cut is imposed on the entire delay signal at the effect-level control, then there will be no change in delay bandwidthover time, but every repeat, from the first to the last one audible will have a bit more treble shaved off.  

I'm not that familiar with the internals of the DD-5 or 6 so I don't know if the feedback control actually provides an analog audio path for the signal to be shaped or whether it is simply an external control for something internal to their proprietary chip/s.  So, the feedback tone mod may or may not be feasible.  On the other hand, the odds are highly likely that the wet/dry mix IS analog, in which case straddling the lugs of the E.Level pot should provide the desired change.

Note that both these mods can coax an analog delay line into providing a much broader palette of colours.

[smoguzbenjamin]

Sounds simple enough. I have a DD-2 and that sounds pretty good for a digital delay.

[12StringStratMaker]

Thanks Mark, Sounds like something I can do, I'll give it ago.
If anyone has some feedback on Mark's ideas or anything to add, that would help too.

[ian87]

success!

i followed Mark and Ben's advice and got a very nice-sounding, quick-decaying, lower-fi delay using a 1uF cap on the E. Level pot on my friend's DD-5. lower values didn't produce a very noticeable difference.

anyway, thanks!  

[smoguzbenjamin]

Cool! It's always neat when stuff works