George Denis pedals...good or bad? these ones are busted!

[Canucker]

A friend of mine gave me two George Denis pedals today that weren't working. I'm worried that he may have used an adapter with the wrong polarity because they have seen minimal use and stopped working. They are the Wizard Blues and The Tube....The wizard no longer distorts but it does work as a volume pedal. Silly question but if an LED is used in a circuit in place of a diode it should light up when in use correct? There are two LEDs that are on when the pedal is in use (its an optical wah no pot required) but there are two within the circuit that don't light up so I don't know if they are fried or an IC that they are coming off of.
The Tube has an actual tube inside of it. I had the external LED going but zero signal was going through...so I opened it up and removed the tube to see if it was fried (visual testing, I didn't test it in an amp or anything). It appeared to be ok and then I placed it back in. Plugged it back in and couldn't even get the LED to shine again. Nothing looked fried in this pedal... I'll have to dig up another tube and test it out since removing and then reinstalling the tube gave different results.
I may just gut these things and build something from scratch but I figured I post about it before I did that...and wait to hear back from my friend if he indeed used the wrong adapter at one point...though I doubt he would remember since he plays maybe twice a year and has had these since about ten years maybe. (They were purchased new)

[drolo]

I used to own the Tube. I found it a pretty sturdy pedal, not unlike a Morley. For an OD/Distortion, it was not bad either and the Volume pedal feature was very good. I ended up selling it because i had started to build my own and prefered to have a pedal that took less real-estate on the pedal board.

The 2 leds that don't light up do not neccessary mean that they are not functioning correctly. Leds used as clipping diodes, don't always light up, depending on the strength of the signal (or would only light up when a signal is passing and being clipped). The Leds could also be used for biasing.

[Canucker]

thanks for the reply! I originally thought they were junk. The entire line was on sale when my friend bought them (boxing day) and I never heard of anyone else who owned/used them. Then he told me about the breaking after not to long. Now that I have them and cracked them open my opinion has changed. Looks like good quality pots, strong case and optical control...I thought there would be a crappy pot inside causing the issues before. Still waiting to hear back from my friend. I'm guessing I won't be able to find the voltages for troubleshooting on these. I don't mind large pedals on my board. I actually prefer them. Anything that doesn't look like a Boss pedal actually...so boring! I love the old big box Electro Harmonix stuff. I never really have many pedals on my board but that will be changing a bit with my next band.