So my friend gave me Jen Double Sound - general vintage discussion!

[Keeb]

Hi guys. Let me start off by saying that any additional info about the Jen Double Sound is appreciated.

I have a friend who I built a couple of pedals for, free of charge. His room mate heard that I build pedals and gave my friend a faulty Jen Double Sound to give to me to see if I was interested in doing something with it. I was told it didn't work. For those of you not familiar with it: The Jen Double Sound is a wah pedal that also has a fuzz face built in so it's a wah + wah/fuzz kind of pedal. I looked it up in the book Analog Man's Guide to Vintage Effects and read som about the Jen company (Italian company who built wah's for VOX and also under their own name).

So yeah, I opened it up and measured the battery and it was about 8,20V. On the inside of the pedal's bottom plate there is a name and address of aprevious owner along with the date 18th of March 1974. Changed the battery and it works! The wah sounds great and it's not a bad fuzz either. I've never had a vintage effect before and decided to look it up on eBay and they seem to go for a bit of money. I told my friend that the pedal works and perhaps could be worth a bit of money as is and that it felt weird to accept it when I was given the pedal under the condition that it was faulty. He said it didn't matter. Pics and link to schematic:








Link to full size gallery: http://imgur.com/a/N7y9f

Schematic: http://www.dirk-hendrik.com/temp/Jen_Double_Sound.pdf

[Here's me explaining my thoughts on vintage gear:]
From what I understand, this pedal is by no means "holy grail" type of rare. Alas, I've never had a vintage effect before. I do have a JCM800 and when I see listings of vintage amps that are modded it kind of breaks my heart a bit. Why would you buy a vintage amp for a lot of money, then mod it to do something it wasn't supposed to do for even more money when you just could have bought a new amp that did those things in the first place? I fail to see the urge for the vintage amp in since it's not really what you're looking for... However, if you love your gear but need to adjust it in ways to make it better in your eyes - then why shouldn't you?

So I'm conflicted about what to do with this pedal from 1974:
-Maybe improve the switching? This would be reversible.
-Add a DC jack, this would require drilling a new hole...
-What do you guys think - about this or vintage gear in general?
-The guts look a bit sloppy, are they original? The battery ground is patched without heat shrink. Did someone try to fix it?

Anyway, tanks for reading.

[tommycataus]

Interesting thread. I myself haven't ever owned anything vintage, however I've started building some vintage designs based on original schematics. My personal view is that I would rather build stuff with whatever is available than mod something and potentially mess it up. Then again, if you have a clear idea of what it needs to do then it's fair enough.

A friend who is a prolific guitarist has a '61 strat had it converted to H-H and was berated for it years later.  His response was that it wasn't worth as much back when it was done, and it has enabled him to do what he needed to do throughout his career. He said if it had the same pickups it was born with, it would be effing useless to him!  If, and only if, it pays dividends to change it up and you see it working in the long run, why not?

Personally I love to build as it gives me a kick,  but do whatever makes you happy, I say. Just make sure YOU don't regret it later!

[mth5044]

Unless you want to keep something original because you want to resell it, or are worried about it's value, I've always had the mind that modding it isn't a problem. If it isn't useable to you, or if you can make it work better for you, what's the point in having it? Sell it, mod it, keep it in the closet, whatever makes it most useful to you is the way to go. Your great great grandchild isn't going to pick up your Jen Double Sound and say 'Geez, I wish this wasn't mod'd for a power jack'.

[Govmnt_Lacky]

I never knew the Red Fasel inductors have been around that long. Have they??

This would be a good thread for Joe Gagan to get involved.

[Keeb]

I never knew the Red Fasel inductors have been around that long. Have they??

This would be a good thread for Joe Gagan to get involved.

In Analog Man's book it says that Jen used a fasel in the seventies. And yes, I was hoping one of the wah aficionados would jump in! 

I'm prepared to improve the pedal in small ways like I stated in my original post. I won't sell it for cash and neither will my friend, so re-sell value is not really a consideration. But yeah, this area is a bit gray to me.

[allesz]

Hallo Keeb.
I jump in to say to keep it (almost) stock.
I would only change the switch in order to make it true bypass.
About a dc plug, you can make a little cable (I think that the first zvex pedals had something similar) that comes out from the bottom lid, so you can connect it to you power supply: don't drill more holes.

The fuzz section seems good to me: the input cap is not too big, and I always like to reduce the value of the resistor (usually 100 k) that goes from base of q1 to q2 emitter... well I am italian afterall, just like people at jen.
And you can operate the toggle switch with your feet too 

[mth5044]

Hallo Keeb.
I jump in to say to keep it (almost) stock.
I would only change the switch in order to make it true bypass.
About a dc plug, you can make a little cable (I think that the first zvex pedals had something similar) that comes out from the bottom lid, so you can connect it to you power supply: don't drill more holes.

The ZVex adapter thing required a hole to be drilled to get the cable to come out.. not sure how that would help. What's the harm in an extra hole, anyway? Mojo will spill out?

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Why not just use the rather large hole that is already cut into the enclosure (you can see the taper pot peeking out of it in the pictures above) and just run a DC jack to the battery snap a-la the 1Spot adapter?

No cutting and it is a good solution to power it from a wall wart 

[allesz]

That's a clever idea.

Mojo won't spill out from a hole, but resell value will  

[joegagan]

ya, that thing is too clean, don't drill it. i would even recommend leaving the wiring stock, put it in an external trubypass loop if this is needed. i second the idea of making a temp bottom plate with dc jack pigtailed off, with filtering and rev protection wired into it. make it so it snaps into the batt clip with one simple ( reversible)connect to ground for the filtering.

it is worth quite a bit, keep it as is!

i would go so far as to repair/redo those two white thick wires along side the board, along with a correct batt clip lovingly soldered into the board as close to orig as possible.  look up gut shots online to see how to get it back to 100% if you send me pics of the batt clp and wires i might have one to donate.

[Keeb]

ya, that thing is too clean, don't drill it. i would even recommend leaving the wiring stock, put it in an external trubypass loop if this is needed. i second the idea of making a temp bottom plate with dc jack pigtailed off, with filtering and rev protection wired into it. make it so it snaps into the batt clip with one simple ( reversible)connect to ground for the filtering.

it is worth quite a bit, keep it as is!

i would go so far as to repair/redo those two white thick wires along side the board, along with a correct batt clip lovingly soldered into the board as close to orig as possible.  look up gut shots online to see how to get it back to 100% if you send me pics of the batt clp and wires i might have one to donate.

Thanks Joe for dropping by!
Yeah, I've decided to keep it as is. It works fine now and the bypass switching is not a big deal. An external true bypass looper fits the bill if this ever would be an issue. The external powering through a custom made bottom plate seems reasonable and effective. A crybaby bottom with wires running through the battery door, perhaps?. I think the rubber feet would give enough clearance for that to work. A small perf board with a diode, caps would fit inside. Anyway to find a connector that attaches to the battery clip (same way a battery would)? 

Those white wires are shielded wire and from the gut shots I've seen they seem to be original? The battery clip seems to have been switched at some point but the gut shots I've seen seem to have a similair clip. I'm not sure what the original is supposed to look like. But all pics look like my pedal. I'll post new pics tomorrow.

[joegagan]

oh cool , i could not tell the white wires were shielded - that makes sense now. leave alone  = ha

the batt clip would of course have the colors reversed but could be used. if you grab any old crybaby bottom to butcher, you could still fit all the filtering and stuff on the underside ( inside) and run a power wire out a hole in bottom.

all in all, very cool pedal. if the pot is not scratchy, you are a very lucky person for sure.

[Keeb]

oh cool , i could not tell the white wires were shielded - that makes sense now. leave alone  = ha

the batt clip would of course have the colors reversed but could be used. if you grab any old crybaby bottom to butcher, you could still fit all the filtering and stuff on the underside ( inside) and run a power wire out a hole in bottom.

all in all, very cool pedal. if the pot is not scratchy, you are a very lucky person for sure.

It works as is and sounds good, no scratchy pot! I'm going to keep as is. I'm thinking of changing the bottom plate and fitting a scaled down huminator (from beavis) to power it through. Basically it would be a power jack -> cables running underneath the bottom plate through the battery hatch of a crybaby bottom plate -> huminator -> circuit. The only way this can be done without any soldering would be to attach it to the battery snap. Kind of like a male battery snap. Any ideas on what to use (or just solder it to the + and - on the board, no big deal really)?

This won't be for gigging or anything like that so it doesn't have to fail-safe.