Converting old, crappy mini guitar amp into od/ dist pedal?

[TTLWes]

Ok, so first post! Greetings everyone! First off, I love this place.

I've been nosing around the forums and other sources for a few months now, slowly building my knowledge of circuit building. I started off small with a few telecaster and gibson es mods as well as my boss bd2 and odb3. All is well and working fine, so before trying a pedal from scratch I thought I would see if this is even feisable (Pics below). I'm honestly not even concerned if it would take forever or not. I can do little bits at a time

It's hard to tell, but the whole circuit could probably fit in a standard big muff enclosure. I would like to take the circuitry and adapt it into a standalone od/dist/boost pedal. Why would I do this you might ask? Well....the sound! The "clean" tone makes me want to throw it in a river, but the od tone absolutely NAILS the 'Reelin in the Years' or 'No Quarter" dist sound! You couldn't get any closer with all the pedals in the world! Part of that sound could be due to the 4" speaker, though. Sure, I could just DI it into an amp, but the convenience of switching would be great. I suppose I could even re-house as is in a large enclosure and replace the rocker with a footswitch and DI it as a temporary recording thing.

Specs:
-Single Channel
-AC powered
-No info printed anywhere but I would assume its 1-5 watts.
-Controls: Gain, Treble, Bass, Master
-It does have an 1/8" output labeled "Monitor" which seems to be mono
-The only weird thing is it has a built-in tuner that I would want to remove.

I've tried to keep the number of questions minimal.  
1) Would it be difficult or impossible to convert to dc?
2) Could I simply find out what components belong only to the tuner and remove them then bypass it?
3) Would I have to copy the circuit from scratch or could I remove and replace the existing parts on a breadboard or something?

Seriously, guys thanks to any help offered. I know a lot of you here know your stuff inside and out. I thought this might be an interesting topic to ponder on! If anyone would know if this could be done, it would be you guys!

[PRR]

> absolutely NAILS the 'Reelin in the Years'

If it sounds "wonderful", do NOT fork around with it. It is far too easy to lose the magic. Don't be trying to re-compact it or cut-out its appendix. Re-box it if you must, though I would even lean to keeping the crap-board box (that may be part of the mojo), just shorten it. Or even keep it intact: as you say, the junk speaker may be part of the grooviness, and you can always mike that.

> I would assume its 1-5 watts.

Says right in the middle of its face: "6 WATTS RMS".

I do not see any 6-watt chip though. The power transformer "might" support 6 Watts audio output.

[TTLWes]

Ha, wow. I completely overlooked the 6w.   Yes, I'm still keeping that angle in mind. It would just be cool to have easier access to that sound live and without using a DI b/c of the hi-z coming out. I suppose a simple bypass box could work in studio. If I cut the top off as you said, it could still be patched in with an box on stage, too. Might even get the 'what the hell is that thing' factor  

[PRR]

> the 'what the hell is that thing' factor

+1

> using a DI b/c of the hi-z

You could pad-down the speaker output to give a very robust Line Output.