Boss RPS-10 Mods

[riot2003]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post, so I'll try to make it a good one.  I've done a couple small, simple pedal builds but this is a slightly larger project that I'm more excited about.  My bass player has a Boss RPS-10 that he uses for general funny noises.  Its an old beat-up unit that is showing its age.  While replacing some 1/4" jacks on it, I managed to break the 12 position rotary switch on the front which switches modes of the box. I've looked and looked and can't find another switch small enough to fit in that envelope. So.... here comes the project.

I'm adding an external auxilary box which will house an on/off switch for the effect (there is a jack on the back of the unit to run an external on/off footswitch) with a LED indicator as well as a new rotary switch for the mode setting.  This includes running all the wires assosicated with the rotary switch, a power line (for the LED), and two wires tapped into the on/off jack, all out to an external box.  I really thought about putting a 12-pin jack on each box and connecting them with some sort of serial cable... but I haven't found any good solutions for that. Right now I'm planning on just hardwiring the two boxes together. Thoughts?  Here are some pictures.

[riot2003]

Self bump. got all the hardware last night and everything is assembled. I'm not getting the signal I should.. so tonight should probably be troubleshooting.

[Mark Hammer]

Do be careful.  Not just from a safety standpoint. rather, as a digital box, there are going to be clock signals flyng all over, and you don't want any additional wiring to pick it up.

Those half-rack desktop units in the series are nice.  I have the ROD-10 and the RPH-10 (which I modded to include envelope control).  Usually well-priced on the 2nd hand market, and worth checking out.

[riot2003]

Hm, thats not something I had thought of.  If I have to run extra wires, should I just be careful of the routing? Any tips to protecting myself from issues?

[Mark Hammer]

using shielding can help, and keeping them away from where you know the clock lines are also helps.  Of course, one needs to have inside pix to provide any useful advice.

[riot2003]

Looked again at my routing, and I'm sure I don't have any interference issues.  Did some close looking and realized there were quite a few cracked solders on the board, which was causing me my issues. Once I repaired those, things started sounding much better. I'm going to let my bassist give it a test run at practice tomorrow night and we'll know for sure then.  I'll get some pictures up soon, perhaps tonight. Thanks for the help.

[riot2003]

Got everything working!

Sorry I've been so bad at updating this.

My one remaining issue is where/how to tap a few volts to run the LED on the satellite pedal. This seems like it should be simple to do... but I can't get it.  I've got my LED wired to a 1k resistor, but if I just connect those two ends to the + and- of the DC jack (with the DPDT in line) then I'm just shorting out the box circuit when the light is on. Right?