Tighten up the muddy lows on a DOD fx53.....

[Caferacernoc]

Wow is this "classic tube" pedal crappy! I was given it to see if I can make it a little better. The main issue is the super muddy lows. It does sound a lot better with a treble booster in front of it. So, could I decrease the size of C2 to a value more like .047uf(like in a Distortion+) to start tightening up the low end?
Thanks for any insight on this evil beast. I plan on clipping out or changing the diodes also but first this ugly tonal response needs to be cleaned up.
http://www.schematicheaven.com/effects/dodfx53_classic_tube.pdf

[runmikeyrun]

give it a shot... and report back!  I find these little snippets on less popular pedals becomes very handy to others down the road, if they use the search.  I've found lots of good info on little used or modded pedals searching back a couple years.

[DougH]

If the muddiness is causing farty distortion, play with c2. If it's just too much bass and the distortion sounds okay, play with C4 or C14 as well.

[Caferacernoc]

Slam dunk. Looking at the clipping section around the first opamp. I changed the absurdly high 3.9m resistor to 1m. Removed the feedback clipping diodes and C3. Changed C2 to a .01uf. And changed the 680 resistor to 10k. Then I changed the two silicon clipping diodes to ground to a germanium diode array. 2 in one direction and 3 in the other. Now it's a decent pedal for the $20 my friend paid for it. Sounds like a decent tweaked OD250 or Dist+.

[Quackzed]

i just tried some of these ,l removed the feedback diodes and cap and changed c2 to .01,but left the rest .sounds so much better. was flabby bassy now is very marshall crunch and tone cntrl is more usable . ez and worth the effort .took a pretty crap pedal and turned it into a totally different animal.. even if you dont have a soldering iron, i highly recommend removing the feedback loop diodes.cut em out. they are the 2 next to the orange,grey,green,gold resistor.