Danelectro Cool Cat Vibe Pedal!!!

zombiwoof · October 20, 2009, 05:20:50 PM

Quote from: 64fx on May 01, 2009, 09:18:06 PM
I have a friend who just got a Mojo Vibe, so of course I had to compare my Cool Cat Vibe to it. I really like my Cool Cat, but the Mojo Vibe blew it away (which I expected). The Cool Cat seemed very dark compared to the Mojo. Any ideas on how to "brighten" it? I haven't opened mine up yet, but I'm assuming it's all surface mount parts, so I'm guessing that replacing caps and resistors would be a pain.

I have a Mojo Vibe, and it has two settings, vintage (darker, like original Univibe), and modern (brighter, for darker guitars or people who don't like the vintage sound). So your friend's Mojo Vibe might be set to the Modern setting, and perhaps the Dano pedal only has the vintage sound. On the Mojo, the setting can be changed by setting the internal dipswitch as per instructions in the manual. I believe that the Mojo Vibe modern setting uses a buffer of some kind to achieve the brighter tone.

Al

DougH · October 21, 2009, 08:57:39 AM

I saw a youtube vid where someone compared the cool cat to the chicken salad. The chicken salad had a "brighter" sound. At $29 maybe that's the answer, in spite of the plastic construction...

obblitt · October 21, 2009, 04:44:11 PM

Just rehouse!

The other day, I finally got around to opening my Cool Cat Vibe up and screwing with the internal trim. Made a HUGE difference in my sound, or rather the tweakability of it, but now it's darker than it used to be...

Ben N · October 21, 2009, 04:49:33 PM

Quote from: DougH on October 21, 2009, 08:57:39 AM
I saw a youtube vid where someone compared the cool cat to the chicken salad. The chicken salad had a "brighter" sound. At $29 maybe that's the answer, in spite of the plastic construction...

Yeah, well, when I had a CS, I found that the sound completely lacked bottom, so there you go.

pazuzu · October 21, 2009, 06:45:58 PM

just wanted to put it out there, that has to be the UGLIEST pedal enclosure i have ever seen.

amirite?

DougH · October 21, 2009, 09:21:45 PM

Hey, it's seafoam green! I love it!

pazuzu · October 21, 2009, 09:53:33 PM

pffft.

jacobyjd · October 21, 2009, 11:02:23 PM

Quote from: pazuzu on October 21, 2009, 06:45:58 PM
just wanted to put it out there, that has to be the UGLIEST pedal enclosure i have ever seen.

amirite?

YOU'RE the ugliest pedal I've ever...um...what?

YOUR MOM IS THE UGLIEST PED...crap....that doesn't work either...

64fx · October 22, 2009, 01:08:10 AM

Quote from: zombiwoof on October 20, 2009, 05:20:50 PM

I have a Mojo Vibe, and it has two settings, vintage (darker, like original Univibe), and modern (brighter, for darker guitars or people who don't like the vintage sound). So your friend's Mojo Vibe might be set to the Modern setting, and perhaps the Dano pedal only has the vintage sound. On the Mojo, the setting can be changed by setting the internal dipswitch as per instructions in the manual. I believe that the Mojo Vibe modern setting uses a buffer of some kind to achieve the brighter tone.

Al

Thanks! That makes sense. I'll have to get him to see how his is set.

I've rehoused my Cool Cat Vibe and done the mods to fix all of the issues, and I'm very happy with it. I know I can't expect it to sound like the Mojo Vibe, so for the price and the sound I'm content. I actually had a lot of fun rehousing it (except removing the pots from the PCB), so I've rehoused all of my Cool Cat pedals.

obblitt · October 23, 2009, 06:12:09 AM

64fx, can I see pictures of your rehousing process? I'm about to rehouse my Vibe, and put my two Transparent Overdrives into an enclosure. What mods did you do?

pazuzu · October 23, 2009, 09:08:24 AM

Quote from: jacobyjd on October 21, 2009, 11:02:23 PM
Quote from: pazuzu on October 21, 2009, 06:45:58 PM
just wanted to put it out there, that has to be the UGLIEST pedal enclosure i have ever seen.

amirite?

YOU'RE the ugliest pedal I've ever...um...what?

YOUR MOM IS THE UGLIEST PED...crap....that doesn't work either...

nice.

64fx · October 24, 2009, 12:49:19 AM

Quote from: obblitt on October 23, 2009, 06:12:09 AM
64fx, can I see pictures of your rehousing process? I'm about to rehouse my Vibe, and put my two Transparent Overdrives into an enclosure. What mods did you do?

Obblitt,

I'm posting these photos, but you have to promise not to laugh at the guts shots. I was experimenting on this, so it's pretty bad looking in there.

Rehoused Vibe

Rehoused T.O. Guts

I rehoused several of the Cool Cat pedals, so I'll tell you some of the things I learned through the process.
- Most of the pedals will fit into a 1590B enclosure except the Vibe. The PCB on it is too large to fit the board and a foot-switch in the enclosure. I used an enclosure from Radio Shack. It's a little big, but I kind of like it. I've seen a lot of vibes in large or different shaped enclosures, so it didn't really bother me.
- I would recommend using a 125B. It will give you a little more room.
- I moved all of the pots and LED off of the board. Removing the pots is a little tricky. They use lead-free solder which is a pain to desolder using just desolder braid. I ended up adding lead solder to the joints on top of the lead-free solder. Then I was able to remove it easier. If you're going to replace the pots all together you can be a little less careful and just rip the pins out of the pots, but I don't recommend doing that.
- If you use the 1590B or a box that's the same height, try removing the connectors that connect the switch to the board and solder the wire straight to the board. That helps with the height issue. I ran into a problem with the bottom of the enclosure shorting something out.
- The footswitch is reusable, but if you want to replace it just desolder the switch that's there and replace it with a 3PDT using the PCB in the pedal.
- The tremolo is a pain to rehouse, so if you decide to do it make sure you really, really want to! I wasn't able to remove the switch that switches between hard/soft, so it has to go out the back of the pedal. I ended up messing up the enclosure by drilling the hole in the wrong spot.

As far as the mods go, I did flashing LED mod, the mod to get rid of the delay in the effect coming on and added a volume pot on the inside to compensate for the volume boost. I did these mods following the info posted in previous posts. (Thanks to those who posted these mods!)

I think someone posted the supervelcroboy link earlier. That provided some good info as well. Some of these things I just learned by messing with it, but hopefully all of this will help you. I'd love to see your rehouses when you finish.

pazuzu · October 24, 2009, 08:57:41 PM

cool work.

honestly you could rehouse it in an altoids tin and i think it would be better looking than the stock enclosure.

obblitt · October 26, 2009, 02:33:26 AM

And not just better looking, I absolutely @#$%ing hate the enclosure design. I hate the way they put the knobs and jacks right on top of each other. Dumbest idea I've ever seen.

64fx, your work looks great, and I'm a noob

! Thanks for the info and I'll let you know how it goes! Actually... can I PM you?

64fx · October 27, 2009, 12:14:02 AM

Thanks obblitt! Feel free to PM me.

snyder80 · November 26, 2009, 03:44:19 PM

Thanks for the great photo documentation. I realy like the "pulsating LED" mod.

To fix the slight volume-boost you add a 100k or 120k in parallel to the existing 47k in the feedbackloop of the output stage (Tl072 IC on the bottom right on the PCB. put the resistor between pin 7 and pin6).

Hope this might help....

Snyder80

Ben N · November 27, 2009, 06:32:49 AM

Quote from: obblitt on October 26, 2009, 02:33:26 AM
And not just better looking, I absolutely @#$%ing hate the enclosure design. I hate the way they put the knobs and jacks right on top of each other. Dumbest idea I've ever seen.

Yeah, that design pretty much forces you to set and forget, especially the ones with dual concentrics,like the "Transparent Overdrive." I must say, though, Other pedals aren't much better--and I'm thinking of Line6, here. I can't set my Echo Park with reading glasses.

DougH · November 27, 2009, 07:54:56 AM

Try picking harmonic intervals on a Boss PS-5 on a dark stage... I need my glasses and almost a magnifying glass too. I still love my CC Vibe and the way it's housed. I usually set and forget this stuff anyway.

obblitt · November 27, 2009, 01:30:01 PM

It's not so much adjusting the knobs I'm worried about, it's having to bend and twist my patch cables to make everything fit on my pedal board. If it weren't for those knobs being in the way, I wouldn't have a problem... maybe I'll post a picture

to show y'all how bad it looks on my board.

alex frias · November 27, 2009, 03:32:31 PM

I've built an Easyvibe and modded it to my taste, but the "vibe-sound-in-my-head" was not really there. Then I was waiting for the spare time to buld a neovibe...

In the meantime I went to this music store and saw the CoolCat pedals. The price was so inviting...
I tested everyone they had. I left the place with nothing less than 5 pedals: CC Vibe, CC Fuzz, CC Transparent Drive, CC Tremolo and the CC Overdrive.
Since then I have 3 of them permanently in my main pedalboard: the vibe, the transparent drive and the fuzz. I liked the design, no problem for me.

And one of the mods I did in my Easyvibe was to add a signal boost to get that same boost the old Univibes were known for. So...

The only thing I don't like about the CC vibe was the oscilator delay. So I would like to ask who did the mod to avoid the delay: Some oscilator click is bleeding through the signal path?

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Danelectro Cool Cat Vibe Pedal!!!