Modding a Vox Tone Bender re-issue
"Germanium-Powered!" This thing is a piece of crap, but I like it anyways. That said, as I'm flirting with pedal making/repair, I'd like to see what I can do with this thing. Here's a couple shots(I love this thing's enclosure; I think it came from Chernobyl or something..): The one that counts: Its got two germanium trannies in there, but this thing doesn't sound very 'Germanium Powered' at all. Its nice and crusty, but there's no slick picking dynamics you come to expect from a cool germanium box. Also, for whatever reason, this thing's output dimed is actually lower than throughput when the box is deactivated. I'd like to seriously amplify this; maybe even add a gain trim. I'd like to replace the trannies wth something a bit more signature, swap out the shitty plastic input jacks, address the Volume issue, and make it burn-worthy. I'm all ears on suggestions. I know I should just join one of the builder's forums, even take some night classes in Electronics, but I'm not quite ready to drown in all that flood of data, so I'm trying to keep my focus a bit narrowed for now. Besides, I know a couple, uh..very cool, but ehrm, fairly laid back dudes that I'm not sure went through a Electrical Engineer's Master degree to be able to swap some trannies around. Additionally, I'm scoping out for some decent reading material(books) that would be useful for helping me learn pedal repair, etc. I've grabbed a couple already, and they're just not giving me the info I'm looking for, so suggestions there are greatly appreciated.

before you do all that.... replace that 8k2 resistor (in the middle... grey, red, red stripes) with a pot and see how the unit sounds when it's properly biased. what you'll do is ... remove the resistor take a 10k pot and wire one of the outside lugs to one hole of where the resistor was wire the other outside lug to the other resistor hole connect the middle lug of the pot to one of the outside ones then play guitar, turning the pot till you find the best sound....if it sounds like crap no matter what, then yeah...you'll need to make some major changes...but if it sounds good then you can just measure the resistance of the pot with a multimeter and replace it with the same value resistor

oh...and "The Art Of Electronics" is a good, easy to understand book

Shit, I forgot to ask; what wattage iron do I wanna use? I have 30,25, and I think a 20. Don't I need a 15 watt for this stuff?

30 watt?

I've got a few matched pairs of trannies I can replace the existing ones with: 9 x OC81D (5 are black glass) 10 X 2SA53 10 x 2SB54 Any of these good replacements?