DOD 250 GREY SPEC MODS

[yngwie308]

Yes stock the YJM308 is a terrible pedal noisy, shrill and harsh sounding. I never used mine at all stock, I sent it straight to Analog Mike!
John goes past the Mojo741 mods and finishes off the pedal to a true Grey 250 spec, for not $500 or whatever the originals are getting!
yngwie308

[outlier]

Kapo, PM sent!

Dave, again, thanks for the kind words! Yeah, you'll have that in any endeavor — people that seek to capitalize on and lay claim to the work and research of others. Of course, I realize that they may see it a little differently. They may see it as merely doing business and being on top of their game.

Lately, I've been thinking of putting bogus info in my descriptions just to see how fast they show up in an eBay listing...

The weirdest thing though is what I mentioned on the Yngwie board: There's a name player, most of you guys know of him, that I'm told was chomping at the bit to have me modify his YJM308. One of my former guitar students knows him well and asked on his behalf if it'd be alright for him to contact me. Of course, I said "yes." Couple of months go by, never heard anything, but that happens and naturally, I don't take it personally.

So recently I get an email from the former student in which he comments about how the player really likes his modded YJM308... I get back to him and tell him that I never as much as got an email from the guy. The former student responds a few days later and tells me that the name player swears up and down that I modified his pedal... I don't even know how stuff like this happens... That's downright weird!

Anyway, got the pedals in and I'll be getting to modifying them this weekend. I'm thinking blue indicator LEDs, but in one of them, I will be putting in an UV purple LED just to see how it looks.

I also have some ideas about building my own overdrive/semi-clone. We'll see how it goes with these pedals first...

I will add that FYI, I do own a 2007 Yngwie signature Stratocaster and old Marshalls and that these modifications were tested and finalized with this gear. FWIW, I also modified the Yngwie Strat, most notably with pots from RS Guitarworks and Hovland tone capacitors.

[Kapo_Polenton]

If your mod works for me I'll buy one of your clones or modified ones as backup!!!! Thanks again for the reply, I look forward to breathing new life into my playing.

[outlier]

Thought some of you might like to see this, so here's a YJM308 I recently finished for someone on the Yngwie forum. It has the 741 chip, various upgrades, 3PDT footswitch for true bypass and indicator LED and a Boss-style 2.1mm barrel DC input jack.

He'd said he wanted a green LED and being that most normal green LEDs are rather dim, I put in an ultra-bright green LED. No problem seeing this onstage during an outdoor daytime gig.

I also placed the LED in a more conventional position as you can see. I'm not sure why a lot of modders are drilling right through the logo to place the LED. Doesn't look good, but maybe that's just me.

[Kapo_Polenton]

Looks awesome.. I'm going to switch out the DC input jack while I am at it when I get your board. How inconvenient of DOD... Are you going to be doing somesound clips soon? Would be good to hear just the pedal clean and then driving the front end.

[S.Marshall]

I like where you put the LED rather then on the logo. Can't wait to get mine!

[outlier]

I have a domain name registered as it's my intention to put up a site someday. With everything keeping me as busy as I am, it's hard to say when I will have the time. I'd also like to put up some clips, but I must confess that I'm not the best at capturing the subtle nuances of recorded guitar tone.

My last attempt met with what I'd consider as failure. I've been given some tips for mic placement from a label engineer here in town, but haven't tried them yet. I was told to angle my Shure SM-57 at the grill cloth in what would be a straight line from the paper cone. Up until this point, I'd just been getting very harsh sounds.

I'm working on modifying customers' pedals all day today, but should be able to get a couple of these YJM308s I bought modified sometime this week.

[Kapo_Polenton]

I hear ya, clips can be hard. I also find that i can never get quite to where i want to be recording wise. I am missing whatever some of the other fellas have around here. I'll tell you what, I'll leave my setup and levels as is and when I get your board with the loaded parts, I'll record some clips with the stock pedal and then the same ones with the modded. I could do the pedal boosting the my jcm800 as my 1987x clone is on the fritz. I could also use a backing track of some type. Its not hard to hear the differences as the stock pedal is a fuzzy harsh mess lol.

[outlier]

Kapo, that makes me feel a bit better to hear you say that. A while back, I was asked to record clips for a particular pedal, but I just couldn't get the playback to sound anything like what I was hearing. It was very frustrating. The main problem was a harsh, fizzy high end in playback that I absolutely didn't hear from the amp. Coming out of the amp, the tone sounded like say, Yngwie's Double Live CD. On playback, it sounded like a DOD American Metal pedal into a Gorilla practice amp!

We have a Tascam 2488. We have some cheap mic that we used to use for our old four-track. Maybe I should've tried that instead... A friend in Japan recommended an Australian-made mic. The name escapes me at the moment.

BTW, your loaded circuit card is done and ready to go.

[carlygtr56]

Kapo, that makes me feel a bit better to hear you say that. A while back, I was asked to record clips for a particular pedal, but I just couldn't get the playback to sound anything like what I was hearing. It was very frustrating. The main problem was a harsh, fizzy high end in playback that I absolutely didn't hear from the amp. Coming out of the amp, the tone sounded like say, Yngwie's Double Live CD. On playback, it sounded like a DOD American Metal pedal into a Gorilla practice amp!

We have a Tascam 2488. We have some cheap mic that we used to use for our old four-track. Maybe I should've tried that instead... A friend in Japan recommended an Australian-made mic. The name escapes me at the moment.

BTW, your loaded circuit card is done and ready to go.

Australian mike- RODE

[Kapo_Polenton]

Thanks Outlier, hopefully the cashola gets to you this week. Shouldn't take long for an envellope to get there but you never know with these cats at Canada and U.S postal service.

[outlier]

Australian mike- RODE

Actually, an engineer friend in Japan recommended that to me. I'll have to look into that especially as his clips sounded so good and natural.

The SM-57 for me, so far, is useless. I'm sorry I bought it. I've had better results with whatever cheap mic we have left over from our four track.

Kapo — I will be sure to let you know when it gets here and I'll ship same or next day.

[Kapo_Polenton]

sm57 is a tricky mic. It seems like it compresses somewhat or adds a bit of colouring/gain to the tone because it never seems to come out right. This I assume is what you referred to when you mentioned it sounded like a DOD metal pedal. So its abalance. You have to play with less gain because it ends up sounding gainier when you listen back. I guess the 57 isn't for everyone unless you've got tube preamps and killer acoustics. Just what I have found anyway..

[outlier]

I actually attempted to use a Blue Tube mic preamp, but it didn't really help. It's my understanding that it's something of a secret weapon for at least one big producer.

Yes, that's absolutely right. It sounded like it had much more gain on playback. Too hard compressed, rather square-wavy to coin a term, with a grating midrange. I can definitely understand where it would help to back off the gain from a pedal and/or amp. It made a vintage Marshall sound like a cheap transistor practice amp. That's quite an accomplishment of sorts...

[Tone Slinger]

What gets me about guys going for the 'Malmsteen' tone, is that a whole lot of them use other od boxes before they actually get a DOD Overdrive/Preamp 250. They get used to the Ibanez ts or the Boss od and then when they do get the 250 it isnt what they expected. It is looser and a bit 'flubbier' by comparison. But, when you really listen to Malmsteen you hear this aspect unmistakenly on such tracks as the rhythm on 'Evil Eye' or the intro to 'On the Run Again'. I've tried LOTS of cloned 250 type variations (the old Voodoo Lab 'overdrive' was a good variation) and imo the yellow reissue is pretty darn close as is. So if you dont like it, then its a bad sign as to what you may expect from a component variation.