Modding and re housing a Danelectro Cool Cat Vibe

Modding and re housing a Danelectro Cool Cat Vibe

Danelectro make a wide and affordable range of pedals that will cater for the usual suspects found on most peoples pedal boards. Rumour has it that they are built to some pretty boutique specs and consensus is that they sound pretty good too. They all tend to come in these funky old enclosures giving them a look of some 50s design - great but not often practical. The ins and outs, 9v power and controls are located tight together at the top end of the pedal. Not the best location for quick access. Looking about on the internet shows that rehousing Danelectros has become a common hobby so I thought Id do the same with the Cool Cat Vibe, a pretty useful clone of the Dunlop Univibe circuit.

Im going to be doing two things with this pedal. First is to do a few mods to fix some inherent issues in the pedals circuit and the second is a rehouse to a new enclosure with new controls layout.

In terms of mods theres a couple of things to do to take care of some annoying issues with this circuit. One is that theres a slight lag in the wet signal engaging once you kick the pedal on. The second is that theres a noticeable volume increase when the effect is engaged. We can also add an extra mod which enables the indication LED to flash in time with the speed of the effect.

As for rehousing Im going to make up a new box, drill it, paint it and decal it. Im going to need some extra parts (jacks, 9v power, pots for example) to replace those on the second PCB that I dont want to keep.

Right, lets take a look at the stock unit and whats inside!

Heres the Cool Cat as it comes in a nice sea foam green enclosure. Note the fat footswitch underneath which there is a true bypass 3PDT switch which we can keep and re-use:

The pedal!

Heres the back end view illustrating the input, output, dc power supply and the location of the controls:

Clunky layout

The next view is from the underside of the pedal. I have taken off the casing and removed the black plastic battery housing. The PCBs are still in place held in by the jacks, knobs on the pots and the foot switch which is tightly secured underneath the big button on top. There are two main boards: one for the circuit, the other which holds the in and out jacks and the 9v supply. For my new enclosure plans Ive decided Im not going to keep this second board so it can be discarded.

Note the additional PCB on the 3PDT switch allowing for cleaner off-board wiring. Well keep this too:

The guts on first inspection

The next photo below shows the boards and switch removed from the enclosure. This was not as easy a job to do as it could have been. This was how I tackled it and the stress factor involved! 

First start by unscrewing the nuts around the jacks using a suitable socket set. Simple.

Next remove the knobs from the pots. This was a nightmare as those knobs are jammed on tight. I had to grab them with a self-adjusting wrench and just keep wiggling until they eased off. The result of this was that the knobs got pretty chewed up and damaged. Thats not a problem here as Im re-housing and will use some fresh knobs anyway.

Next unscrew the two bolts holding the big green stomp switch cover in place. You can seem them in the pic above, either side of the 3PDT board. This reveals that the footswitch is held in place by a funny locking washer with two indents that I guess you attach some tool with teeth in so you can turn it. My way round this was to put a small screwdriver into the notched indent and tap it with a hammer to get it budging. Unscrew and the footswitch becomes freed. Now you can wriggle the boards and switch out of the enclosure. The pic below shows the guts:

Boards removed, check the wiring

In order to fully rehouse the Cool Cat Im going to do away with the top PCB which has the 9v DC input and two jacks mounted on the board. Make a note of the wires out of the main circuit board - their colours, their locations and the areas they are attached to so we can hook them up to new locations once we have rehoused the circuit:

Separating the PCBs

Danelectro have helped us out here by clearly labelling the pots - two 50k linear (marked type B) for the Mix and Intensity controls and a 50k reverse log pot (marked type C) for the Speed control. Nice to know for when we order new parts. Bang in the middle of the circuit is the metal box housing the Vactrol unit. In here there are four LDRs (Light Dependent Resistors) also known as photoresistors being fed by one small clear white LED. Just for the heck of it Im going to replace this LED with a 5mm red diffused LED to see if I get a more s

Modding and re housing a Danelectro Cool Cat Vibe