The ES-345 Box - A Simple Hack Chris Wargo 10-29-12 Introduction

In a previous paper on the Gibson Varitone (http://www.onlyandnothing.com/varitonepaper.pdf), I described a pedal design that I was working on that solved some of the more annoying aspects of using a stereo Gibson ES-345/ES-355 guitar with a single input mono amp. The two most common ways of using a single channel amp with an unmodded 345/355 are to use a mono cord and push it in halfway to get the neck pickup and all the way to get the bridge pickup, or to use a stereo to mono summing cord. The first method sounds great, but is inconvenient. It is also often very difficult to get both pickups on at once. The second method causes both sets of pots to "see" each of the pickups. Each pickup is loaded by both sets of pots (slight tonal change), and we lose independent control over each pickup. Both methods also do not address the "out of phase" issue when both pickups are used. I proposed and prototyped a box that had an input buffer for each pickup, and a mixer to mix the signals together after they were buffered. The box also had the ability to invert the polarity of one pickup, so that the pickups were in phase with each other. After this article was posted online, I received dozens of emails from readers asking me if I could build them a box or provide them with a layout and a materials list. At the time, my build was a point to point and perfboard rats-nest, but I had every intention of finalizing my design, cleaning things up, doing a real layout, ordering boards, building the pedals, marketing the pedals, etc. But you know what they say about good intentions, right? In the past two years, I've had several false starts where I started with a new design. I had versions with and without transformers, with and without FX loops, with and without boosts, etc. I never did finalize anything, probably because taking a design from a perfboard prototype to a marketable product is a lot of work for someone who's not in the business, and life kept getting in the way. I didn't really want to go into the pedal business, but I thought that this design should be available to people. I had no intention of ever offering any other pedals besides this one (the world does not need any more "new" fuzz pedals on the market), so I'd be ramping up a small business with one niche product. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a reader named Howard asking me about using a few pedals that were already on the market to do my buffer/mix idea. I haven't really been up on pedals lately, since I probably stopped paying attention around the time that a new pedal was being released every 15 minutes or so. Howard was wondering about the Xotic's XBlender, Barge Concepts' VFB-X, and the BigShot's ABY pedals. After looking these pedals up online, I first ruled out the ABY. It's a passive design, and I like having input buffers. The VFBX looked like it might do the trick, but it didn't have a phase switch already wired in. The XBlender had a block flow diagram showing that it would do exactly what I want; it has a phase switch, and also has the bonus of a boost and EQ circuit. I ordered one online and went to work.

The latest iteration of my own ES-345 Pedal, now abandoned.

The Xotic X-Blender

So the first question that should be asked is "can I use the X-Blender without any modification"? The short answer is yes, definitely. To use the X-Blender with an ES-345, you need a stereo to mono Y-cable. You plug the stereo end into the guitar and the two mono ends into the input and the effects return jacks on the X-blender. Each pickup is now buffered and mixed, and the pickup volumes can be blended together with the blend knob. The phase switch will reverse the phase of one pickup signal, to get both pickups in phase with each other. While this works, there are a couple of issues with this setup: 1. I find the Y cable to be a little clunky. I'd much rather have a single stereo cable between my guitar and the pedal. 2. The logic of the footswitches can be very confusing in this configuration (see the table below). 3. The two mini toggle switches on the pedal (boost and phase) would be much better off as footswitches.

Blend On On Off Off

Bypass On Off On Off

Input Jack Buffered Not Buffered Not Buffered

Return Jack Buffered Not Buffered -

Looking at the table, we can see that the stock footswitches can serve as a floor based pickup selector. While this is intriguing, I find that the switching logic is a little confusing for this application. Think about the different combinations that you might have to remember when moving between the neck, the bridge, then both, back to the neck, etc. And if you reverse your Y cable ends, then everything is backwards. My goal in a foot pedal is to have it be as simple as possible and still do its job. With that in mind, I saw a few simple hacks that would make this pedal perfect for an ES-345: 1. Combine the input and return input into a single stereo input. This lets us use a single stereo cable between the guitar and the pedal, and we will never mix-up bridge and neck outputs. 2. Get rid of the Blend on/off and Bypass footswitches. We really want this pedal running as a stereo buffer/blender all the time. Any kind of bypass just gets us into the same trouble we see using a stereo to mono summing cable. 3. Move the phase and boost functions to the foot switches. Why not? We have the switches available now, and both of these switches will actually do something interesting (If I were a marketing guy, I'd call these switches "honk" and "crush").

The Hack
I already mentioned that the X-Blender was already almost what I wanted, so it seemed like the logical pedal to hack. I should also mention that Xotic seems to do custom pedals as well. So if hacking isn't really up your alley, it seems like the logical move to contact Xotic and have them build you one like this. Who knows, if there is enough demand, maybe Xotic might someday release a "345 pedal" of their own. An additional pot for the boost level and a switch to assign the EQ to neck, bridge, or both would also be really cool. I'd also love to have equal gain for both inputs when the blend knob is at 12:00 (more on this later). I'm now going to walk through each step of this hack that I did. Depending on your goals, not all of these steps need to be done. I decided to use a new case for my build. The reason was because using the Xotic case would leave a few holes, and I would need to repaint the old case so that I could re-label the new functions. If you decide to use the old case, "push in plugs" are available at mcmaster.com that will cover the old unused holes. The case I used was a Taiwanese "BB" size from Small Bear Electronics. I created a drilling template for this case that I've attached to the end of this document. If you're not used to drilling very accurately located holes in metal, it's probably a good idea to just use the Xotic case for the pedal. A good center-punch is mandatory, and a drill press is a really good idea. The circuit board won't fit in the case if any of the holes are misaligned. The first step is to print out the template, cut it out, fold along the lines, and center it on the box. Use tape at the corners to fix the template, and then tape down the sides. It is critical that the template be centered or the circuit board may push up against the front wall of the box and not fit.

Use a center punch to locate the holes on the box (don't forget the three sides) and then remove the paper. Drill the holes according to the sizes given on the template.

The next step is to strip down the Xotic pedal. The Xotic board is a double sided PCB. This makes it much more difficult to desolder components from the board since the lead holes are plated all the way through. If you have no experience desoldering from a double sided board, you might want to rethink hacking this pedal. It is possible to do the job with a fine tip iron, solder braid and a plunger pump, but a decent desoldering iron is strongly recommended. I'll also warn that removing the switches from the PCB is the toughest part. The four jacks should be unsoldered and removed. Then all the wires on the foot switches need to be unsoldered. The circuit board can then be removed by removing the blend knob and then unscrewing the nut from that pot.

Remove all the wires from the circuit board with the exception of the battery leads, the two black and one white wire on the lower left hand side, and the two right most blue and black wires on the lower right hand side. The black wire on the underside of the board should also be removed. Remove the two switches on the PCB. This can be very difficult, so be patient.

Now solder in a wire next to the power jack as shown below (black wire). The wire should be about 6 inches and will be trimmed later. This is the same location as the wire you took off the bottom of the board. Moving the wire to the top of the board will make it easier to connect later. This wire is the battery ground and is normally connected to the ring of the input of the Xotic pedal. This deactivates the battery when the input is unplugged. Since we will be using a stereo plug for the input, we are moving this to the ring of the output jack. The battery will now be disconnected when the output is unplugged.

Now solder in a 6" wire (yellow) to the location on the right hand side of the board shown below. This is the former "return input" and we will be hooking it up to our stereo input jack. Ignore the multicolored wires in the picture for the moment.

Add two jumpers (white) to the lower right hand side of the board as shown below. Notice that we left the two wires to the far right from before. These jumpers lock the pedal in Blend mode, which is what we want.

Add two 6" wires (orange and blue) to the lower left side. These are our other input and output leads.

Now add the 6" switch wires shown below (multicolor wires). Using multicolor wire helps keep track of what goes where. The order of the wire here will be identical to the order of wire when we wire the switch. Repeat this for the other switch holes.

Your board should now look like this:

Wire the input jack to the ground wire as shown below. The input jack is the only one with three tabs sticking out. It may be helpful for installation to first bend the ground tab backwards like the others.

Mount one of the other jacks to the right hand side of the chassis. Face the two solder tabs up at an angle as shown.

Now work the other jack and the board into position as shown below. Face the two unused tabs up on the jack like you did with the other one.

Connect the input wires (yellow and blue) to the input jack as shown. This will have the neck pickup run through the EQ section (this is what I like). If you'd rather have the bridge pickup run through the EQ, reverse the wires on the jack. This will also reverse the function of the Blend knob.

Connect the battery ground (black) to the output jack ring (top lug) as shown. Connect the output wire (orange) to the output jack tip (bottom lug). Connect the switch wires to the foot switches as shown. Note, the PCB connections and the footswitch connections are identical (top left to top left, middle left to middle left, etc.). Connect the footswitch LED wires as shown (black and white on left and blue and black on right). This completes the wiring of the pedal.

It's important to note that the blend knob is not perfectly symmetrical on the pedal. Equal volumes for each pickup are obtained when the knob is set to about 2:30. This is because the return input was not at unity gain on the X-Blender. This results in about a 3dB drop from the guitar's output when the pickups are balanced. This isn't really a cause for concern though, because the output knob on the pedal can be goosed a little, and so can the input gain of the amp. Remember, these signals have been buffered, so reducing the volume a little doesn't change the sound like it does when we roll down the volume on the guitar. It just changes the volume, which we can get back easily with the mixing op amp (volume knob).

Template for drilling a Small Bear Electronics Taiwanese BB Enclosure. Check scale after printing.