boss pedal repair

[moronmountain]

I have an older Boss pitch shifter/delay that I paid alot for in '87 that has always been funky. I never used it until after the warranty experation so I could never get it replaced, and I've always hung onto it thinking I could get it fixed someday 'cuz it was kinda expensive. Has anyone ever had these repaired? Is it worth the $$? Here's the problem mine has.

 

1) kinda noisy

2) eats batteries (will kill a duracel in 40 mins,maybe less even)

3) ac chord won't work

 

When I first used it, it would power up with a chord, but I would get this HUGE hum and the adapter would get hot FAST. I opened the thing up and saw what looked like some messy solder, so I broke it off and now the pedal does what I listed in items 1-3. Any feedback would be cool. I hate throwing away a $250 pedal, but I'm kinda getting sick of looking at it as well. I don't THINK Boss makes this model anymore either. I'm pretty sure it's called a PS-2. Thanx in advance.

 

Anyone here that would like to fix it for free, feel free to chime in as well. If you f'd it up it wouldn't kill me either.

[jonny guitar]

{censored} off and go back to the amp forum:D

[moronmountain]

HEHE!!!!!!!!!! This is my FIRST non amp forum post ever, and I get this.

[NITEFLY182]

i think breaking off the solder was the first problem.

[moronmountain]

Originally posted by NITEFLY182 i think breaking off the solder was the first problem.

Well it was deffinately a drip, not a regular joint. I'm positive of this. The pedal was completely unusable before I did that. At least I can use it now if I'm willing to risk my signal chain dying mid set from a dead battery. Thanx for your wonderful insight though.

[bieke]

do you use the Boss PSA series AC adapter?

 

http://bossarea.com/loadpage.asp?file=boxes/ps2.xml

[moronmountain]

 

Originally posted by bieke do you use the Boss PSA series AC adapter? http://bossarea.com/loadpage.asp?file=boxes/ps2.xml

 

 

I don't remember. I did the "hum" thing even with a battery in it though. It was definately a short, and not the adapter I was using I'm pretty sure. It wasn't just a simple hum. It sounded like a downed power line or shorted out electrical box, but WAY louder. This was with a battery OR ac adapter. Before I chipped away the dripped solder, a battery would burn up in less than 1 minute. It was a short for sure. Anyways, does anyone here repair these or know someone who can for cheap?

[bieke]

well, I have an old PS-2, also Made in Japan, and it works fine and is equally noisy as my DD-2 (which is rather noisy and also eats batteries within minutes), it is quite normal that carbon-zinc batteries are drained within a couple of minutes, an alkaline would last a bit longer, safe for another 15 minutes, I mostly use the Boss power supply, you have to unplug your cables after use

 

the hum indeed seems to be some kind of malfunction, but it's hard for me to believe it has to do with the circuit, and what a beautiful little circuit the PS-2 has, the components wouldn't fit onto one board, so the BOSS people used 2 boards in a doubledeck construction, and squeezed that into the compact casing, the hum could be a bad contact, some wire touching the circuit board and in the early PS-2 (if you bought it in 1987, you should have one of those) the ran out of room on the double boards and the had one capacitor with insulated legs just floating in space above the board

 

perhaps the battery clip is no good, the lugs on the clips sometimes don't grip properly

 

I'm no good at fixing pedals, but if my PS-2 should act up, I'd take off the knobs, unscrew them, unscrew the bottom, carefully pull back the circuit and rearrange the cables a little, stare at it for a while, gently shove it back in, put the knobs back on and hope it'll work again, I've repaired my DM-3 with this method

 

you could ask Robert Keeley, he's always very busy, but he's one of those incredible helpful people, who really knows the Boss stuff

www.robertkeeley.com

[MrSage]

Seems like something that could be repaired relatively easily.

 

The hum could just be from the power supply.

 

Any digital delay will eat batteries fast.

 

It's probably as easy as heating up one or two solder connections. Hopefully. Unless you managed to break a trace when you snapped the solder bit off.

[moronmountain]

I'm sure I didn't break a trace. It was a drip for sure. It was totally out of place. I took the pedal apart as mentioned above and completely inspected it. I have no idea how to fix stuff like this, so I wouldn't know what to look for necessarily. Thanx for the info. The VERY loud hum wasn't the only problem either. There was a LARGE amount of overheating going on. There is no way this was a normal problem. Like I said before, after I chipped off the drip, I was able to use the pedal with a battery, and it was still kinda noisy, but useable. The adapter just won't work now, and it goes through batteries too fast to be reliable that way. Thanx for all the info. Mebbe I'll mail Keeley.