#85 Harley Benton HB-80R teardown & modding

Right, so i had been on the hunt for the cheapest way i could get a 1x12" or 2x12" guitar cab for a while now - mainly because i landed a toasted Celestion Greenback for free some months ago, and a recone kit is arguably affordable. Budget being a prime concern, i was compelled to look locally, and a couple weeks ago finally pulled the trigger on this thing.

#52 Solar A2.7 & Fishman Fluence Keith Merrow, part two

Aaaaand it's back! Not because of technical issues though. Due to chance, and the limited speed of international shipping, only the day after the owner got his guitar back, did the Fishman rechargeable battery-pack get delivered, just only too late to include it in the previous operation. But no matter, this should be far less involved than that.

#51 Solar A2.7 & Fishman Fluence Keith Merrow & 5-way install

Local guitarist buddy time again (owner of the Fortin Grind and the Warwick bass amp featured here previously) - after taking several swings at it, he got fed up and let me have a go at installing a brand new set of Fishman Fluence Keith Merrow pickups into his Solar A2.7 guitar. Complete with some custom switching and whatnot, to take full advantage of the entire feature set the pickups offer.

#49 Joyo ZoMBie, part two - analysis and repair

It took the best part of an evening and a couple hours the next day, but i managed to lift the schematic for the whole preamp board. I also recreated the board, but that was mostly for sanity-checking. I used all the same component designators, but didn't bother measuring all the dozens of small ceramic caps, because there's only SO far i'm willing to go...

#47 Joyo ZoMBie guitar amplifier teardown

My bandmate got his hands on this Joyo ZoMBie about a week or two back; it was sold as faulty. No idea how or why, but there's something dicky with the tone control - on some power-ups it works fine, but sometimes quits working (ie. sounds like the setting got stuck at some random point along the travel of the knob), no matter how much you twist it. Power cycling sometimes helps, but inconsistently, and even if it does, it just "gives up" again, sooner or later.

#45 Pedal pandemonium, part one - Fortin Grind

A local guitarist friend of mine recently upgraded his rig to a Fractal AX8, and as such, a couple of his overdrive pedals got relegated to (mostly) sitting on a shelf. Knowing some of my interests, he offered to lend them to me, to have a look on the inside, out of sheer curiosity.

First on the chopping block (as it were), a Fortin Grind. 

#4 Dunlop Zakk Wylde ZW45 wah pedal teardown & repair

Ok, this one's a real quickie. One of the guitarists in my band got this wah (Dunlop ZW45 Zakk Wylde Cry Baby Wah) as a gift a number of years ago, and in the last few weeks it developed crackly and intermittent sound (regardless of being on or off).

Initial fiddling with the power / input / output jacks pointed towards a questionable patch-cable, but even that soon stopped working, which then turned my suspicions towards cracked solder joints (rather than the jack sockets themselves).