DIY TS9 mod questions

[Triangle]

I did the 808 mod already and liked the results so I thought I'd do some more tinkering.

Per this site (http://www.geofex.com/article_folder...ch/tsxfram.htm) I'm thinking about doing a couple of other changes.

1) I'm going to upgrade the NP 1uF electrolytics to polyester film. It also mentions upgrading the tantalums to polyester film. Can you do this since the tantalums are polarized?

2) How risky is it changing the tantalum caps since they are so close the opamp? Are these easy to fry? I'm decent with a soldering iron, but I don't want to ruin the opamp and have to deal with trying to replace that if they're especially sensitive.

3) I'm also thinking about doing the low gain mod which involves changing the 51k resistor just before the drive control to a 10k or something similar. I know that the increased drive mod requires you to change a cap to a different value to compensate for some tone changes. Do I have to do the same for lowering the drive?

4) Do you guys know any other upgrade mods? Not necessarily changing the overall sound of the pedal (although I might do a slight bass boost mod per the BeavisAudio TubescreamerLab page), but more along the lines of just improving the components and little tricks to get the most out of it.

[Triangle]

So during the TGP blackout (or whatever it was that happened) I decided to just go for it and do the mods.
Everything turned out great and sounds amazing.
I did the 808 output resistors mod a couple of weeks ago which made a mild difference.
I changed the NP electrolytics and the tantalums to polyester film. The 1 uF polyester film caps are massive and I had to do some interesting positioning to get them to fit. I ended up hanging them off the front of the board in the area between where the board ends and the metal cover that separates the battery comes down. The polyester films that replaced the tantalums were pretty big too, but there was ample room in the area that the tantalums came from for those to go.
I also dropped the 51k resistor in front of the drive knob down to 10k. I really liked the effect this had on the pedal as now I can get alot of nice edge of break up tones that I couldn't get before. Works really well for jazz tones with that just barely there hair.

Overall, the pedal seems to have alot more clarity and less harshness/graininess to the gain structure. Definitely worth the time and effort and I'd recommend it to anyone with a ts9 sitting around that they want to improve.

[drbob1]

For your next project maybe a build with switchable clipping diodes?

[Triangle]

I was considering doing an AMZ bass boost switch and a diode switch. I don't know which/how many diodes to use though. I understand a bit of electronics, but the clipping section is still confusing me.