How to Modify Guitar Pedals: A complete how-to package for the electronics newbie on how to modify guitar and bass effects pedals

I've been doing music electronics for years but it still taught me quite a few things I didn't know. Written in serious engineering nerd language, so if you are not already familiar with electronics, maybe it will be a bit over your head. A bit expensive for what you get, being a paperback book.

This is great! This is a re-release of the original book. I purchased the digital copy. (Normally I like actual books)This re-release is great and has color pictures in it.Plenty of details for beginners. Plenty of suggestions on how to do simple soldering techniques and very specific mods to tons of pedals. A good stepping stone to working towards making your own pedals as well. Thank you for the re-release Brian.

Hi everyone and prepare yourselves for sad news about these 332 sheets of paper pasted togher...I'm not calling it a book, even if this item is sold in cathegory "books".Do not be mislead by the number of pages (334!), the same amount of information could have been well set on 100 pages. The author just prefers to leave about 50% of every page empty. Add to this a completely awful editorial layout and poor quality black and white photos. Still if you are not confused by the mentioned above info and want to use this "book" to modify pedals you'd better get yourself a big magnifying glass because all the electric diagrams are barely traceable and every simgle one seems to be a reprint of some bad qality bleached photocopy of a scheme which in its turn had been printed by an old dot-matrix printer, and with all this quality the author had the conscience to downscale every scheme to fit a single page. Could you imagine anything worse?Alas, Brian is the man who can make things even worse yet: some of electric diagrams are in freehand which shows first of all that he author doesn't descend on using a ruler and doesn't care in general to make the lines right and straight and the overall scheme inviting to the eye... Who needs computer graphics these days when there is a pen and trembly hand?!The text itself is very jerky: first the author tries to make an introduction of electric components rudimentals but in a very hurried and patchy manner, then for some reason he gives a detailed description of what electronic parts could be found in this or that internet shop (a small embedded advertising?) and then he finally goes to the description of guitar pedal mods.A small surprise: there is NO general info about modifying, there is just a collection of mods to some particular pedals which reader could even not have. No referencies to the mods' authors, but sometimes the author gets honest in his own way and writes laconically "found on web".Conclusion: we all want to earn money, Brian Wampler is not an exception. He piled together some guitar pedal mod recipes found on web (a process that could take some time indeed), retrenched editing expenses by not having any layout designer at all, inflated the book's volume for a better presentability by adding as much useless space as he was able to (things that could happen innocent of wrong intention when your print your book using some simple text editors not suitable for book editing), and then Brian desided to sell this all for a price that is much higher in comparison with many other books of considerably better quality sold on Amazon.Dear Brian, no hard feelings, but this was the most expensive and hardened toilet paper I have ever bought.Dear guitar pedals' mod fans, you'd better spend some time on the Internet and you'll find much more info and for free!PS I wanted to send it back for refund, but the very delivery of it from Russia costs about 80% of the book's price (yeah, that is what we have about regular post service prices here), so this review is the only way I can renumerate the author with.

IGNORE THE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PHOTOS! They are very easy to follow and don’t need to be in color. I just got into messing with electronics and effects pedals in the last couple weeks and I’ve been modding pedals every day since I bought this and the stuff Brian recommends in this book is great. Very easy to follow with lots of great info for a beginner like me. The book is a little expensive but it’s pretty thick and to be honest I’d pay twice as much for a ds-1 that sounds as good as mine does now. This is a must buy if you want to get into modding but know absolutely nothing.

After reading all reviews on this book, I still decided to purchase it. Whereas the price is a little high for what you get, it does provide good information. As a beginner to the electronic world of pedal modifications, this book does provide a general overview of information that you need to know. It does provide a great amount of different pedal modifications(over half the book), so that is a plus. The book is in black and white. For anyone who has dealt with modifying pedals, color documentation is key. That is a down side to the book, again for the price. However, the values for each component is listed, so one can determine the correct resistor, cap, diode, etc.This is a good entry level book for anyone who wants to start modifying their existing pedals. It is a must for those who do not have an electronical engineering degree. It reads very well and keeps you reading onto the next page. Is it the "bible" for modifying pedal, no. But it does help the entry level person starting on the long journey of moding pedals.

At first glance, the book is simply a collection of schematics (most of which you can get online for free). However don't ignore the first 20-30 pages; they are an invaluable jump start guide to understanding electronics and components. Plus the schematics are accompanied by explanations of what the various mods actually do. The list od pedals is fairly standard, obviously it is mostly Boss/Ibanez pedals, but there are rare distortion circuits and even Danelectro pedals.

Wow...I thought some of the reviews were being too critical but oh no....ALMOST 80 dollars for a poorly formatted black and white book which obviously should be in color due to the references and detail needed...its as if a first year college student printed this thing from a computer WITHOUT being edited If this book was actually edited by a professional then they should be terminated immediately!!!! If u just want all of Brian's mods and don't care about these things than yes its adequate but after watching a few of his videos I had high hopes for this collosal disappointment. I am fairly new to modding...maybe 12 or so mods on boss pedals...i thought this would save me the trouble of Googling everything but the horrible format and black and white photos are a real let down for a very very over priced book. BRIAN HOPE U READ THIS AND STOP RIPPING OFF YOUR FANS WITH THIS I KNOW YOU CAN DO BETTER NOT WORTH THE HIGH PRICE BUT MAD PROPS TO GUYS LIKE BRIAN FOR MODDING JUST WATCH THE GREED MAN!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of this information is freely available online, and you may even find better schematic captures and PCB photos. This is a cobbling together of information, with no consistent format, no eye for detail, just a complete mess. The annoying thing is that this bootleg looking mess, asks for real money to be exchanged for it. The whole thing needs to have the tables, photos and schematics created from scratch. The badly photocopied manufacturer's schematics should be offered in a separate appendix for reference/authenticy only - certainly not good enough for a published offering.For reference, I took a punt on the Kindle edition - even though there seemed to be a lot of colour photos, this is far from being worth even the £20(ish) asking price. I would be furious if I'd bought the tree cutter version.

Great book very interesting

There's a lot of wealth in this book, but it's overpriced for what it is. Printing quality is low, images are black & white, and there are huge areas of blank space on virtually every page. For a book this expensive I would expect it to be properly layed out formatted by a professional. This is basically a printout of a Word document and it's a real shame because Brian has so much experience that it lowers the entire experience of learning from master.

I've started reading it as soon as I got & now I'm thinking about modding pedals more seriously than before!

Clearly written and easy to understand. Lots of schematics for various pedal modifications.