About ten years ago I picked up a Johnson Amplification J3 footswitch from a thrift store for about $2. Even though it looked like it had done a world tour, or two, I knew a few bucks would be a solid investment. Since I've never owned a Johnson amp, or their little modeler, I've never known if this thing worked or not. For years it sat in my closet without any purpose, until I started wanting to build a DIY A/B/Y box. It seemed to fit those needs well, in fact too well, but my A/B/Y didn't need three switches, so I had to sort out a way to plug the middle hole on the top. I would also need to drill additional holes for LEDs and the additional outputs.
Eventually I got around to drilling the holes and putting everything into place, but I never bothered soldering it together because I was really put off by the middle hole. Hindsight being more than just looking at big, round booties, I should have thought it through before drilling the additional holes and just left it alone. In the end I used a small 1590A enclosure and made a very simple A/B switcher and at that point the A/B/Y project was completely dead. Now I just had a J3 footswitch with extra holes and no wiring. So what do I do with it now? I rectify my stupid mistakes and fix it up, duh!
Lucky for me I had enough foresight, which has no questionable quip, and took photos of the insides so I could replace them, should I ever decide to do so. Which I have, obviously, that's why you're reading this right now. I'm sorry. I got everything set up and removed the excess outputs and LEDs, then I soldered back the coupled pair of 1N4148s which I always left alone, even when I needed them for pedal builds, and used the images I took all those years ago to rewire it back up. If you'll refer to the opening paragraph of this blog entry you'll remember I've never owned anything this footswitch will work with, so I still can't tell you whether it works or not. I can tell you that aside from some extra holes, which are now bugging me more so than just the middle hole when I wanted it to be an A/B/Y box, it's back together to the best of my ability.
Below I've provided the images I took before tearing the footswitch apart. These may help someone rewire theirs, or you can tell me that mine isn't wired correctly. The previous owner may have rewired it to work with something else, I'm not sure. That's the problem with having nothing to test this thing with. Again, it's wired to the best of my ability and that's what matters right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment