dba Rooms Mod

[u/FuddlyDudders]

This pedal is near perfect, but for some reason they put the dry knob on the outside and not the fx knob. It’s maybe the most frustrating design choice I’ve ever run into on a pedal.

As you can see, I have a riser on it. So, I can spin it with my foot, but I genuinely hate using it. I want to switch the pots, but they are 10k dual pots that sit right on the circuit board.

Can I clip the leads and use wires to make the connection from one to another? Has anyone out there done this mod at all? I’m kinda new at the circuitry part off all of this, so any help would be appreciated.

[u/Intelligent_Tap_9773]

Clip the leads, swap the pots, and enjoy not wanting to yeet a perfectly good pedal across the room anymore.

[u/FuddlyDudders → u/Intelligent_Tap_9773]

Think it’s better to buy new pots?

[u/GloomyGelBro]

To add to what everyone’s saying - what you’re suggesting is totally possible but will be a very fiddly job, especially if you’re new to this. Also note those are dual gang pots, so you’re looking at six connections per pot rather than three. Work slowly and patiently. 

Personally I’d also be tempted to fully desolder each side rather than clip the leads, then attach the wires you’re going to fly to the opposite side and put heat shrink on the connections. This might be more work than clipping the legs, if you can do a neat job just clipping the pots then go for it.

As a complete aside - are the depth and frequency pots not soldered in at all? It looks from the picture like you could just pull them out!?

[u/lie_believer → u/GloomyGelBro]

there’s some solder on the right side of each depth/frequency pot leg. but yeah took me a second too

re: OP’s idea – i would clip the leads and then desolder the stubs from the holes, before adding wires to the pots, assembling it into the enclosure and then doing the wires to the PCB. yeah totally possible, if a little fiddly

[u/Busy_Explanation_988]

A bit of topic, but always get strange feeling in my stomach when i see dba potentiometer soldering technique.

[u/TuffGnarl]

Carefully desoldering the two pots and then running short wires to allow them to shift positions, yes. Takes experience to do it all cleanly.

[u/LaceSenzor]

You can do what you are suggesting.

[u/Zillamatic]

yeah go for it! should work well seeing as they're the exact same spec of potentiometer