Boss Pedals SMD

[PJazzmaster]

Probably old news to some of you but I just found out that Boss did change some (?) or their classic pedals to surface mount. It's for sure a no-brainer for a company like Boss to save production cost. But c'mon, it's getting really difficult if not impossible to mod or to repair, right? Also confirmed by Analogman
"In 2017, some Boss pedals (...) were changed to tiny SMT (surface mount) parts, with the board assembled by a machine to save money. We can't mod these pedals. The old style had a big circuit board, almost the same size as the bottom plate. The black DS-1 ANNIVERSARY model is still old style so we can mod those and have a bunch in stock. "

Below example is a Blues Driver:

[Shadoweclipse13]

That kinda sucks. I've got an older style Blues Driver (Keeley modded as well) that's the full-size board. The funny thing is, it might be harder, if not impossible, to mod them now, but the newer style should be easier to rehouse for someone like myself who doesn't care for the Boss enclosure (side jacks mostly).

[Ursa Minor]

omg, i thought something was missing in the one one the left. There's nothing in there! Thats crazy!

[oid]

It is far from impossible to mod surface mount, it just takes a new skillset and a few new tools.

[Embenny]

It is far from impossible to mod surface mount, it just takes a new skillset and a few new tools.

Absolutely.

I took that quote as more of a comment that Analogman "can't" mod them, as in they won't accept the new ones from customers, because they aren't interested in retooling and adjusting their business model to accommodate surface-mount pedals.

Which is fine, they're free to do whatever makes sense for them as a company.

I'm curious to see what enterprising modders can come up with for these new boards.

I mean, with an efficient layout, control and switching scheme, you could easily house half a dozen of those suckers in a reasonable single pedal sized enclosure, making a compact analog multi-effect unit. And that's before you even start to talk about tweaking the circuits.

[oid]

I took that quote as more of a comment that Analogman "can't" mod them, as in they won't accept the new ones from customers, because they aren't interested in retooling and adjusting their business model to accommodate surface-mount pedals.

There was the quote but PJazzmaster also said

But c'mon, it's getting really difficult if not impossible to mod or to repair, right?

Right now is a great time for anyone with some ambition who wants to get into the business. Surface mount does make some things more difficult, multilayer boards are common and if the trace you need to cut is in the middle, it may not be possible, sometimes you can just drill through the board and the trace but not always so you have to go about things in a different way. You do not get to be lazy with SMD, no replacing resistors with trimmers like AnalogMan was so fond of, you actually have to learn at least the practical side of circuit design and calculate the new values, swapping parts to see what happens is much more difficult and impractical on the smaller SMD parts, you really need to learn some electronics.

Honestly I assumed Boss switched years ago, apparently they are aware of the importance of the mod community on their sales and put it off until a sizeable chunk of electronics DIY/repair community was comfortable with SMD.

On the positive side, SMD is not nearly as tolerant to the hack job mods that are so common, anyone who wants to make a go at it will have to be much neater and mindful of good technique than AnalogMan etal ever were.

[s_mcsleazy]

i've modded the odd smd pedal but it is a bit of a bitch. saying that, i understand why companies are going that way nowadays. it's more reliable in the long run. harder to repair when it does go wrong but if it's under warranty, they'll probs just send a new one.

[Harmoncj]

t the newer style should be easier to rehouse for someone like myself who doesn't care for the Boss enclosure (side jacks mostly).

also if you wanted to put a new circuit in there entirely!

[PJazzmaster]

There are for sure also some good aspects to SMD but generally speaking -- for such "old" technology - like a traditional boss pedal:
- i guess they want to achieve that people are buying a new pedal if the old one is broken yes, people are doing this already but the likeliness is much higher that they are simply throwing away the broken one
- they are doing this to save production and labor cost

Yes, I get the point of SMD when it comes to new innovations and technology but I don't get it in that specific case (traditional guitar pedals that weren't designed for SMD originally).

Value add for the customer who is buying a 2018 SMD Blues Driver ? ZERO
It's not even cheaper so there is really no positive aspect to it.

[oid]

The prices for Boss have barely gone up over years, the Blues Driver was $70 in the early 90s when I bought my first distortion pedal, $30 increase over nearly 30 years, they have been eating cost increases for awhile most likely. Thru hole boards are expensive and time consuming to make and stuff, they are wasteful of resources compared to SMD, there is little reason to cling to the past here.

Any competent tech has the tools for SMD these days and can fix something as simple as these pedals without issue, you may not be able to go to your amp tech, but most anyone who also works on synths and recording gear will be able to handle it without issue. There is no reason to throw away a dead pedal just because it is SMD, the younger people into electronics can handle SMD better than they can thru hole, the market is changing.

The value added is that the Blues Driver stays a $100 pedal instead of going up to $120.

Boss would die if they did not make this change, plain and simple, the resistor, capacitor and IC manufactures are all switching to SMD, in another decade thru hole will be purely legacy for everything but high power circuits. The only way they could stay with thru hole for the long haul is if they went into manufacturing parts themselves, which would greatly increase the cost of everything they make.

This is just like everyone freaking out about ROHS and stocking up on lead solder because everything made with lead free solder will die in under a decade! It has been 15 years and no one even mentions it now, it was a non issue, everyone adapted to working with lead free solder with 15 minutes of practice, the solder did not fail causing everything to die a premature death, life went on.

[somanytoys]

There is also the consideration of Boss' new Waza line. If they are taking the old mods into consideration, to bring the pedal up to some of the modded standards right out of the production gate, there's not so much of a need for people to mod the non-Waza pedals anymore. So now that (most of) the modders won't work on the new pedals, people have the choice of buying older used ones to mod (no sale for Boss), the new & improved Waza version (a Boss new sale), or just buy the new cheaper,. non-improved version (another Boss new sale) and live with it, maybe upgrade one day.

I really think that besides the savings of the SMD, this also may have been their way of trying to reclaim some of the market. Especially considering that the current golden era of pedals is kind of an outgrowth of Analog Mike, Robert Keeley and Mike Fulton tinkering with and improving all of those old Boss and Ibanez pedals in the early 00's, then moving on to making their own versions of them, and then on to doing new, original pedals. There's so much new great stuff out there now, that there's not too much left out there to bother to mod anymore.

I have 2 modded BD-2s and a modded TS-9, and those are the only ones that I've personally found worth that are bothering modding, and that I will keep after modding. But I'm sure that if I didn't already have them, I could probably find 5 versions of each of those, built by other companies, all better than the Boss or Ibanez stock versions.

The Waza versions may be really cool and replace the need for mods, hopefully they paid attention to the market and what was going on, and incorporated those improvements. Otherwise, maybe all of the pre-SMD pedals will become the new "Made in Japan" Boss pedals that people seem to go crazy about. I understand about craftsmanship and all, but nothing I've read says that all that much changed with them being made in Taiwan.