The Boogie Board

OK, so I originally had a tech do a 'foot-switchable drive' mod on my LSS, announced it to you guys, and then you actually figured out how do do it yourselves and posted a how-to on this board. Nice! You are better men than I.

Effectively this made the LSS into a 3-channel amp, or at least eliminated the need for an overdrive pedal... ALMOST!!

But what about this: instead of foot-switching only the Drive, WHAT IF that could be coupled with a change from 'normal' to Thick or Thicker? Here's my reasoning:

Let's say you want clean cleans on Channel 1. Gain knob down, highest wattage.
On Channel 2 you want a dirty-ish Stones rhythm tone, or a nice lightly-clipped lead in Normal mode.
But on 'Virtual Channel 3' you want to go full Boogie, with the Thicker pouring tons of creamy gain into the circuit. We would be infringing on Mk V territory here, with nary a pedal in sight!

Now THAT's 3 channels. Can it be done?

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Lonestar Special, Mark V 90W, Vertical slant 2x12 cab.
ES-335, various G&Ls
"Vintage is in the fingers."

I know that a few people have actually made foot-switched drive selectors. However, the change in tone is fairly drastic and makes it hard to have a setting that suits both having the drive mode on and off. The only way it will really work is with the gain and drive gain settings fairly similar. That said, it is a relatively simple mod if you're familiar with the internals of the amp.

You'll need to drill another quarter inch jack on the footswitch and one on the amp chassis to route the extra channel. Install a third dpdt switch in the footswitch and then re-wire the drive switch in the front to the new quarter jack on the back/bottom of the chassis.

The thick/thicker/normal switch is a little trickier and so subtle it's probably not worth the effort.

Good luck!

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Fender American Strat 08' w/ Dimarzio pickups
Gibson Les Paul Supreme 05'
Mesa Lonestar Classic 07'
Mesa Stiletto Ace 08'
Marshall JCM 900 93'
GK 1001rb 2x10 04'

Check out my post below as it is much better!

It would be hard because that would require a 3T or DT on-off-on relay which are hard to find. In fact, on my brief internet search I only found a guy on Ebay selling a used SP3T relay, so I wouldn't call that a viable option.

What is easy though, is to footswitch between 2 different options using a DPDT or SPDT relay. The simplest option is to have one way automatically hard-wired to normal and on the other side letting you choose(on the amp) between Thick and Thicker. The existed switch on the amp would preform that function. It would let you footswtich between normal and thick/thicker.

The hard and complex option is to footswitch between two full options(i.e. thick and thicker) which would be hard because a second switch(on the front) and pair of capacitors would need to be added.

To do the easy one would require adding a jack on the back(or using the reverb jack*) and adding a relay to the amp. The relay supply would be easy but a space on the PCB or a separate PCB for the relay could be tricky.

Zest

*This itself would require rewiring of the reverb jack.

Hi again,
Now have have thought of a better way to do it that involves no relay. It allows you to switch between normal and whatever the switch on the front panel is on. When the footswitch is unplugged, the switch on the front panel would be the master and its setting would be used. To implement it, you would connect the middle terminal of the normal/thick/thicker switch to a mono jack. The tip of the jack would connect to the middle terminal of the switch and the sleeve would connect the terminal of the treble pot where the normal/thick/thicker switch was connected to before the mod was done. Then connect the switch of the mono jack to the sleeve so that when the footswitch is not connected the 3-position switch on the front panel chooses the setting.

Any standard single button footswitch should work. If you have or want to make your own footswitch, all that's needed is a SPST switch. So all that needs to be done for this mod is to add a jack on the back of the amp and the moving of a few wires.

BTW. I haven't done this mod nor do I own a Lonestar but I have the schematic and if done correctly it should work.

Zest

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Mesa Electra Dyne Combo

Wow! So by this reasoning, you could actually do the ‘footswitch drive’ mod and ADD the Thick/Thicker mod to it, right? One switch, turning on the drive and the thick switch. Basically that would give you the ‘virtual channel 3’ I was thinking of.

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Lonestar Special, Mark V 90W, Vertical slant 2x12 cab.
ES-335, various G&Ls
"Vintage is in the fingers."