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The Hot Holder thing is neat. Once I finally get my dang 3d printer going I think that would be a perfect thing to start with.

If you 3D print it, wouldn't it melt when you try to use it?

The radio shack one looks originally 3d printed but cast in silicone, so heat resistant.

At the same time, all mbp boards are as good or in many cases better than some production run boards you see from smaller boutique shops. I can say that with some confidence

I can attest they are fantastic and my weener wah still kills it. Best board I've ever had the pleasure of soldering to. I would just be bummed if I paid a lot of money to a "boutique" builder to find out all he really did is assemble and upcharge. Kind of like a "builder" who really just assembles bolt on guitar parts. I can do that myself! 

Someone in the Tone Mob facebook group was bummed he opened a "boutique" flanger pedal and found an MPB board in it. I believe (based on his pics) it was a current lover board. Is this still a problem? From his complaint this was not a "one off" or "selling this pedal I made"  and for his credit the seller did have some self etched boards in his other pedals. I suggested he complain here as, correct me if I'm wrong, this isn't kosher. Obviously you can't police this kind of thing but what a bummer. I'd have been bummed. 

Very usefull (I believe neccessary) instrument is solder pump - getting hot tin away from point. Not allways will clean everything, but it is far easier to get pin out from hole. Practice is necessairy, but it comes quickly. And solder-iron with temperature setting. The best pistol solder. More handy for such a work.

I have both suction AND heated desoldering pumps. The issue was that with the through hole PCB solder has secured the pin on both sides of the board. You'd reheat the old solder on one side, but it would not wick through to the other side, which was still securing the part. I was able to cut apart the pots and desolder the pin stubs but after lifting multiple traces trying to get the pin stubs out I gave up. I still have the second parts unit. With an (old) machine soldered PCB with old solder, even copious amounts of flux wasn't helping. I watch guys restore old 80's computers and they have similar issues. Are there professional desoldering devices, us mere hobbyists don't have access to?

If there was a decent market for it, you could have new daughter boards produced for you. Solder on the pots and the header and sell them as a drop-in replacement assembly!

As this is a COMMON failure point on these units, there just night be a market... hmmm

More alesis MIDIVERB II woes as I think the output pot is dying. As I unfortunately found out on my first attempt replacing/resoldering the pots (I still have replacements) is crappy business. Or I don't have the proper tools to get the parts off cleanly. I wish I could just send the daughter board with the replacement pots have someone with a professional set up replace them. building pedals/rewiring guitars is in my realm, but repairing old electronics is not. Doesn't anyone own 1-800-solder4U?

My bandmate sold me his ts9 (reissue with jrc chip) for dirt cheap and I did landgraff mods to it, added LEDs for clipping. Does the trick with my blues Jr. Sometimes you just need good generic crunch. Now are the mods worth the landgraff prices? awesome, but nah. Buy a couple caps and a couple LEDs and go to town. Ibanez/Maxxon pedals are cheap and plentiful and easy to mod (along with many PCBs). I always called TS and TS style drives the swiss army knife of dirt/crunch. Need some? use a TS.

Tried toothpick trick.. worked a little.. still better solder wick.

Now onto the rest of the tale as it gets.. crappy. Order a non working unit from a guy in NC, two weeks, no item, no tracking, not answering messages. Get reverb involved. Get a refund denial. "claims shipped". get reverb involved again. Only then do I finally hear from the seller. He never had the item, he already sold it. But took my money anyway. Reverb refunded me. WTF. If you don't have an item remove the listing and don't steal people's money.

Unit 3: This is where the story has a happy ending. Get unit last night from florida. Claims unit won't power on. Seller immediately lets me know shipping will be a day late, wifey forgot to slap on shipping label, and he was late for work. Shows up last night. Well I open the unit planning to swap parts. This is an older unit with the 1/8 old skool plug power adapter and socket. The headphone shaped one. The jumper from the PCB to the socket broke. solder a new one it, unit fires up first time. Pots are a little scratchy, otherwise like brand new. Ever had bought something "broken" only to find it one loos connection? SCORE!!!

If I was going to do more gear restoration on a pro-level yes I'd buy one of those fancy pumps, probably the best tool for the job.
I do have ones of these:



But it's not all that great, and I probably need to clean it out. Back in the day before Alesis was sold off, you could send the units back for repair, and I'm sure they used that kind of stuff. Sucks now all this old gear is in the hands of us novice hobbyists to try and salvage. Speaking of which the summer before last my dad spent rehabbing an old Commodore 64 and an Amiga 500. Both of which proved daunting. The other wild thing was he had got the c-64 software collection of a local video game reviewer from back in the day and CLEANED THE FUCK UPPP on some of the in box titles, some with original shrink wrap. He didn't believe me when I said the retro tech collecting community is insane! I think one one title alone he got $250!

Oh I tried every trick in the book. The three pots are board mounted, double gangs with two rows of three pins. They sit flush to the board, with enough gap that solder wicked through the hold and welded them in place. I had to dissect the pots, drill out the rivets, basically rip them apart, then try to remove the pins. Still managed to lift a trace and pad. Then attempted to clean out the holes with solder wick (I need new wick, this wick I have DOES NOT wick solder, even with copious flux). The holes managed to stay partially stubbornly plugged, blocking the holes from the new pins. After a couple more pad lifting issues (the pads were in bad shape after removing the original pots) I basically cut my loses. There are always units on reverb and ebay for repair and snagged another cheap with a board issue. I'm gonna try and harvest the front panel/pot daughter board assembly. Mine has a bad segment in one of the 8 segment displays anyways. Come to think of it, I see a lot of retro computer guys doing this, maybe I should have taken this route in the first place!

Which begs the question, when you have a part mounted with solder on both pads, how can you remove it? You can only wick/suck up so much solder, and one side will always stay solid.

  Trying to replace the pots on an old midiverb II rackmount. Finally found replacement pots. Waited on backorder. Show shipping via USPS and their problems. Tried to remove old pots, barely got them removed, lot a pad, gave up. Ordered non working midiverb (pots and pot daughter board seem ok) going to try to assemble a working unit. How do these old computer restorers on youtube do it? Trying to remove through parts on a 20+ year old wave soldered board is damn near impossible. it's like you need a small iron on both ends of the board. And that's with copious flux. And fresh solder. Should I never be attempted to do something this aggravating in the future, any tips?

My dad went to MIT in the 60's and was talking about all the now tech famous people and tech that came out of there that decade. Tom Shoholz of Boston also was a grad. Very prolific time period

That actually looks handy and much easier than trying to find a signal source, patch together your own cable with a alligator clip, paper clip and half of a 1/4 cable

Do you get thick enough gain out of it? Maybe I'm asking too much out of it since I'm comparing it to a modeled preset on my old pod XT that is based off the real thing

Tim, builds as Master Effects out of canada, it sounds great. (And he had just happened to have built one when I asked about it) But looking up the circuit online it's the same guy on a forum post.. has no one else done this before? I'd have thought it was more common. Unless people aren't into the 80's rack saturation thing. Anyone else tackle this before? I've been trying to find a high gain pedal in the pre-amp or hot rodded marshall territory to use in my dinky live rig. (blues Jr. if you believe it!) Can't afford the real thing (nor the volume). Anyone else after this goal?