Andy McCoy I

December 17, 2019

BUILDING ANDY'S BOARD began by following the first step in our process, namely making sure all used pedals were in perfect working order. This means play testing, knob twiddling and carefully listening to each pedal in isolation, before even touching a screwdriver or cleaning any contact. Looking at the roadworn pedals we were prepared for the worst-case scenario, meaning the disassembly and repair of all pedals to fix broken switches, pots or connectors. And that was if all pedals were even salvageable. Here are the DOD's vintage phaser guts that ended up in the second board. It looked pretty cool from our opinion.

We tested the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic that Andy said was broken. The lower gain Rhythm channel sounded strange, the pedal was really noisy and the controls didn’t seem to work in a linear fashion. The Lead channel was just like Andy had said – it sounded like a very fuzzy, badly tracking octaver pedal.

No doubt, this box had been through a lot. There was rust on the PCB, along with residue of various sticky liquids and indistinct gunk. Luckily, most of the damage was underneath the PCB, and the electronic components themselves looked all right. We went through several stages of careful cleaning, and we also resoldered the worst looking damage. Then we tried the effect again. Something had changed, maybe even for the better, but the pedal still wasn’t in working order.

We opened the effect once more and started tapping on components with a wooden stick to find broken components or cold solder joints. We still couldn’t find the culprit. Then we turned our attention to the pair of NOS 6021 miniature tubes, of which the one labelled “V1” was much more microphonic than the other. This called for drastic measures, namely soldering in a new valve.

Luckily for us our local supplier had a few of these rare tubes in stock. We cut off the legs of the old tube, carefully cleaned the solder points on the PCB, and soldered the new valve in place. This brought the pedal back to life, with even the Lead channel working just as it should!

Rest of Andy’s pedals worked fine, and only required the removal of old velcro strips, maybe a new screw here and there, a little tightening of the occasional control or jack, and a few sprays with switch cleaner. The US-made Vox wah-wah was a view to behold, with all its components clean and in working order. The wah sounded great – not even the pot crackled!


Once we got the Twin Tube back to life, the pedal also pointed us in the right direction regarding our choice of power supply. The Twin Tube needed its own 16 VAC power supply, plugged into its own power outlet on the bottom of the board.

We then selected a Cioks DC5 power supply and attached it to the pedalboard to power the rest of the pedals. There was just about enough space underneath Andy’s old-style Pedaltrain 2 frame for us to place the Cioks and the AC outlet next to each other, using black 3M Dual Lock.


The rest of the building process was easy. Because this was a special case, we made sure to secure the cable ties holding the snake in place with additional screws.


We made all the patch cables using our preferred combination of Evidence SiS-plugs and Monorail cable. Because this board would be used heavily we added Locktite screw fasteners to further secure the plugs to the effect pedals.

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If you have purchased all the parts and components but get a feeling that you might not be up to the task after all, we can make your pedalboard for you, using the components you have bought from us. Don’t worry, we won’t let anything go to waste.

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