BYOC E.S.V. 2 Knob Bender Mod (Modular Capacitors)

(Note: This sort of modification can be done to almost any electrical circuit, just as long as it’s not all surface mount parts. You will see these same lugs and pins used on a variety of projects here at HL)

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After some back and forth conversations with the customer service reps at BYOC (Build Your Own Clone), I decided to turn my E.S.V. 2 Knob Bender into a modular design (with regard to capacitor swapping).

These are high quality “AMP” socket pins with nickel plated copper and gold plating in the middle of the socket.

For convenience I used AMP’s female lugs for the much lighter and smaller electrolytics. These can be seen directly above the foam.

BYOC’s “ESV 2 Knob Bender” design is meant to emulate the first fuzz pedals, used by people like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. It’s my favorite of any fuzz pedal I’ve ever tried, captures that vintage fuzz tone perfectly.

Capacitors installed in pictures:

• 2x Solar HK-2D 4.7uF 25V (vintage)
• 1x ELNA SILMIC-II 47uF 25V
• 1x WIMA MKS4 0.01uF 2000V
• 1x WIMA MKP10 0.1uF 400V
• 1x Sprague 287P (1%) 0.01uF 50V (vintage)

I used a combination of lugs and IC pins, lugs for the electrolytics and IC pins for the rest. The reason I picked IC/socket pins was to protect the PCB from large capacitors. I solder a socket pin to each leg of the capacitor under test and connect it to the board’s socket. If one of the large capacitors bends on the test bench, it’ll just break a pin instead of pulling up the entire pad (like how a lug soldered to the top of the PCB would).