IndyGuitarist SD-1 Fullclone Mod

The mod is easy if you know how to solder and unsolder. Brian gave all the info about mod after I bought ( I bought the od-3 mod too).

I tried with my strat (alder body, maple neck, 2 dimarzio virtual vintage and an air norton humbucker on the bridge on a boogie mk3 amp) and with a lot of different guitars and amps of some friends.
Well.......great....is a word that I can think. It has more gain, bass, sustain, the sound now is bigger/fuller, the mid is softer now and keeps the natural sounds of the guitars. Another point is the playability. The dynamics are there with the gain at any point. I can get a Brian May type of drive. For me, a dream come true. Try it. If you don't like it, sell it. How close is comes for the fulldrive? For what I need, better. Not for everyone I think.

It's a boss, if it stops it will be my fault. I gig without a back up. Shouldn't have any problems

He always respond my e-mails. Always polite and available. Thanks Brian!

Can play almost anything on this pedal(not thrash, speed, etc metal). It really inspire me to play better. I wish I had it when I was younger.

It's a Boss pedal so it's easy to use. Tone, Volume and Gain.

I took a dusty, mediocre pedal and turned it into one of my favorite pedals.
Simply by buying some parts and switching them out as Brian suggested. Now it sounds virtually identical to a Fulldrive. Which of course is a modified Tubescreamer just like the SD-1. It has a real smooth midrangey tone, like a TS. But it just sounds more refined. It is hard to get a good low gain, but this fits the bill perfectly. With a normal SD-1 you get no volume boost and a thin, gritty overdrive. The mod fixed all the SD-1?s drawbacks. It covers my low gain needs, inconjuction with my Tonebone Classic for medium gain stuff and my Fuzz Factory for crazy stuff. All of this works with several other boutique pedals and one more Indyguitarist mod pedal, a Boss CH-1 chorus which sounds amazing. Guitars PRS McCarty Rosewood or Custom 22 and a TopHat Club Royale 2x12.

Only one drawback and it?s due to the Boss?s buffered bypass. If the gain is cranked, you can hear a little distortion when it?s bypass. But I don?t use it with the gain cranked, so it suits me just fine. But again, this isn?t Brian?s fault.

It's a Boss that's worked for me for 12 years, with my decent soldering job it'll hold up. If not, I know enough to fix it.

Brian's a great guy. Very helpful and honest. He has done a lot for the DIY pedal community, and is respected as such.

I highly recommend finding one of these $30 dollar pedals and contacting Brian for the mod. Save yourself some cash and have an amazing low gain pedal to boot.

As easy as any 3 knob overdrive/distortion pedal to get a sound out of. Volume, tone and drive. If you can't figure it out, you probably need help putting your shoes on.

I've been changing my setup quite a bit these days. There are a number of things that I use right now, but I try to keep it constant for a few months until I get bored. I recently acquired 2 Parker Flys (I'm a professional musician with a good income, so I require good gear). One is a P-38 that I modded with some Planet Waves tuners and a JB Jr. in the neck, a Duckbucker in the middle and a JB humbucker in the bridge. I'll end up changing the Duckbucker, it's a little bit weak and it gets in the way of my picking because I have to raise it quite far. The other Parker fly is a Fly Mojo which is about half of the weight! I just acquired 2 different amps as well. One is a Fender Hot Rod Deville 2X12 and the other is a Fender Acoustisonic SFX (amazing amp!). Mostly what I play through is either a Tech 21 Trademark 60 (which is great when you don't need an assload of volume and it's practical), a modded Fender Bassman head into a Carvin 2X12 (the tweed one) or a Fender Silver Face Twin (with some great Fender/JBL speakers). I have other guitars, but mostly I'm using the Parkers right now. I used the Y-cable for the Parker and ran the piezo side straight into the Acousticonic and the effects chain that I use for the electric is as follows: Loooper Micro A/B >> Nobels ODR-1 >> Indyguitarist SD-1 Fullclone Fulldrive >> Barber Electronics Direct Drive >> either an Ibanez SC10 or Boss CE-2 >> Korg Dynamic Echo >> Hot Rod Deville. I've been doing a lot of rehearsals for an short upcoming tour (cover music, blah!!). Before I got the Parkers and the Fenders, I got the SD-1 from an eBay auction pretty cheap, maybe 35 bucks or so. I decided that I would buy it only to have it modded from one of the soundclips from Brian's website. I got the parts from Smallbear (www.smallbearelec.com) and purchased the DIY kit from Brian's site. It took me about 45 minutes to mod (I'm not the best at modding, but I can get by fairly well). Right after I modded it, I headed down to the basement to try it out. I got the Parker P-38 and the pedal and ran it into my Tech 21 amp. I got the sweetest, thickest sound ever from this thing! I dorked with it for about an hour just because the sound was so pleasant while my soldering iron roasted upstairs. I then took an SD-1 that I got modded from Analog Man and A/B'ed the two of them. NO COMPARISION!!!!!! Don't get me wrong, Analog Man's pedal has a pretty good tone, but even when you turn up the volume all the way, it's barely at unity gain (the same volume as the clean sound). Indy's mod added so much warmth, had a cleaner drive and and the volume was a vast improvement. Indy's pedal at 11 o' clock on the volume was still louder than Analog Man's at full. The tone is much better as well. Much more sweet bottom end and no harsh high end at all. Full bodied, sweet and plenty of gain and volume to spare. The next day, I took it to my first rehearsal with a rock/funk band that I play with. The bassist is a dabbler in guitar and drums and has an SD-1 as well. Well, we played through some tunes and he just freaked out. He went over to look at my pedalboard and just said, 'Jeez, what the hell is giving you THAT tone?!?' I let him check it out and he handed me his SD-1 to mod. So I modded that one and same super sweet tone! The following week I went to some more rehearsals (for the touring band) and had the most heavenly sweet sustaining sound. This pedal ended up replacing my TS-9 on the board, I'm selling my Analog Man modded SD-1 (which I swore that I would NEVER do!) and have yet to stomp on the Barber Direct Drive. The Parker through the 2 amps with the SD-1 and a touch of echo is a sound that I could only dream about if I could have dreams this beautiful. It reacts to your touch very well, is extremely dynamic and cleans up great with the volume knob giving you a multitude of useful tones along the way. Definitely not weak or leaving me saying 'It's nice, but...........' Perfect!!

Well, Brian never touched this pedal, so if it screws up it was either Boss or me (probably me!). But I did an extremely clean and solid solder job, so I'm not worried in the least. Can't rate Indy on this one! I will get another and keep it as a backup just because if it were stolen, I would probably cry like a baby for a long time.

Brian is a god!! He replies to every email of mine, is courteous and very, very cool! I respect the guy wholeheartedly. I found out about him from the Harmony Central forums. He got a lot of flak for being a bit confident in his craft and some people got offended by that. You know, he is a great person who LOVES guitar, electronics and has so much ideas and knowledge to share with other guitar players. Eventually, I realized that I was wasting time reading forums about how 'players' were gettin GAS for new gear, drooling over pedals that were painted this way or that and whining about getting the next new thing. In other words, non-musicians (not all of them) that were only interested in gear and not music. Brian can easily cater to the MUSICIANS; who cares about the posers? In my book, the modders do us a great service (Analog Man, Keeley, Tone Jam, Indyguitarist, and so on) and they are all different. What I like about Brian is that he plays his own clips (if he didn't like it, he would never present it to you just for profit), is TOTALLY stoked about guitar and offers his secrets. I could go on. First class in my book!

This cheap ass pedal became my reason to enjoy playing and thinking about music again after being in rut for about 3 years. Wow!! Now I'm stoked, my playing has gone to a new level in the last 2 weeks and I'm hungry to play again. I have about 60 pedals and have bought enough gear to try to keep myself interested, but it took this thing to make me interested. I play a lot of rock (old, new) in cover bands, original funk/fusion, Eric Johnson music, lots of straight ahead, country, damn it you name it, I'm a prostitute but that's how I make my living. Like I stated, I make quite a generous amount and my gear is like a carpenter's tools; it has to be consistently reliable and basically the best that you have to do the job perfectly. I've been playing about 20 years now. I am thinking about getting another and modding just because it is so cheap and having a backup. Not because of reliability but getting stolen. I would be crushed and could not wait even a day to have one again. I'm done buying gear now (except picks and strings). You can absolutely not go wrong with such a great innovation from Indyguitarist!!!