Changing the foot switch in a guitar distortion pedal

Hello, steemians, and welcome to my page, eh!

Today, I want to show you a little project that I did recently. I was given two older Proco Rat distortion pedals back in the mid 1990s, neither of which worked when given to me. Both had broken foot switches. They basically sat in a box for the next 20 some odd years until I ran across them a few weeks back while looking for something else. After checking them both out, I decided to replace the switch in one of them to see if it would work.

In order to replace the switch in one of these, you basically have to take the entire thing apart. Taking the bottom cover off is just the beginning of this repair.

Here's a look at the circuit board in the pedal. I already had the wires unsoldered from the switch connections when I took this picture.

Here it is with the new switch installed. I neglected to take a picture of it when I had the board out.

This is a picture of the other Rat pedal with the board removed. This one is newer than the one I fixed, it has an indicator LED to tell you when the pedal is on, the other one doesn't. As you can see, you have to remove the entire unit as one piece to get it out of the case. The big hole in the board is where the foot switch gets mounted.

There are several small differences between these 2 pedals, even though they are the same pedal. The circuit board is laid out a bit differently, the newer one has the indicator light, and the battery holder is different.
The older one is pretty old, it has a serial number in the 15 thousands range, the newer one, which is still probably 30 years old, has a serial number in the 150 thousand range. I suppose they make changes as they feel necessary when they're making them.

I only had the 1 foot switch to use for replacement, so the other pedal will have to wait until I get another switch before I can repair it.

Well, that's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my post, eh!

As always, feel free to leave a comment or a question if you would like.

May the Steem Force be with you!