Danelectro BLT Echo mods (Sample Length and Drone Machine)

This little monster combines uses two mods; one discovered by soulsonic of freestompboxes.org, and one that I found while poking around.


[click for larger]Soulsonic's mod turns this crappy, single-speed echo into a surprisingly decent variable-speed delay pedal! Simply locate pin 6 of the PT2399S, remove the attached resistor labelled "682" and replace with a pot and resistor. Soulsonic reccomends a 50k pot and 180 ohm resistor, but I used a 100k pot and 220 ohm resistor.


[click for larger]The second mod is a feedback loop connecting the bottom two wires pictured above with two different capacitor selections to create a wave effect in the drone. With this mod, I also added a 100k "feedback strength" pot, and a switch so you can throw it into standalone mode without anything plugged in (top two wires in the picture above).


[click for larger]When these two mods are combined, the BLT is so much fun to play with! There are 5 controls, mix, repeat, sample length, feedback strength and feedback mode (A/off/B). As a standalone drone device, it packs a powerful punch. The sample-length mod creates some great pitch swoops and I once managed to make it sound EXACTLY like a turntable scratch! Unfortunately I wasn't able to reproduce that in this video.

Happy Glitching.