vintage Rosac Nu-Wa Nu-Fuzz - converting to 9v dc adaptor

maertz13

Active member
alright braintrust, here's a fun one. I was sent a vintage Rosac to check out/repair/mod so that it is no longer powered by 2 separate 9v batteries. It works fine on a battery, he said, but a voodoo lab power supply to battery snap adapter made terrible noise.

those were my findings exactly. battery sounds great, clipping a 9v power supply makes the most obnoxious buzz. here's where it gets weirder. if i clip the negative to either the chassis or one of the bare bus wire grounds, it's totally fine. but in either position for the "battery on/off" switch (which has good continuity) it makes awful noise. there are also 16uf electrolytic caps on the footswitches, which is something i've never seen before.

if anyone is clutching their pearls, rest easy. my plan was to use the hole for the battery switch to hold a dc jack, and every change i make be 100% reversable. trouble is i'm not 100% sure how to approach it if i can't just connect (-) to (-) and (+) to (+). definitely some really interesting vintage wiring tactics going on here that are beyond my understanding at the moment.

thoughts?
 
Those caps would be my first suspect. If I'm envisioning it right, by toughing the chassis, you are bypassing them.
If the owners used batteries + it sat for years, those caps may have never seen power past the factory.
Maybe tap in the DC past the cap and heat shrink the battery clips and write NO on them?
 
Those caps would be my first suspect. If I'm envisioning it right, by toughing the chassis, you are bypassing them.
If the owners used batteries + it sat for years, those caps may have never seen power past the factory.
Maybe tap in the DC past the cap and heat shrink the battery clips and write NO on them?
if they weren't working at all, I'd expect it to not work with batteries, but it does
 
Looks like ground needs two connections, one to the fuzz switch and one to the wah switch. You establish both by going to the chassis.
 
in the event that i disconnect that battery switch and take both grounds to the negative pin on the DC jack, think the issue would just go away? because that's the end-goal. get both circuits to work on a single 9v supply, add a protection diode, maybe a small dropper resistor to simulate a C-Zi battery. original switch and battery snaps go back with it
 
in the event that i disconnect that battery switch and take both grounds to the negative pin on the DC jack, think the issue would just go away? because that's the end-goal. get both circuits to work on a single 9v supply, add a protection diode, maybe a small dropper resistor to simulate a C-Zi battery. original switch and battery snaps go back with it
I don't think you would hurt anything by any means. Can always test it with some clips.
But, isn't one switch bypass of sorts? The one under the pedal.
 
I don't think you would hurt anything by any means. Can always test it with some clips.
But, isn't one switch bypass of sorts? The one under the pedal.
there are bypass footswitches for both effects as well as a toggle switch to turn off the battery. it breaks the negative connection so the battery doesn't die. i guess they hadn't worked out switching jacks yet
 
Or just wanted battery power and to leave the unit plugged in on the pedalboard without having to remove the plug or battery every freq'n' time done practicing/rehearsing/gigging/playing...
 
Or just wanted battery power and to leave the unit plugged in on the pedalboard without having to remove the plug or battery every freq'n' time done practicing/rehearsing/gigging/playing...
but then they had to unhook everything and unscrew the battery door on the bottom when they DID expire :p
 
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