Replace the annoying 1/4” DC jack on a DOD Performer-Series pedal.

If you are lucky enough to own an early-1980s DOD Performer-series pedal that still actually works, you know about the dumb power jack. There are some great-sounding pedals in this series, such as the 575 Flanger, 585 Delay, and 595 Phasor; but many of them collect dust because you either need to cram two 9V batteries into each, or find a plug attachment for your power supply that is a non-standard 1/4” size.

You don’t have to live that way! It’s really easy to install a standard Boss-size 2.1mm DC jack that will work with most power supplies, as long as they have an 18V output. Here’s how to do it.

First, note that the existing power jack just has two red wires connected to its tabs:

The thicker red wire is the battery-clip positive wire; the thin red wire is the connection to the circuit board. After removing the jack from the enclosure, this is easier to see:

Since there is the remote chance I might resell this pedal someday, I am going to leave the battery wire attached to the old jack, and keep it inside the battery compartment. I will cover the two battery clips with electrical tape to keep them from touching anything. I have no interest in actually using batteries myself, so I won’t miss this feature, nor will most people who are bothering with upgrading the power jack!

Next, I need to mount the new jack. It will not fit in the old hole. You can either ream/drill a 1/2” hole for the new jack, or (if you might resell the pedal in the future) mount it into a rectangle of plastic or other nonconductive material. Here’s mine, with labels for the three tabs:

“Wait, ground? There wasn’t a ground wire on the old jack!” Correct. The old jack depended on the metal enclosure for its ground connection, because it was center-positive with the sleeve as ground. The new jack is center-negative, and plastic, so that connection needs to be made with a wire. To where? There are a few options, but the easiest is one of the audio jacks; the angled/corner tab on either is a ground connection.

Below, my orange ground wire is soldered to that tab:

Next, I soldered an orange extension to the existing thin red wire from the circuit board that I clipped off of the old jack. The existing wire might have reached on its own, but I wanted room for the battery clips and old jack to fit inside the cavity, so I added the extension and covered the connection with heat-shrink tubing. Here are the two wires (from the board, and to ground) soldered to the new jack; the blank tab is where the battery red wire would go if I were still using batteries:

That’s it! All that’s left to do is place the board with the new jack into the space on the back of the pedal. For now, I’m using electrical tape, because, again, I might sell this pedal someday and don’t want to drill more holes into it. Drill holes for mounting screws if you want to permanently mount the board.

Plug it in; again, it wants 18V, not 9V. It works! It sounds great! Hooray!