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drmcclainphd
August 10th, 2012, 07:55 AM
The "Legendary" Pignose 7-100 Mods
It's a great little portable (9V, six AA cells) with a long and illustrious history of famous players. A new model, identical as far as I can tell down to bare metal, goes for about $75. One of the reasons it's so well liked is the growling overdrive you get when it's turned up.
The most common question I see about the Pignose is about the schemtic. Here's a good one:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/pignose7-100.gif
The second most common is about the speaker, and replacement.
It's a 5", 30 watt, 8 ohm instrument driver. I've seen some with this installed:
http://www.jensentone.com/speaker/mod_5_30
Mine has no markings but it specs out right. I've tried a couple replacements to see how they worked. The Sony "dynamic bass" driver that went into my PA require a hole be drilled in the flange, but works great at low levels, but breaks up at high, being 10w instead of 30w. I also tried a Dayton PA130-8 full range, and it was as good as the original all the way up.
The first mod people ask for or do is usually an external
speaker. It can be hooked up via a switched jack, maintaining the 8 ohm impedance, or it can go in unswitched, which drops the impedance to 4 ohms. The difference is which kind of jack you put in -- the wiring's the same. Just run a lead pair in parallel from the original driver's terminals, making sure to maintain polarity. I started to do both, but the non-switched, 4 ohm version worked out so well that I kept it. Here's a pic of the wiring in place, inside the box.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/Piggy%20Inside.jpg
After that, put together your chosen external speaker with a 1/4" plug and cable (a guitar cable with a bad end cut off, frinstance) and plug it in. Here's the back of mine with the non-switched jack showing (top right). It also show the location of the second mod I did, not so much a mod of the amp, but of the power system
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/Piggy%20Back.jpg
On the black panel near the bottom there's a 1/4" out to preamp, and a smaller jack for the AC adapter. The jack is 3.5mm mono, and the polarity is negative tip. I got a collection of D cell holders and stuck together enough to hold 6 (9V worth). Then I wired them in series. I got a long wire, put a 3.5mm mono plug on it, and wired it to the box, making sure the lead connected to the tip of the plug went to the end negative of the D cell holder. Fill it up with cells and plug it in. Why bother? The average long life alkyline AA cell such as goes inside the Piggy carry about a 2000 milli-amp hour capacity. Same kind of D cells, 17000, eight times more. I get one load of D's for $5 and put them in a $10 hack, to get as much play time as 48 AA's, costing $30. On the first go round I cut cost by half, and after that, battery cost goes down to 17% of AA cell price. Here's one 9V battery pack. This one has two plugs, one of them for my f/x pedal:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/Dpack-9.jpg
It's a great little portable (9V, six AA cells) with a long and illustrious history of famous players. A new model, identical as far as I can tell down to bare metal, goes for about $75. One of the reasons it's so well liked is the growling overdrive you get when it's turned up.
The most common question I see about the Pignose is about the schemtic. Here's a good one:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/pignose7-100.gif
The second most common is about the speaker, and replacement.
It's a 5", 30 watt, 8 ohm instrument driver. I've seen some with this installed:
http://www.jensentone.com/speaker/mod_5_30
Mine has no markings but it specs out right. I've tried a couple replacements to see how they worked. The Sony "dynamic bass" driver that went into my PA require a hole be drilled in the flange, but works great at low levels, but breaks up at high, being 10w instead of 30w. I also tried a Dayton PA130-8 full range, and it was as good as the original all the way up.
The first mod people ask for or do is usually an external
speaker. It can be hooked up via a switched jack, maintaining the 8 ohm impedance, or it can go in unswitched, which drops the impedance to 4 ohms. The difference is which kind of jack you put in -- the wiring's the same. Just run a lead pair in parallel from the original driver's terminals, making sure to maintain polarity. I started to do both, but the non-switched, 4 ohm version worked out so well that I kept it. Here's a pic of the wiring in place, inside the box.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/Piggy%20Inside.jpg
After that, put together your chosen external speaker with a 1/4" plug and cable (a guitar cable with a bad end cut off, frinstance) and plug it in. Here's the back of mine with the non-switched jack showing (top right). It also show the location of the second mod I did, not so much a mod of the amp, but of the power system
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/Piggy%20Back.jpg
On the black panel near the bottom there's a 1/4" out to preamp, and a smaller jack for the AC adapter. The jack is 3.5mm mono, and the polarity is negative tip. I got a collection of D cell holders and stuck together enough to hold 6 (9V worth). Then I wired them in series. I got a long wire, put a 3.5mm mono plug on it, and wired it to the box, making sure the lead connected to the tip of the plug went to the end negative of the D cell holder. Fill it up with cells and plug it in. Why bother? The average long life alkyline AA cell such as goes inside the Piggy carry about a 2000 milli-amp hour capacity. Same kind of D cells, 17000, eight times more. I get one load of D's for $5 and put them in a $10 hack, to get as much play time as 48 AA's, costing $30. On the first go round I cut cost by half, and after that, battery cost goes down to 17% of AA cell price. Here's one 9V battery pack. This one has two plugs, one of them for my f/x pedal:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52918987/Piggy/Dpack-9.jpg