These mods worked for ashbass and are not guaranteed to work for anyone else. Some modders have ruined their pedals.
Most agree that too much heat, or heat left on too long, burnt something up. Some symptoms are the lights at the top of
the pedal not working. And of course, the pedal not working.
So if you are going to do the mod, you are doing so at your own risk.
Zoom has released a firmware update (ver2.00) that adds a lot to the standard G3. With the update, you'll have 6 effect slots instead of the pre-update 3 effect slots. Since there are only three visible effect panels you need to scroll left/right to bring any hidden effect slots into view.
Zoom's implementation of the Scroll controls breaks the original ashbass Patch Select Mod and turns it into a Scroll Button Mod.
To the right are images of an original G3 (top) and a newer G3. Both have the new v2.0 firmware. For both, you must press the Tap button and then a Patch Select Up/Down button to move through patches. To make the buttons do Patch Select instead of Scroll you can do the Zoom G3 v2.0 ashbass Patch Select Mod.
What we need then is an external switch box that lets us easily scroll up/down through our patches and as a bonus lets us scroll left/right in our effect slots.
The following steps show how to do this mod yourself.
Here are the parts you'll need.
This mod needs to accommodate 4 wires coming from the G3 and into the switch box. So you'll need two 4-conductor jacks, two 4-conductor plugs, some length of 4-conductor cable, and two momentary SPDT/DPDT/3PDT push button switches.
Remove the six screws from the bottom of the G3 and put them safely aside. Lift up the back panel.
Unplug the battery compartment wires from the circuit board and put the back panel safely aside.
Unscrew the two circuit board screws circled in yellow.
Unscrew the four nuts from the input jacks on the rear panel.
Carefully pull the circuit board away from where it was connected before. Don't disconnect anything else. The space we have now with the board pulled back is all that is needed.
The dotted yellow circles show us where the solder spots are for each of the controls we need access to. Click the image for a larger version.
Solder the ends of four wires to the soldered spots as shown in the image. My cable had two blue wires and two white wires so I put black stripes on one of each to help tell them apart.
Here, the white/black wire is responsible for Tap. The blue/black wire is responsible for Patch Up. The blue wire is responsible for Patch Down. The white wire is common to the other controls. Left to right you should have white/black, blue/black, white, blue.
I left my wires like the bottom image at right so I could run the cable out from under the circuit board we moved earlier and then on to the 4-conductor jack.
Put the circuit board back into the G3. Screw it down with the two screws you set aside earlier. Screw the four nuts back onto their jacks on the rear panel. Make sure that the wires you attached to the circuit board are accessible after putting the board back in place.
Solder your wires to your jack. Solder the blue wire to the 'tip' lug, the blue/black wire to the first 'ring' lug, the white/black wire to the second 'ring' lug, and the white wire to the 'sleeve' lug.
Drill a hole in the rear panel of the G3 to seat your jack.
Now let's make the switch box.
I used a small aluminum enclosure from Mouser. I laid out my controls where I wanted them and then put them into the box. Note that the switches have 9 lugs each. These are 3PDT momentary switches. We only need one of the three rows of lugs for this mod.
The blue/black wire and a white wire are soldered to two lugs on the leftside switch. The blue wire and a white wire are soldered to two lugs on the rightside switch. If we stop now, you have a Scroll Button Mod pedal. But let's continue to Patch Select.
Many people who have performed this mod have used a latching foot switch instead of the mini-toggle switch described below. They've also added a dedicated Tap Switch so they can do Tap Tempo when the latching switch is open. If you want to do this, you can with just one switch. Use a "normally closed" momentary switch instead of an open one. This way the Tap button is always pressed because the switch lugs are connected inside the switch. So the Patch Select buttons/switches do Patch Select right off. Then when you press the closed switch, release, and press again you get Tap Tempo. The video below shows how this works.
This will work in the setup below as well if you use a closed momentary switch for locking down the Tap button.
The white/black wire comes out of the jack and connects to the center lug on the toggle switch. A separate white/black wire is connected to the outside lug of the switch and to the white wire's lug on the stomp switch.
When the toggle switch connects the two white/black wires, the Tap button is pressed and the buttons on the G3 front panel and the buttons in the new switch box will act as Patch Select buttons.
Issues:
The buttons on the G3 and switch box do not do Scroll left/right anymore.
You can Scroll your effect slots to the left by pressing foot switches 1 and 2 simultaneously. Pressing foot switches 2 and 3 simultaneously will Scroll your effect slots to the right.
The Tap button no longer changes the tempo by tapping it.
You can change the tempo in the Global menu, from the Rhythm screens, and by reversing the toggle switch so that Tap is no longer "always pressed".
The finished switch box. I made the graphics in PowerPoint from images taken from the G3 manual. I printed them out on water-slide decal paper and a laser printer and put the decals on the boxes. I then spray-painted some polyurethane on them for protection from scratches and rips in the decal.
[Box setup: 1- drilled the necessary holes. 2- put the decal on. 3- did the polyurethane. 4- put the jack and switches in. 5- wired it up. 6- attached the bottom to the box.]
Screw everything back together.
All finished.
Take a picture of your modded setup and send it to ashbass to add it to the User Examples page.
