Vintage Uni-Vibe Repair
Shop Labor Rate is £100/Hr (minimum 1 hour), plus Parts
People all over the world send us their Uni-Vibe's for repair.
Below are just a few of our customers...
Randy Hansen - WA, USA
Randy asked me to work on one of his (many) vintage Uni-Vibe's which needed the common repairs, re-cap job, and Bulb replacement, bias.
Randy also owns and uses 2 of my Vibe-Baby CV-2TM pedals. Go Randy!
John E. - MI, USA
John's Uni-Vibe had the dreaded funky circuit board disease so common to old Uni-Vibe's, I installed one of my Auxillary LFO Modules, replaced his power supply cap's, and he's good-2-go.
MrNoName - NoTown, USA
MrNoName sent his Uni-vibe in to me for the four most common repairs, LFO rebuild, Bulb Driver rebuild, Power Supply Caps, and Bulb replacement.
He's too funny, said I could put his reference on my website "as long as you don't use my real name", well ok then MrNoName.
(BTW, it was MrNoName that dubbed me with the Dr Vibe moniker)
TJ - HI, USA
TJ sent his Uni-vibe in to me because his LFO stopped working, it works now!.
Mike S. - FL, USA
Mike's Uni-Vibe had the dreaded funky circuit board disease common to these old effects, his was un-repairable so I installed one of my Auxillary LFO Modules.
Tim K. - IL, USA
Tim sent me his early-production Uni-Vibe for repair, his vibe had the dreaded funky circuit board disease that plagues many of these vintage units. This was one of those tough-dog-job's because this particular Uni-Vibe had issues well beyond typical parts-replacement style service. Took a lot of work but I brought Tim's unit back to life and it sounds very good if I say so myself.
(from Tim's email)
"...thank you for everything...I was given the Uni-Vibe in 1988, several times over the years i tried to
have it fixed. In the early 90`s a repairman had it for a while but told me he could`nt get it working.
In fact it never worked the whole time i`ve owned it, today was the first time i have ever heard it function.
I can`t put in words how thankful i am of your skill Brad thank you !! -Tim."
Phil V. - NY, USA
Phil sent his late-production Uni-Vibe in to me for repair, his vibe needed the LFO, lamp-driver, and power supply work.
Brad P. - TN, USA
Brad sent me his Uni-Vibe which needed some care and attention.
Mark S. - MN, USA
Marc sent me his 'ol Uni-Vibe for some service/tune-up work, the LFO was dead from funky circuit board disease, his vibe got a "graft" and is doing fine now.
Jay M. - NY, USA
Jay sent me his Uni-Vibe for some service/tune-up work, the LFO was getting really weak and turning the Intensity knob up full barely made it vibe.
Will C. - CA, USA
Will sent his Uni-Vibe in to me for some minor service/tune-up work, Will's Uni-Vibe is one of the few in near mint condition Uni-Vibe's I've had come across my workbench.
Eric T. - PA, USA
Eric sent his Uni-Vibe for some LFO work, his was another one of the few vibes in near mint condition.
NOTE:
Something very interesting here, be it a coincidence or whatever, Eric's vibe (pictured above) and Ricki's vibe (pictured below) were not only in my shop at the same time (June 2013) they were nearly identical and appeared they could have been built at the same time (day/production-run). Most Uni-Vibe's I've come across although they are all built "similarly" don't have the "exact" same parts and/or wiring (wire colors per connection) on their main boards, but these two did have exactly that. In fact the only difference between these two Uni-Vibes was the Vibrato/Chorus switch wiring was inverted, otherwise these two were identical in all aspects.
Ricki C. - CA, USA
Rick sent me his Uni-Vibe for some LFO service work, and a tune-up.
Jorgen R. - Stockholm, Sweden
Jorgen sent me his later model Uni-Vibe for some power supply and DIN jack work. A couple things of note were the power transformer did not have the unsual "02-1-05" marking printed on the top, it had a .005uF cap instead of the usual .0047uF, and had some 1uF caps in the LFO section of a brand (AL) I've not seen before in stock Uni-Vibe's.
Ronald D. - CA, USA
Ronald's Uni-Vibe needed some LFO work, power supply capacitors, and a tune-up.
Marc D. - Munich, Germany
Marc's Uni-Vibe came all the way from Munich for some work. His vibe was interesting in that the Shin-Ei stamp/logo was on the inside of the chassis rather than the bottom.
Trey Anastasio (PHISH) - VT, USA
Brian Brown (Trey Anastasio's technician) sent me one of Trey's Uni-Vibe's which needed the usual work. This one appeared to be a "late" mfr unit.
A couple weeks later Brian sent me a white-logo and an ali-logo of Trey's Uni-Vibe's to have internal speed pots installed.
Here's my completely reversible mod where I add a speed pot to the front panel using a custom made mounting plate that fits exactly where the original DIN plug socket goes. This plate can be removed and the unit restored to it's past condition before this mod was made.
(no drilling!)
Ed D. - NJ, USA
Ed sent his Uni-Vibe which needed some luv.
"Celt" - PA, USA
"The Celt" sent his Uni-Vibe which needed some LFO work, power supply capacitors, and a tune-up.
Red Slim - NSW, AU
Red sent me this vibe for service, it needed a refresh and some bit-n-bobs straightened up. Red's vibe is one of the few in particularly good shape, it's always nice to work on these when they're nearly spotless and well kept.
Red sent me another of his uni-vibe's for service in 2024, another one of the few in particularly good shape and an early production unit, again it's always nice to work on these.
Jim B. - VA, USA
Jims vibe needed a bit of work, mostly the usual work and a good clean-up, but check out the power switch someone had replaced:
Got his vibe all fixed up and put a decent NOS type power switch in there. Looks good now!
Steve H. - GA, USA
Steve's vibe needed quite a bit of work, it needed restoration because sometime in it's life it was converted to use another speed pedal and put a new jack on the front panel and a stomp switch where the output jack was, and someone (with good intentions) tried to do some work on circuit board inside:
We got Steve all fixed up, and built him one of our speed control pedals to work with the original DIN jack on the front panel as it should be on a vintage unit.
Jeremy R. - IL, USA
Jeremy's vibe needed the usual work and a hole pludded in the front panel.
Jeremy's vibe sounds really good as vibe's go.
DeeDee J. - MO, USA
Dee Dee James is the guitar tech for Bootsy Collins, he sent me one of Bootsy's uni-vibes for some work.
Ed A. - PA, USA
Ed's vibe needed some fairly extensive service, several bad transistors were replaced, a full cap-job, as well as a new DIN jack.
Raymond B. - PA, USA
Raymond sent me his Uni-Vibe for some luv, his needed to be restored from someone's earlier "repair" work.
Then later, Raymond sent me this very cool cousin of the Uni-Vibe, it's called a Nomad Verberola which needed some work the mode switch replaced which is an extrememly hard to find part.
Jason H. - FL, USA
Jason sent me his newly aquired vibe for some service work.
Leif C. - OK, USA
Leif sent me his vibe for some normal service work.
Miguel S. - Spain
Miguel sent me his vibe for some work all the way from Spain, though it was working, it didn't sound like a vintage Uni-Vibe.
After inspecting the unit, it turns out someone had converted it to be LED driven instead of light bulb driven as seen below:
No worries, I quickly restored the unit to it's former glory and it sounds great now.
Rick G. - CA, USA
Rick sent me his vibe for a tune-up.
Alan H. - CH, USA
Alan sent me his Resley Tone for a re-build.
Albert R. - NY, USA
Albert sent me his Uni-Vibe for some TLC.
Brian M. - MN, USA
Brian sent me his Uni-Vibe for some TLC, and adding the internal speed control replacing the DIN jack.
(a completely removable/reversible mod)
Jack H. - CO, USA
Jack sent me his Uni-Vibe because the LFO was failing (wouldn't vibe), got him going again ...no worries!.
Reid B. - IL, USA
Reid sent me his Uni-Vibe for some TLC.
