Build Your Own Clone Message Board

I have been working on this guy for about four days for at least an hour each time. I finished it fairly quickly and went over everything and made it look nicer. Didn't work. I did research and found out I was doing the input and output jacks completely wrong. I have spent the past two days attempting to unsolder and resolder the input jacks. When unsoldering them, I could get none of the pads completely clean. And believe me, that was all I tried to do yesterday. Today, I attempted to clean them again and then reattach the jacks. I believe I did a fine job on the jack side of things but I had trouble with attaching the wires to to the pcb. Two of them were done correctly, I think. The other two I had to attach to the top because they was absolutely no way I could get those holes clean. I think they were packed with little pieces of frayed wire rather than solder and nothing I tried could get them out. After attaching the jacks, I plugged it up. I only got noise. The volume of the noise increased as I turned up the trimpot until the trim was at max, then no noise at all. Throughout any of this, you could not hear the guitar although touching the strings made the buzzing louder.
I don't know that I'll be able to fix the input and output solders. Do you think that that is the only problem and that the pedal would work if that were fixed? Any suggestions or criticisms? I need it. Also, do you think it would be fine for me to head to the octave fuzz I got with this or what? I feel like I did a good job (other than the ins and outs and I think all the leads could be cut a little bit shorter). I flew through all the resistors and capacitors and such. I thought that was way easy. I just had trouble with the jacks. Pictures in a few minutes. Thank you for any info.

Some of the pictures look better because I took them through a magnifying glass.

You could use some practice with your soldering. Pin 1 of the op-amp looks bad as does the + lead of 100uf cap, the anode of the diode and the ends of the 2.2M resistors nearest to the diode. You also need to cut off the excess lead at the top of the solder joint and not leave the little tails poking thru. This is poor dressing and can lead to short circuits.

A very quick look shows me you've got one of the jacks wired backwards (tip is going to sleeve and sleeve is going to tip). Hopefully that's it?

As for removing the excess from the holes, do you have a solder sucker? I probably couldn't build without one...

Good eye p_wats.

Yes, the wires on the jack in this photo are reversed.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try and fix the switched jacks tonight or tomorrow and get back here.
Also, I've been using a solder braid because it came with the byoc starter kit. I went to town looking for a solder sucker yesterday but no where carries them that I could find so I'm ordering one soon.

So I checked my booster and I have both of the ins and outs wired the same way. Does that mean I messed up the tip and sleeve on both? Can someone describe the differences, please? I have the middle tab on each wired to the tip and the tab to the furthest tab soldered to the sleeve. Correct? Wrong? If this doesn't fix it, what would? I'm trimming all the extra leads and cleaning up those two or three spots?
Also, what is all the dried clear stuff sitting around the joints? Is that some of the melted rosin? Does it need washed off somehow?

One more question. Sheesh. Do you trim the excess leads of the op amp. They look less wiry and are less bendy than the others. Are they okay to cut?

The picture I referenced above tells you all you need to know. The wire coming from the "IN SLEEVE" eyelet on the PCB is connected to the TIP lug of the jack. The wire coming from the "IN TIP" eyelet on the PCB is connected to the SLEEVE lug of the input jack. Reverse these two wires at the jack and they will be connected correctly. If you have the output jack connected the same way reverse them too.

The clear stuff is flux. You can clean it off if you want. The thing to be the most concerned about is solder spatter. These are little blobs of solder that can create short circuits.

The op-amp pins don't need to be cut off. Normally you would bend them over to first make a good physical connection between them and the solder pad before you solder them together.

Thank you so much. There is a lot of help here. I've seen other posts too. It's great

Wrong, as Stephen has explained. Switch them.

As far as telling the difference between them, if you closely examine the stereo jacks you're using, you can trace the parts of the jack that those solder tabs attach to. The middle tab is obvious--it connects to the tubular section that the cable tip inserts through, which is the SLEEVE (very aptly named, when you think about it). The TIP is the longer of the two bent "fingers" extending from the jack body, and you can trace it's base around to the solder tab that is located diametrically across from it. The remaining tab connects to the shorter "finger", which is the RING.

But just to clarify further, it won't hurt anything to trim the excess opamp leads down to the tops of their respective solder joints. Matter of personal preference. If you leave them as is, just be sure that they don't touch anything conductive, if you mount the PCB into an enclosure of some type.

Thanks voodooman and stephen. A bunch. But I hate say it... still nothing. Same results as before.

GOT IT! Mega relief right now! I can't say thank you enough! I was getting really worried. jeez. Any advice or pointers before I move on?

Pick up a PCB and some components at your local Rat Shack or equivalent and practice practice practice your soldering. Having good soldering skills are an absolute MUST if you want to have a working pedal when you're done. I've been doing this sort of stuff for over 40 years and every now and then I get a bum joint.

Sound advice...pun intended!

Incidentally, in recent months, I have noticed a tendency with the stereo jacks for the solder tabs to not "wet out" smoothly when solder is applied. There seems to be some surface coating or residue present that causes the molten solder to ball up on the tabs. This could definitely lead to cold joints and poor electrical contact. You can eliminate this problem by roughing up the surface of the tabs with a piece of fine sandpaper, Scotch Brite, or some similar abrasive. Only takes a few seconds of rubbing on each tab.

Hello, new here, and also bought the starter package. This week I worked on my confidence-booster kit and concluded that I do not even want to attempt my first pedal until I'm better at soldering. I'm going to take Stephen's advice -- does anyone know of cheapo projects you can get at the Shack (or anywhere else) that will allow me to practice soldering as well as complete a finished product? just something that i can actually test at the end of the build so i can see what I did right, what I did wrong etc. Thanks!

Not really necessary, IMO. Get yourself a piece of perfboard and a bag of 50 diodes (total $5) and go nuts soldering them. Refer to THIS DOCUMENT, which provides excellent guidance into proper soldering technique and contains ample images showing what a good joint looks like. Practice until your joints appear to at least approach that level of quality.

BTW, if you don't already have a multimeter, pick one of those up while you're at it--essential tube for building (and debugging!) effects. You might also want to grab a "solder sucker", too--very handy "rework" tool.

thanks! will definitely give that a shot this weekend