Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Hi all, Just completed my first build-scrambled octave, but its not working My camera died so I can't post pics right away.

Heres what I know:

-DC and battery work. LED works
-Bypass works great
-Blend knob seems to work. I get a nice clean signal with it all the way towards guitar-coutner clockwise, but as I turn it clockwise the signal goes out and I hear static, and no more guitar.
-Texture knob doesn't do anything. Just hear static.
-Solder for the knobs on the front of PCB for the texture and blend knobs look OK.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

The octave fuzz portion of the circuit (i.e. the "effect" itself) isn't working, so as you blend out the clean signal, you're left with bupkis. And since the texture knob functions to add more fuzz intensity in the effect circuit, that isn't doing anything.

Fix your camera or beg/borrow/steal one and get some pics posted. Otherwise, we're shooting in the dark.

So im still working on trying to borrow a camera. In the meantime, ive removed the circuit board from the enclosure and have reflowed many solder joints. Truthfully, there are a quite a few sloppy ones. Im brand new to this so im starting to see how i can improve things.

in an effort to clean up some spots i had to desolder a capacitor, and i wasn't doing it correctly at first, and it took a while, and I was surprised at how hot the capacitor felt. Is it possible to overheat an electrolytic capacitor? Would the multi-meter allow me to test the installed capacitor to see if it still works?

Unfortunately after my last effort, the pedal no longer works at all in bypass, and the LED does not come on. I must have knocked something loose.

Thanks for your help,

Modern components are pretty tough but you can overheat any of them. Internally an electrolytic somewhat resembles a 'dry' cell battery. There are various chemicals and I believe I am right in saying that most of them rely on a trace of water and are moist. Obviously heating a sealed metal can filled with moist wadding is not a good idea.

In circuit testing of any component is influenced by the surrounding components and does not generally yield accurate results. I would not worry about that electrolytic for now but concentrate on getting general signs of life from your pedal. If you have no bypass and the LED no longer lights you probably have wiring / power supply issues so focus on the jack and DC socket wires and power switching and on the bypass switch wiring.

+1. Lack of bypass signal is generally either a bad wire connection somewhere between the jacks, footswitch and PCB, or a signal shorting issue--something touching ground that shouldn't be. Again, photos are key--keep looking for a camera!

i found some loose jack wiring. i resoldered it and so now the bypass and LED are working again. reflowed some joints and for about 10 seconds the effect was working, although it didn't seem like i was getting the full range of it. Then it went out. i think reflowing is helping and ive used too much solder on a lot of joints. also, the switch makes a loud popping noise when i engage it. i wonder if i should redo the switch? i have a multi-meter, although im not really sure how to use it. was able to get a camera working for a little bit luckily. thanks again for your help.

Just my 2 cents: You should work on your soldering. There are a bunch of them that look cold and a few on the bottom of the very last picture look as though they haven't even been soldered. The PCB shouldn't look all marred and melted like that either. Check out some youtube soldering how-to's. You need to wet the tip of your iron with a bit of solder, heat both the wire and board and then apply the solder to the joint, NOT the iron.

To be blunt - your build is a mess. The quality of the soldering is terrible, particularly on the jack tabs where it looks like you haven't got any of them hot enough for the solder to flow. I doubt you have reliable connections there. I suspect that either your soldering iron is not hot enough or is too small or you just aren't holding it in firm contact with the joints long enough for the solder to flow properly.
I think perhaps you should get some practice materials and spend time working with those until your soldering skills improve. To make a good joint first make sure the two items to be joined are clean with shiny surfaces (not normally a problem with BYOC kit components) apply a little flux cored solder to the tip of your iron. If the iron is at the right temperature the solder should melt and flow out across the tip surface quite quickly. Wipe the tip on a damp soldering sponge to remove excess solder and apply the iron tip firmly to the joint that is to be made. Apply the solder to the junction of the joint and the iron tip and pause for as long as it takes for the solder to liquefy and spread out to completely cover the joint area. Remove the iron (note that if parts of the joint move while the solder cools it will crystallise and you will have a 'dry' joint). Once the solder has cooled you should have a smooth shiny joint that follows the contours of the items joined.
Keep your soldering iron clean. Never 'dab' with the soldering iron and don't use it like a paint brush to carry solder to the joint. Don't blow on joints to cool them, that can also cause crystallisation.

The PCB is also covered in flux and crud which you can clean off with some isopropyl alcohol and an old toothbrush.

hi all,

I know my soldering skills are super weak. However the observation that the iron might not have been hot enough helped. I was running it at the specs of the manufacturer, and really had a hard time. I ended up using the iron incorrectly as a paintbrush, got blobs everywhere, and the tabs on the jacks seemed impossible. This is why i ended up using flux and made a mess.

So I turned up the heat, and life got so much easier. I redid the entire pedal and am happy to say I have it working. There is a pop though when the effect is first engaged, but at least its working. Perhaps sometime i will take the toggle switch out entirely and put in another.

I learned a lot from my first build though.

Thanks for your insights.

-dave

Glad to hear it's working! Practice makes perfect, especially with pedals. Keep on it dude!

Brilliant! really glad you got it working. Sorry to be so snotty about your soldering but perhaps my other comments helped after all.

If you haven't done it yet I recommend cleaning up your PCB with isopropyl. I checked and it is pretty easy to get, they even sell it on Amazon.
There is a possibility that cleaning up may help with the popping.

cleaning with the isopropyl alcohol had amazing results. the switch popping is gone, and ive now got a great pedal. i let the circuit board dry for a while before reassembling, and when i first plugged it in afterwords, it still popped, but the following day and now several days later its gone.

thanks for the tips. i know my next build will be smoother and cleaner.