Build Your Own Clone Message Board

The clean signal is fine, and it sounds like it is good & fuzzy but it breaks off quickly, or is weak on the thinner strings. I've heard problems like this with a bad battery, but the battery is good, and I tried a 9v adapter with the same results. The LED works fine. I also triple checked the transistor seating with a vasc. clamp.

The continuity all checks out, and I get the 9 volts everywhere but position 6, a .01 cap. I get a signal, of varying strength, all the way though except at 4, the 100k position. I get a signal at the other end of the resistor but not where I'm supposed to. I've got a video of it as I have a hard time describing the problem...

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x130/Jerrocity/?action=view&current=esv2khelp_0002.mp4









It may have been easier to see if still in the box... So, any thoughts?

Sounds like a badly mis-biased transistor, with that splatty, gated sound. Have you tried dialing in a better sound with the trimpot?

Are you sure that the 470 ohm (yellow/purple/brown/gold) and 47K ohm (yellow/purple/orange/gold) resistors on the right side of the board are correct? I can't see the band colors clearly enough to tell.

I double checked the resistors noted and sho'nuff they were reversed. As it is I had to use a magnifier with light to be more confident which was which. It's noisy as hell with a single coil pickup which is kind of what I remember from these old things, but it has a lot of sustain, pretty much just what I've been looking for. With my 335 it is the nuts.

Thanks for the help! Here's the finished product:

Glad to hear that did the trick. For similarly coded resistors, you're better off actually measuring them with a multimter than relying on eyeballing the color bands.


Not unusual with this effect, with the three cascaded transistor gain stages. When using a single-coil guitar, a noise gate pedal is a huge help with very gain-y pedals. I have a Boss NS-2 that I've been very satisfied with--I run pretty much all my "dirt boxes" in its noise-reduction loop.

A polarity question on this box.... I see a special power source isn't needed, but don't daisy chain them. I've used the regular neg pin and it works fine. I tried a positive pin and it doesn't work... so I'm guessing don't do that? This is one box where I may prefer a battery to be safe, but I just want to double check that a neg pin 9v is the preferred method as long as it is a dedicated one.

Also, when using an adapter that goes above 9v (even though it says 9) the humm gets worse. And for some reason using a power strip seems to help with reducing noise.

I'd say this one isn't worth the cost & trouble except it sounds so damned good!

Yes, use a regular 9V battery. Also correct that you don't want to use a center-positive adapter. The pedal uses a positive ground wiring scheme which is NOT the same thing.

Hi Jerronimo & duhvoodooman

Just finished my build and had exactly the same problem.
Thanks to Jerronimo for posting the vid, as soon as I heard that I knew I had the same problem.
Very tricky to get the resistors correct there by sight alone.
Thanks duhvoodooman for tracking down the problem.
Very happy boy now

Gotta say I do like the artwork on the enclosure.