Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Hey guys...

I just wired up a klone from the latest group buy... and didn't have a power cable around to test, so I hit the practice space and wasn't paying attention when I plugged in one of the cables in the room. Aaaannnd, it was a 9v AC cable. It was only plugged in for a second, the LED came on, and it smoked a little. So I quickly pulled the plug.

Anyways, I put a 9v DC plug in it an nothing. Bypass works. I used a DMM and saw that there was no power at the DC jack, so I replaced the jack, but that didn't make much of a difference. It does make a weird pulsing sound now (pots have no effect on it).

Final thing is that when I plug it into my OneSpot, all the other pedals lose power.

Sooo... am I totally hosed, or do you have some ideas about what might be cooked on it that I can replace?

Thanks,
-Bill

I would imagine your IC's are quite possibly fried, and/or the 1N4001 polarity protection diode needs replacing.. you socketed the ICs, right? If not, I don't envy you.

I'd start there and see what happens..

Yeah, I socketed the ICs.

Thank you, I'll start with replacing those and see what happens.

Take a peek at the electros too.

I would think that the charge pump IC would be the first thing to go....

Thanks, fellas. That was my thoughts as well, but I'm the noob hack that cooked a klone, so wtf do I know?

I ordered replacements for all three ICs and the zener diode and I'll see if that gets it done.
Also, the negative lead on the LED looks toasted, so I'm going to replace that too.

I'll let you know what comes of that when the parts arrive. Thanks for your time/help so far!

I fried one that I bought about a year ago the same way. The only physical damage I could see was that the 9.1v zener burned up. The builder repaired it and told me that only the zener and charge pump had to be replaced to fix it. I did the same thing with one I just built (plugging in power supplies in the dark = bad idea). The only thing to suffer was the zener that I know of, though I immediately replaced all the IC's, so one or all of those could've gone as well.

At any rate, I wish you luck on getting it working and hope your fix is as simple as mine was.

Thank you, that's oddly reassuring.

You most likely only blew the Zener. In fact, take the Zener out and test it (with an appropriate power supply)......I have a good feeling it will work.

OK, I'll give that a shot... thanks!

Just snip out the diode and see what happens, it isn't required for the effect to work

Edit: Doh, I missed dcountry13's post

Great vid!!! They look like spinal tap!

Snipped the zener out, and that helped a little. The LED works, plugging it in no longer cuts the power to the other pedals on the OneSpot, but when on, it now just makes a bad brown noise. The tone and gain pots have no appreciable affect, but the volume pot raises and lowers the sound of the noise.

I am guessing this is because one or more of the ICs are shot. Got new ones (and a new zener) en route from Mouser.
Does that sound right to you guys? Thanks again for all your help and suggestions.

Possibly, but you said you were testing the pedal when you fried it - there may still be a build issue as well.

Yeah, that's the hard part... it could be something I did wrong since it got fried before I could properly test it.
But I've already got the ICs on order and they are socketed... so before I go through the trouble of troubleshooting, I'll wait and swap those out and make sure they aren't the problem.

Good news... as soon as I replaced the charge pump IC, it worked just fine.

The kid is asleep, so I can't really put it through its paces now, but it is working and sounds good.

Thanks for all your help/advice. I appreciate it.

Awesome. Glad it wasn't too much trouble to remedy. The diode protection is a lifesaver for when a klutz like myself and this circuit meet (2 experiences and counting, unfortunately ). Oddly enough, I've NEVER plugged an AC cord into anything but a Klone.

Awesome circuit, though. Enjoy!