Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Hello all,

I'm new to the world of DIY. I have successfully completed an ESV Fuzz and a Tri Boost and they both work perfectly. So, I stepped up to the Stereo Flanger. It, unfortunately, is not functioning after I completed the build. Here's what I've got:

The power works. When I step on the foot switch the LED lights up. It will pass the guitar signal from the input to either output. So far so good. However, when I activate the pedal it totally kills the signal. I went in and cranked the internal trim pot to maximum. It added a little noise to the line, but still no effect. It is currently a really expensive kill switch, and works great as such, but I was hoping for something that actually flanges.

Of course this kit was way more complicated than the first two I built and there are a lot of things that could have gone wrong. I have never had to trouble shoot a pedal before, so I don't even know where to start. The other kits had some trouble shooting suggestions in the instructions, but this one did not. Can anyone give me some tips on what to start looking for?

Thanks for the help.

Hi Reed - welcome to the forum!

Symptoms like this are typically from a bad solder joint somewhere near the input or output of the circuit. Your wiring from the jacks and some of the connections on the footswitch are good, since you're getting signal in bypass mode. You'll need to remove the pcb from the enclosure and re-do any suspect-looking solder joints.

And please post pics as detailed in this post: http://www.buildyourownclone.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=20913

I am also not experienced with posting pictures to forums, so I'm going to try these and see if they are big enough/too big.

I can't send a picture of the other side of the PCB without de-soldering a lot of connections. A big concern of mine when mounting the PCB was if it was shorting out against the trim pots. I tried to be careful, but could not figure out any way to check it after it was done. Is there something I can do to see if that's my issue?

You've got all of your IC's in the wrong positions. Take another look at where each different chip goes in the instructions and swap them around to where they should be.

Now that is some embarassing stuff right there. I must have been tired at the end of the project. Well, the good news is that after moving the ICs to the correct places and tweaking the internal trim pot the pedal now works.

Is it possible to get the classic jet airplane swish from this box?

Thanks for the assist!

The flanging effect is created by a moving, multiple notch, harmonic comb filter (this happens when you mix a slightly delayed version of a signal with the original signal and vary the delay time). Which means that the more complexity there is in the input signal the more there is to filter and the more the effect will be apparent.

For the 'jet plane whoosh' you will probably find you need to feed the flanger with a distorted signal from an overdrive or fuzz. Rate set to slow, Depth and Regen at max.