ARGGHHHH....

jhaneyzz

jhaneyzz

Well-known member
I breadboarded a Dan boost right after work tonight and had it working and took up to where my guitars and amps are and was planning on tweaking it a bit.

I was making good progress but must have bumped something out of whack so I put it aside until after dinner.

I ended up spending a good two hours building and rebuilding the circuit, quadruple checking components, two different breadboards, etc. etc. at best, it would work for a few seconds when I attached the last capacitor, but it would quickly fade away like a cap had become completely drained.

After completely exhausting all options, I put the MM on the pots I was using and at some point in my testing the B10k bias pot had gone bad.

swapped it and all is well...

gimme a freaking break...
 
jhaneyzz said:
I breadboarded a Dan boost right after work tonight and had it working and took up to where my guitars and amps are and was planning on tweaking it a bit.

I was making good progress but must have bumped something out of whack so I put it aside until after dinner.

I ended up spending a good two hours building and rebuilding the circuit, quadruple checking components, two different breadboards, etc. etc. at best, it would work for a few seconds when I attached the last capacitor, but it would quickly fade away like a cap had become completely drained.

After completely exhausting all options, I put the MM on the pots I was using and at some point in my testing the B10k bias pot had gone bad.

swapped it and all is well...

gimme a freaking break...
Click to expand...
Did you test the pot before using it? I've had DOA pots, capacitors, resistors, tube sockets, even switchcraft input jacks (which were fixed by simply removing some sort of plastic covering on the switch contact). I test everything before I use it now. *Every thing, Every time, All the time* lol.... I have never had a DOA transformer as everyone tests those at the factory. Eating the freight on DOA transformers gets expensive, really quick.
 
I have breadboarding... wires always popping out.

I need a board with all the jacks and pots locked down but I just don't do it enough to justify it.
 
RetiredUnit1 said:
Did you test the pot before using it? I've had DOA pots, capacitors, resistors, tube sockets, even switchcraft input jacks (which were fixed by simply removing some sort of plastic covering on the switch contact). I test everything before I use it now. *Every thing, Every time, All the time* lol.... I have never had a DOA transformer as everyone tests those at the factory. Eating the freight on DOA transformers gets expensive, really quick.
Click to expand...
I did, and it WAS working that why it took so long to figure out. It was an older, larger pot that had been hanging around forever.
 
You got it working! You gotta tell me what you think about it.

I have stuff like this happen to me everyday. I filmed a whole video but never noticed a strange hum that ruined the whole thing until editing. Somedays I don’t have sound because i forgot to plug in a cable.

Thats life, right?
 
Here's one that confounded me for hours yesterday. Wired up the input and output jacks using some now open--back jacks I had scavenged form another project. Fired it up, it worked, so I boxed it up. Suddenly not working. Check all my solder points, which appear fine. Eventually build an audio probe and see that I am getting audio at the input but it's not even making it down the wire to the breakout board. Re-did the connection at the breakout board, redid all the grounds just to be safe. Nothing. Long story short, I eventually realized that this jack had the ring and tip layers reversed and I didn't pay attention and accidentally wired input to the ring. But here's my question - if it has been wired incorrectly all along, how the heck did it work the whole time until I boxed it up?
 
mkstewartesq said:
Here's one that confounded me for hours yesterday. Wired up the input and output jacks using some now open--back jacks I had scavenged form another project. Fired it up, it worked, so I boxed it up. Suddenly not working. Check all my solder points, which appear fine. Eventually build an audio probe and see that I am getting audio at the input but it's not even making it down the wire to the breakout board. Re-did the connection at the breakout board, redid all the grounds just to be safe. Nothing. Long story short, I eventually realized that this jack had the ring and tip layers reversed and I didn't pay attention and accidentally wired input to the ring. But here's my question - if it has been wired incorrectly all along, how the heck did it work the whole time until I boxed it up?
Click to expand...
Something about grounding the ring?
 
I'm always amazed at the number of Forumites here who get bad pots, bad switches, bad footswitches etc... Kinda has me spooked.

I am going to start testing pots before installation and maybe footswitches, too, if I remember to. I'm just not in the habit. I test resistors, caps and sometimes transistors.

To date my worst "duh" moment was due to carelessly copying out a schematic, putting a "k" after "390". Circuit matched my schematic, no sound. Gave up on the simple single transistor circuit, called the cavalry and my friend barely looked at the breadboard and told me "390Ω".



Every 1 in a million spark plugs straight from the factory is a dud.
 
So many stories could be told. I was testing fuzz pedals last night using my looper, and none of them worked. I put 2 and 2 together and plugged my guitar and pedal into an amp instead of my DAW. Much better. Looper has buffer that doesn’t play well with fuzz. I was beginning to think all my fuzz pedals went bad.
 
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