Effects in parallel.

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jlees1264

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Alright so I have someone who wants a RAT/Ds1 in parallel. I got everything connected and it is passing signal but it almost seems as If the Rat doesn't have any gain at all and just the volume control works. The DS1 works absolutely fine and actually really like the sound of it. I used 2 Aion effects kits to make it an easier build with what the customer wanted for mods.

Any suggestions?

It got late and I gave up for the night.
 
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FiveseveN said:
How did you mix the outputs? Hopefully not by just tying them together.
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This was my first shot running parallel and so far I have had almost no issues and built about 60 pedals. If I remember correctly after a night's sleep I think I ran everything in parallelfrom the boards to the foot switch. I'm thinking I know where I screwed up. Won't have time til this evening to troubleshoot. Will try and get a pic up before I leave for work.

I am almost positive my issue is coming from how I am wiring the output. It's all in parallel to a single footswitch. This was purely a let's see if this works trial run knowing it more than likely wasn't going to work right out of the gate. I am going to run both outputs to a b100k pot tonight and test from there. He wants them 50/50 anyways so I could just set it on a trimmer internally?
 
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Robert said:
Without looking Aion's schematic.... The DS-1 output is buffered so it is swamping the output from the Rat.

You'll need some form of mixer at the output. It can be as simple as a pair of resistors.
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Where exactly on those boards would I want to put the resistor? At the output before the footswitch I would have to assume?
 
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I'm not an EE and couldn't even play one on TV, but I'd try adding a 1k 47k resistor in series between each board out and their connection to the switch... such that they're going to be bypassed when they're supposed to be. I'd try them out with alligator clips or jumping them to a breadboard before soldering in case you need to play with values... or it just doesn't work.

If there's no improvement with 1k 47k resistors, try some higher values. If those don't work, come back and wait for someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
 
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Ok
Robert said:
Without looking Aion's schematic.... The DS-1 output is buffered so it is swamping the output from the Rat.

You'll need some form of mixer at the output. It can be as simple as a pair of resistors.
Click to expand...
My first mistake was most likely running the switching in parallel as well?

I already desoldered the outputs from both pcb to the output jack
 

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genXslacker said:
I'm not an EE and couldn't even play one on TV, but I'd try adding a 1k resistor in series between each board out and their connection to the switch... such that they're going to be bypassed when they're supposed to be. I'd try them out with alligator clips or jumping them to a breadboard before soldering in case you need to play with values... or it just doesn't work.

If there's no improvement with 1k resistors, try some higher values. If those don't work, come back and wait for someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
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Thanks for somewhere to start! I also think I have something wrong on the single footswitch that may be causing problems. This is my first parallel unit. Only build that I gave up on was the PPCB Ceasar. I couldn't ever get it to work and haven't had time to go back to it. I have build about 50 so far and I clearly need some more research and knowledge for this.
 
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jlees1264 said:
Thanks for somewhere to start! I also think I have something wrong on the single footswitch that may be causing problems.
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If it works as expected in bypass, and you're hearing a processed Rat sound, however attenuated, I'd let the switch be for now and assume it's a mixing issue... especially since Robert indicated it's a problem.

You definitely have more wires than you need, but they might be functional as wired. It's hurting my brain to think about, so I'd like to put that off.

One thing you can check is disconnecting the SD-1's board-out wire and see if the Rat side then functions as expected. If so, that's another indicator that it's a mixing problem.

If it turns out to be something more than a mixing thing, I'll show you how I'd have gone about wiring that up. For future reference, Aion's "legacy" boards would have been a better option there since they have polarity protection and all powering filtering on the mainboard... instead of moving bits onto a daughterboard. Of course, you have to source your own parts for those, so there's always a trade-off. I feel like I have to mention that PedalPCB also puts them all on the mainboards.
 
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genXslacker said:
If it works as expected in bypass, and you're hearing a processed Rat sound, however attenuated, I'd let the switch be for now and assume it's a mixing issue... especially since Robert indicated it's a problem.

You definitely have more wires than you need, but they might be functional as wired. It's hurting my brain to think about, so I'd like to put that off.

One thing you can check is disconnecting the SD-1's board-out wire and see if the Rat side then functions as expected. If so, that's another indicator that it's a mixing problem.

If it turns out to be something more than a mixing thing, I'll show you how I'd have gone about wiring that up. For future reference, Aion's "legacy" boards would have been a better option there since they have polarity protection and all powering filtering on the mainboard... instead of moving bits onto a daughterboard. Of course, you have to source your own parts for those, so there's always a trade-off. I feel like I have to mention that PedalPCB also puts them all on the mainboards.
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Yeah i dont buy kits I source all my own parts. I just didn't think until after I ordered them that I shiukd have got the Legacy ones but figured I would try these before starting over. I unfortunately was in a motorcycle accident 2 weeks ago and am slowly on the mend and can only handle sitting and soldering for shorter periods of time right now. Had another project I needed to finished tonight. Will report back tomorrow with more issues.

Disconnecting the DS1 was going to be my first move when I start tomorrow
 
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