DAJE
Well-known member
Yes, after a series of unfortunate soldering events, I now have a working pedal, and it sounds great.
I did the bass mod, which is merely changing a 33nF cap to a 12nF cap, which is the only difference between the CE-2 and the CE-2B, apart from the paint scheme. EDIT: and the mix knob. But - I am pleased to report - it sounds great on guitar too. Plenty of top end swirlyness, and the lows are not muddy. I added sockets for another cap, which increases the intensity or something - I'm just going with the standard one at the moment, will try swapping it eventually.
OK, getting to the shameful part; I made the classic rookie blunder of soldering the footswitch to the wrong side of the breakout board. Never done that before, but all it takes is a moment of derp. In undoing that, the board and/or switch got damaged. At first the pedal did nothing, on or off. No signal, just nasty hums. I reflowed the solder on the prongs and ran a jumper from the left middle prong to the pulldown resistor, which fixed the effect. But it still didn't work in bypass. Nasty hum, and nothing else.
I did despair for a while, then I left it alone and did other things. I realised at some point that I had another Aion pedal with a comparable breakout board, so I checked that one with my multimeter and worked out what needed continuity and what didn't. On the Azure, there was no connection between the top left and bottom right prongs, which there was on the other pedal in both on and off settings. So I added a jumper and that fixed it.
Yes, looks terrible, in Australia we call that a bodgy job. It's very bodgy. But it works, and it seems solid enough to last, so I'm calling it fixed and leaving it at that.
I did the bass mod, which is merely changing a 33nF cap to a 12nF cap, which is the only difference between the CE-2 and the CE-2B, apart from the paint scheme. EDIT: and the mix knob. But - I am pleased to report - it sounds great on guitar too. Plenty of top end swirlyness, and the lows are not muddy. I added sockets for another cap, which increases the intensity or something - I'm just going with the standard one at the moment, will try swapping it eventually.
OK, getting to the shameful part; I made the classic rookie blunder of soldering the footswitch to the wrong side of the breakout board. Never done that before, but all it takes is a moment of derp. In undoing that, the board and/or switch got damaged. At first the pedal did nothing, on or off. No signal, just nasty hums. I reflowed the solder on the prongs and ran a jumper from the left middle prong to the pulldown resistor, which fixed the effect. But it still didn't work in bypass. Nasty hum, and nothing else.
I did despair for a while, then I left it alone and did other things. I realised at some point that I had another Aion pedal with a comparable breakout board, so I checked that one with my multimeter and worked out what needed continuity and what didn't. On the Azure, there was no connection between the top left and bottom right prongs, which there was on the other pedal in both on and off settings. So I added a jumper and that fixed it.
Yes, looks terrible, in Australia we call that a bodgy job. It's very bodgy. But it works, and it seems solid enough to last, so I'm calling it fixed and leaving it at that.
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