Pro-10 Dual build report

KindCanuck

Well-known member
This build is my most anticipated, I love both pedals it’s based on and ever since I built the Sproing Deluxe, I wanted a dual drive pedal too!

I broke a few pads and traces, so there’s jumper wires all over 🤣

The first 5k pot I installed was bad, so that was frustrating, little did I know what trouble this little box would cause me. I started testing and immediately something was wrong. Everything sounded muffled, super low output on both sides, but most clearly on the blue side. I started probing the circuit with my audio probe, and noticed there was a wild drop off of signal after the tone pot before the TL071. I couldn’t find any cold joints or incorrect resistors, I kept reflowing joints hoping it would help. Then I started looking at caps. There’s my mistake. I had 10uf caps in where 4 10nf caps should have been! Oh man what a brutal 24h of troubleshooting.

I’ll post more later once I get a chance to play. Still not settled on the back plate or knob colours yet. Right now it’s got a cream back and black screws.
 

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Great job with the troubleshooting!

As frustrating as it is, this is when you learn the most!
And, in MOST cases, when I have a pedal that doesn't work it traces back to something dumb I did:)

Troubleshooting problematic builds has helped me really be a lot more careful with my build process.

Great looking build!!
 
Great job with the troubleshooting!

As frustrating as it is, this is when you learn the most!
And, in MOST cases, when I have a pedal that doesn't work it traces back to something dumb I did:)

Troubleshooting problematic builds has helped me really be a lot more careful with my build process.

Great looking build!!

What Mike said, 100%. Debugging is truly another word for learning. And of all the DIY things I've build, I can only think of one case where the problem wasn't some boneheaded mistake on my part.
 
@MichaelW @MattG Absolutely! I’ve built an amp and probably a dozen pedals, and I’ve only had a few actually broken parts. I narrow this down to me thinking I had cap codes memorized. Thanks for the kind words!
 
Well I torched this board, I think the same thing happened as with my first life pedal build, a short to ground from a scratch through the surface of the PCB. So I knuckled up and bought a new board, pulling the components I needed from the old board.

Last build I used 1n34 diodes in both sides, but I didn’t care for it, so I went with the prescribed 1n4148’s to start this build, but putting in sockets so I could experiment later.

I have amassed a large collection of parts so I was happy I could build this without purchasing extra parts. Because I felt so familiar with this board from my troubleshooting, it went together perfectly. I took my time, because I know I can rush myself if I don’t slow myself down. As the saying goes, slow is smooth smooth is fast. I had it together in an evening, but waited until morning to test.

It sounded so much better than my last build right away, I popped it open and swapped the clipping diodes on the green side to my smallbear OA10 Ge diodes for some extra growl and it is perfect.

With this pedal, I have the blue set to a low gain breakup that I pair with my Kliché as my base tone. Then I can a little more with the green side, which is actually interesting with the bass cut (though I think I might try to make that switchable as a mod).

Love this pedal 💖

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