Caesar Chorus - Hum/No Sound

8stringalchemy

New member
Hi All,

I just finished building a Caesar Chorus and it seems to be functioning like a synthesizer instead of a chorus. Turning the blend knob up kills the sound entirely and the pedal starts emitting a single sin/triangle wave (depending on the setting of the shape switch) as the speed knob is turned up. It seems like the output of the timing circuit is just being sent directly to the amp. Anyone know what's going on?

Update: putting the trim pot in a very specific place produces chorus. I guess this is a bias? I probably need to spend some time tweaking it to minimize hum and maximize chorus.
 
Last edited:
Hi All,

I just finished building a Caesar Chorus and it seems to be functioning like a synthesizer instead of a chorus. Turning the blend knob up kills the sound entirely and the pedal starts emitting a single sin/triangle wave (depending on the setting of the shape switch) as the speed knob is turned up. It seems like the output of the timing circuit is just being sent directly to the amp. Anyone know what's going on?

Update: putting the trim pot in a very specific place produces chorus. I guess this is a bias? I probably need to spend some time tweaking it to minimize hum and maximize chorus.
Yea you gotta find the sweet spot on the trimmer as it seems you have found. I just tweaked mine by ear until it sounded the best to me. Don’t think there’s a magic voltage you’re shooting for.
 
Yea you gotta find the sweet spot on the trimmer as it seems you have found. I just tweaked mine by ear until it sounded the best to me. Don’t think there’s a magic voltage you’re shooting for.
Yeah I got it figured out. Is the rate supposed to be so fast though? It becomes pretty much unusable for anything other than wacky effects past 20%.
 
Yeah I got it figured out. Is the rate supposed to be so fast though? It becomes pretty much unusable for anything other than wacky effects past 20%.
I don’t find mine to be totally unstable it does get a bit whackier than some other choruses I have used. I’d take some time to play around with it for a bit.
 
I don’t find mine to be totally unstable it does get a bit whackier than some other choruses I have used. I’d take some time to play around with it for a bit.
Never mind, I swapped the Lag and Rate pots around and I don't have a good way of fixing it so I guess I just have a weird sounding paperweight now.
 
Never mind, I swapped the Lag and Rate pots around and I don't have a good way of fixing it so I guess I just have a weird sounding paperweight now.
Well I did that with an ocd pedal I built every pot was on the wrong spot. I couldn’t get the pots out by desoldering them no matter how much I tried. I ended up cutting the legs off the pots with some wire cutters and was able to desolder them that way one at a time. I’ve heard people say use desoldering braid but it wasn’t working well for me. That way worked. I also did the same recently with another pcb where I had a bad pot. All is not lost. Well the pots mostly are but you could just solder a little wire to connect them I guess after you cut the leg.
 
Well I did that with an ocd pedal I built every pot was on the wrong spot. I couldn’t get the pots out by desoldering them no matter how much I tried. I ended up cutting the legs off the pots with some wire cutters and was able to desolder them that way one at a time. I’ve heard people say use desoldering braid but it wasn’t working well for me. That way worked. I also did the same recently with another pcb where I had a bad pot. All is not lost. Well the pots mostly are but you could just solder a little wire to connect them I guess after you cut the leg.
This is what I do. Your Caesar is worth more than $1.50 in pots.
 
Well I did that with an ocd pedal I built every pot was on the wrong spot. I couldn’t get the pots out by desoldering them no matter how much I tried. I ended up cutting the legs off the pots with some wire cutters and was able to desolder them that way one at a time. I’ve heard people say use desoldering braid but it wasn’t working well for me. That way worked. I also did the same recently with another pcb where I had a bad pot. All is not lost. Well the pots mostly are but you could just solder a little wire to connect them I guess after you cut the leg.

This is what I do. Your Caesar is worth more than $1.50 in pots.

Another option is to try to have gravity pull the pot out. Situate the board so the pots aren't supported by anything (but the solder joints). Take a thicker piece of buss wire or component lead and lay it across each pot solder joint, then apply heat with your iron.
So, I was finally able to swap the pots around (broke them of and put new ones in) but the problem seems to have gotten worse. Any ideas? IMG_0311.jpg
 
Well I did that with an ocd pedal I built every pot was on the wrong spot. I couldn’t get the pots out by desoldering them no matter how much I tried. I ended up cutting the legs off the pots with some wire cutters and was able to desolder them that way one at a time. I’ve heard people say use desoldering braid but it wasn’t working well for me. That way worked. I also did the same recently with another pcb where I had a bad pot. All is not lost. Well the pots mostly are but you could just solder a little wire to connect them I guess after you cut the leg.
you can even leave the legs in place after you cut the pots and solder the other pots to them when you shift the locations. if you need to remove a pot you can usually cut the middle leg and then desolder the outside legs by going back and forth to melt the solder and move them out bit by bit.
 
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