SOLVED First Build - El Sol not working

[cyrano456]

I'm getting no signal from my circuit, just noise when it's on. I've troubleshot it to the best of my ability, every trace I can find gets a beep when I test for continuity. From the other thread with a similar issue, it seems like my LM386s could be the problem, but I'm not sure how to check them. Hoping that's not the case since I didn't have the foresight to use sockets.

 

[Robert]

One of your 1/4" jacks is wired incorrectly.

Move the wires over to the lugs on the opposite side of the jack.

The other jack is correct.

 

[swelchy]

your wiring and soldering needs a bit of work... Are you aware that the boards are designed so you dont have to offboard wire the pots? Your led wiring looks it needs work as well... you should just tie the hot and negative lead into the led pads at top of the board.. Also its a good idea to use sockets for the ic chips as well...Your input/output jacks could also stand to be the metal type instead of insulated to help with getting ground.

 

[cyrano456]

One of your 1/4" jacks is wired incorrectly.

Move the wires over to the lugs on the opposite side of the jack.

The other jack is correct.

View attachment 79550

Thank you! I am now getting signal when the pedal is turned off, but still nothing when it's on.

 

[Robert]

Does your LED light up?

 

[cyrano456]

Does your LED light up?

It does, and I'm getting sound when the pedal is on! But it's very quiet and and gated sounding.

 

[swelchy]

I retract part my statement.. looks like you did wire to the led pads... i was just tired last night and realized you bypassed the CLR resistor because u have a prewired unit..

 

[chris.knudson]

My guess is that one of your 386s is fried. You could try to probe the first one, and if you get a good signal out of that, you'll know that it's likely the second one. If you get low/no sound out of the first one, you could start there. However, you're probably going to have to sacrifice the IC to get it off the board. A hot air rework station is probably the only way to do it without damaging the chip, but if it's a bad chip, it doesn't matter.

Probably the easiest way to get it off is to cut the legs. Then, you can desolder the pins separately and clean up each of the pads. As a rule of thumb, I always socket ICs because it's easy to get a bad one or fry one by putting too much heat on it when you're soldering it in.

 

[DailyDovetails]

I would try reflowing the solder joints. These look like they could have bad connections but I would probably flow all of them.

 

[cyrano456]

Ok, I think I got it working! Reflowed the joints as recommended, and I noticed that I had nicked a couple caps at some point. Replaced those, and now this thing is loud as hell.