Forgive me for the messy build, I'm not very experienced builder yet this is my third.
I'm trying to troubleshoot this for a while now & can't get my head around it
It's going silent as soon as I turn it on, but I hear pops and click when I turn on off the 3 switches so I'm assuming that this means something coming in from the output but the input is not working?
Not sure if it's that or grounding issue or just bad soldering
A lot of your wiring has too much solder. They also look like cold joints. Can you show us a pic of the underside of the board?
First step is visual inspection. Check that your solder joints are good. Then double check all your components are the correct values. From there check your voltages on powered components. After that, audio probe to find the problem area.
I have a sneaking suspicion you’ve got some iffy soldering or something is shorting out.
I'll second the too much and cold solder. In some cases, almost twice the necessary amount. The cold joints could be technique of bad solder or too cold or an iron. Your filets should look like peaks of a mountain and the solder should flow through the hole to the pad on the other side, at least flush with the board on the component side.
The balling can also be caused by dirty boards. Oils from our hands or other sources can to ball up and not adhere to the pad, instead kind of resting on top. I clean every board with a quick wipe of isopropyl before populating. Sometimes giving a second wipe down on larger boards.
You can bork switches and even components with too much heat+time. It's moreso time though. Don't be afraid to heat your iron up some more. Just move fast and leave a break for the component to cool some before hitting the other legs. This is especially true for 3pdt and 2pdt.
Retouch any of the joints that look cold(balled up dull/not shiny) cleaning your tip of excess solder between joints. make sure there are no solder bridges. These can be less than obvious with only a hair or solder bridging two points. Use magnification if available or zoom in with your cell camera.
Now to check your signal(if it still doesn't work).
With the circuit off, use your DMM on resistance (ohms) setting and check for continuity between the tip of the jacks to the in and out wires on the pcb with the 3pdt engaged to the non-bypassed setting. One way you'll have continuity, the other you won't. Process of elimination. You should have a resistance of no more than a few ohms. If you have more or you have no signal in both positions of the footswitch, you need to check the switch to make sure the poles are flipping. If all is good, time to move to an audio probe.
Set up a tone generator/looper/drum machine to play a constant noise into the pedal. Line level signals should be turned way down. Plug it in and start playing audio. Listen via the probe to the input jack as a reference of level.
When probing a non-working circuit I will generally try to hit each gain stage until I find the issue. These points are highlighted above. Once you find a break in the signal path, you know your issue is between those 2 points. Probe to find the problematic component front there.
I know none of this is the answer, but give a man a fish...
Thanks Guys for your reply, this is what I love about this forum.. yes I was not sure always how much is enough soldering also lead free is annoying so I had to increase the soldering iron temperature to 400 C not sure if that's too much...
I was spot checking some of your component values (usually the thing I screw up), but I hit a snag. There are two board images on the site - one in the build doc, and one on the product listing, but neither match up exactly to the board you have.
I was going to question the film cap installed for what is listed as C8 in the build doc, but that may be a version difference.
As a general rule if you install the values printed on your board you should be good, but without a reference, double checking your work can be tough.
@Robert - do you happen to have a current board image handy for this one?
Take a close look at your solder joints next to your toggle switches. Not much clearance there, the slightest touch of solder to the metal body of one of those could ground out your signal.
This was one of my first pedal PCB builds, and I liked it so much I had to do it twice.
...cause I didn't socket the jfets. Really hope they selected some good j201s for ya there brother. Otherwise it could be a crash course in IDSS and VF. I can only presume that these folks know what they're doing.
