MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Well following my last build of one of these using VTL54C's instead of the prescribed LED/DR pair in the BOM I had planned to either update my original build to vactrols or build 3rd and retire the original one.
I had also mentioned that I wanted to have the two Tso's in my pedal chain with relay switching. The Tso is probably my favorite PedalPCB pedal that I've built to date. (and that's a lot!). I wanted to give them the royal treatment of relay switching.
And therein lies twisted and downward spiral of this build report.
First of all, since these are buffered bypass boards, the PPCB Simple Relay switch doesn't lend itself to have relay switching AND buffered bypass. Pretty easy if you want to convert it to true bypass with the Relay board.
So @Robert had to send me some wiring instructions and once I looked it over I was like "duh, that all makes sense, why didn't I think of that?" heh.
Anyway, armed with my new wiring scheme, I decided to build another Tso from scratch today. The build went as smooth as the last and and the VTL54C's nestled in there nicely in place of the LED/LDR.
I hooked up the Simple Relay board as per Roberts instructions, and I plugged it into my bench 9v supply to test the power.......
First the relay switching didn't work, and as I was looking around at what I might have done wrong, I saw a wisp of smoke come up from the relay board and a tell tale smell of an IC burning......ruh roh.
So I popped the board back out and looked at it closer, and could not find anything wrong with how I built it. The voltage regulator smelled like plastic toast. It's obviously fried. So back tracking from there, I figured it was a power problem. So I plugged the pedal back in, power at the jack was fine, power at the board was......-9.63v. Whaaaat? Checked the power at the jack again, it was find. My wires from the board to the jack were wired correctly.
Then it dawned on me, sigh......
In order to make it easier to wire the Relay board with it's dedicated 9v source, I used one of @Robert 's "DC Jack Breakout" boards.
I've used these many times and they are very handy when you need to provide 9v supply to two boards from one jack.
That is, when you don't pull a bonehead move like I did. Notice the little "plus" sign on the pads where it mounts to the jack?
Well I installed the board backwards and reversed the polarity on the board. Thus everything else the board was feeding was getting -9v.
Apparently the Simple Relay board doesn't like that, to the extent that it puked and fried. I'm not sure the extent of the damage to the board but I might try swapping out the voltage regulator and seeing if doesn't still work.
In the meantime, it was my last relay board until my next order shows up. So I went ahead and installed a regular 3PDT in it.
It sounds pretty much identical to the other two. I'm going retire my #1 Tso and at some point convert #2 and #3 to relay switching.
I had also mentioned that I wanted to have the two Tso's in my pedal chain with relay switching. The Tso is probably my favorite PedalPCB pedal that I've built to date. (and that's a lot!). I wanted to give them the royal treatment of relay switching.
And therein lies twisted and downward spiral of this build report.
First of all, since these are buffered bypass boards, the PPCB Simple Relay switch doesn't lend itself to have relay switching AND buffered bypass. Pretty easy if you want to convert it to true bypass with the Relay board.
So @Robert had to send me some wiring instructions and once I looked it over I was like "duh, that all makes sense, why didn't I think of that?" heh.
Anyway, armed with my new wiring scheme, I decided to build another Tso from scratch today. The build went as smooth as the last and and the VTL54C's nestled in there nicely in place of the LED/LDR.
I hooked up the Simple Relay board as per Roberts instructions, and I plugged it into my bench 9v supply to test the power.......
First the relay switching didn't work, and as I was looking around at what I might have done wrong, I saw a wisp of smoke come up from the relay board and a tell tale smell of an IC burning......ruh roh.
So I popped the board back out and looked at it closer, and could not find anything wrong with how I built it. The voltage regulator smelled like plastic toast. It's obviously fried. So back tracking from there, I figured it was a power problem. So I plugged the pedal back in, power at the jack was fine, power at the board was......-9.63v. Whaaaat? Checked the power at the jack again, it was find. My wires from the board to the jack were wired correctly.
Then it dawned on me, sigh......
In order to make it easier to wire the Relay board with it's dedicated 9v source, I used one of @Robert 's "DC Jack Breakout" boards.
I've used these many times and they are very handy when you need to provide 9v supply to two boards from one jack.
That is, when you don't pull a bonehead move like I did. Notice the little "plus" sign on the pads where it mounts to the jack?
Well I installed the board backwards and reversed the polarity on the board. Thus everything else the board was feeding was getting -9v.
Apparently the Simple Relay board doesn't like that, to the extent that it puked and fried. I'm not sure the extent of the damage to the board but I might try swapping out the voltage regulator and seeing if doesn't still work.
In the meantime, it was my last relay board until my next order shows up. So I went ahead and installed a regular 3PDT in it.
It sounds pretty much identical to the other two. I'm going retire my #1 Tso and at some point convert #2 and #3 to relay switching.
I like it it!
