SOLVED Spirit Box (Ghost Echo) no effect after using overdrive into it

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koolimy

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Hi, I have a question regarding my Spirit Box build. It's recently stopped working after I played my Mach 1 Overdrive (Greer Lightspeed) build into it. I didn't turn on the Spirit Box, it's just at the end of my effects chain and the effect preceding it was the Mach 1 OD.

I was actually having trouble with the Mach 1 OD not working, and just got it to work. The problem was, that after getting the Mach 1 to work, my Spirit Box stopped working.

When I turn the effect on, it passes signal but there's no effect. The LED lights up. If I turn the knobs to their maximum, I hear a faint squealing noise, but I do not hear the reverb effect. The guitar signal still passes through however.

I noticed that this Spirit Box had issues whenever I used an OD pedal in front of it. I once used a Boss SD-1 in front of it, which actually caused my amp to get a weird buzz and stopped the Spirit Box from passing any signal. Now with the Mach 1 OD, it passes signal but there is no effect. Interestingly, my Aberration Fuzz does not cause any issues for the Spirit Box, and neither does my Moonshot Tremolo. After the Boss SD-1 incident, I think I opened it up and probed around and it just started working. It was working perfectly fine until the Mach 1 OD incident.

Could anyone help me understand what's going on?

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks to the members here, I was able to find that the issue was the seating of the 78L05s in the sip socket, and a cold solder joint. I reflowed the solder joint and cut the 78L05s to reduce the height and soldered them into the sip sockets. Now the effect is working again! Thanks to everybody for the help.
 
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My guess is that it's a coincidence and there's a cold solder joint in the Spirit Box, so basically the same thing dcfvgb suggested. Probably wiring, but could be some other component too.

It's easy to draw a conclusion that an OD before it "broke it" or something, but chances are it's more of a coincidence.
 
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Are the 78L05's soldered into the sip sockets? If not, gently wiggly them with power on do they make noise? Regular use can make them giggle in the sip socket making intermitent powerfor the wet circuit. I learned that the hard way (having transistors fall out lol) measure the supply pins of the 2399 (pin1) and the reverb module (pin1) while wiggling
 
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jwin615 said:
You have some cold joints for sure. bottom right of the first pic looks like the solder never made it to the PCB.
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Oh, I see! Thanks for pointing that out, I'll try flowing that solder joint.
dcfvgb said:
Are the 78L05's soldered into the sip sockets? If not, gently wiggly them with power on do they make noise? Regular use can make them giggle in the sip socket making intermitent powerfor the wet circuit. I learned that the hard way (having transistors fall out lol) measure the supply pins of the 2399 (pin1) and the reverb module (pin1) while wiggling
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The 78L05s are installed in the sip sockets. The sip sockets themselves are soldered in, but the 78L05 are just installed. I also have to bend them to get them to install, as they don't fit normally.

So I should turn the amp and pedal on, and wiggle the 78L05 to see if they make noise? After that, I use my DMM to measure the voltages while wiggling?

Should I be measuring DC or AC?

Thanks.
 
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Hi, I just wanted to report back from the wiggle test.

So I soldered the cold solder joint mentioned. I also did the wiggle test on the 78L05s. At first, nothing really happened until I got a weird oscillation that didn't go away until I turned my amp off. That scared me but I turned my amp on again and tried the wiggle test again.

I noticed that the 78L05s were very loose in the sip sockets. After a few wiggles, the pedal just started working normally!

I guess I should take out the sip sockets and just solder the 78L05s directly to the pcb. They are already too tall for the enclosure so I have to lay them down anyway. Soldering them directly to the pcb should give better contact and take away the height problem.

I'm guessing I won't need to take measurements as the pedal is working correctly(?)

Anyways, thanks for the help!
 
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koolimy said:
Hi, I just wanted to report back from the wiggle test.

So I soldered the cold solder joint mentioned. I also did the wiggle test on the 78L05s. At first, nothing really happened until I got a weird oscillation that didn't go away until I turned my amp off. That scared me but I turned my amp on again and tried the wiggle test again.

I noticed that the 78L05s were very loose in the sip sockets. After a few wiggles, the pedal just started working normally!

I guess I should take out the sip sockets and just solder the 78L05s directly to the pcb. They are already too tall for the enclosure so I have to lay them down anyway. Soldering them directly to the pcb should give better contact and take away the height problem.

I'm guessing I won't need to take measurements as the pedal is working correctly(?)

Anyways, thanks for the help!
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You can also just cut the legs shorter. But soldering them to the PCB is probably best if desoldering the sockets is not an issue. Personally I hate desoldering (and it is somewhat risky for me) so I would probably just solder them into the sockets (even though it's probably slightly less reliable than soldering them to the PCB), but do what you feel works the best for you.
 
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I see! I have been desoldering quite a lot with these PedalPCB pcbs and I've found that they have been pretty tough, fingers crossed. I think I will desolder. That's the best way to get the height clearance and get sure contact. Hope this is not my once time where desoldering breaks something for me LOL.
 
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koolimy said:
I see! I have been desoldering quite a lot with these PedalPCB pcbs and I've found that they have been pretty tough, fingers crossed. I think I will desolder. That's the best way to get the height clearance and get sure contact. Hope this is not my once time where desoldering breaks something for me LOL.
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Nooo, solder it to the socket and be done e with it.
 
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koolimy said:
I see! I have been desoldering quite a lot with these PedalPCB pcbs and I've found that they have been pretty tough, fingers crossed. I think I will desolder. That's the best way to get the height clearance and get sure contact. Hope this is not my once time where desoldering breaks something for me LOL.
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Desoldering isn't too bad if you've got good tools and use leaded solder. I find it to be a huge pain with unleaded solder though, but YMMV.

Again, height clearance shouldn't really be an issue since you can clip the legs to be shorter - no reason not to do it tbh instead of just leaving them full length and having clearance issues. Just don't go too short, but there's plenty to remove.
 
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