Aion Aperture (Ampeg Scrambler)

Welp, in a nostalgic nod to my early pedal days, I fired this up this afternoon and....crickets.

I get the trademark staticy, barely there output of an extremely under or over biased transistor. Boost switch works as does the volume control. LED and switching works, as I have bypass tone.

I reflowed all the joints. The 2N5306 have a weird pinout but I thought I was very careful in their placement. I'll take a look tonight and see if I can't get it going. I've posted the schematic here for anyone who may be able to lend a hand:

 
Do you have a picture of everything all finished? Q3 and 4 are the mpsa14 right? You used the vintage part and those are oriented right? I have built a lot of aion builds and his off board wiring throws alot of people. It's not my favorite off board wiring layout tbh.

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The 2N5306 are oriented properly. I double check on another trio and I have them in correct.

I’m not a fan of the Aion offboard. I think my issue is the off board wiring in fact. I trace continuity from DC Jack to the breakout board but not from the breakout board to the main board, which is odd because I have voltage on the other semiconductors.

I’m thinking I may remove the breakout board and just do standard stomp, and LED connections. That does mean I’ll have to put some of the filtering components on the jack but I’m not worried about that.
 
Yeah I mean no shame in it not working. It's just always more fun when a new pedal works from the get go

I know. I’ve been spoiled but, and this should not be a shock, I rushed a little on this. And I F’in hate Aion’s breakout board. In general, I avoid breakout boards when I can. They don’t make things any easier for me and I have a very solid and efficient offboard wiring protocol.

I’ve just been spoiled by PedalPCB.
 
I know. I’ve been spoiled but, and this should not be a shock, I rushed a little on this. And I F’in hate Aion’s breakout board. In general, I avoid breakout boards when I can. They don’t make things any easier for me and I have a very solid and efficient offboard wiring protocol.

I’ve just been spoiled by PedalPCB.
I just was saying how I really like the uniformity of PedalPCB's board layout/format I have a bunch of 3Pdt's already pre-fabbed up along with my in/ out jacks makes it so nice troubleshooting is much easier to finalize
 
I’m going to jump power directly from the DC jack to the main board after we put the kids down for the night. I’ll report back.

If by chance that helps, I’ll simply jettison the breakout board. I believe I have an extra 3PDT in the parts bin.
 
The two wires going from the main board to the daughter board next to the output wire, disconnect those, they are ground wires and not needed. They are connected to nc pads and that may be a possible issue

Good catch. I caught that too and it’s the first thing I tried.

Long story short: I believe I got it working. First I disconnected the breakout board, removed the cloth wire, and cleaned up the pads. I then jumped power and ground to the main board to verify voltage on Q3/Q4. Bingo.

That told me my issue was probably bad wiring on the breakout.

So I cleaned off the breakout board and reassembled. Prior to landing everything, I did another check by running just the breakout board power and ground connections and I still had good voltages.

So I fully assembled and here we are:

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Not my cleanest wiring but troubleshooting is a cruel mistress.

One thing I’m not pumped about is how much voltage Aion is forcing me to drop across the 1N5187 and the mystery R19 100 ohm. R19 is not on the schematic. So, I’ll play it amd see how it sounds and then I can excise those if need be.

Im dropping almost 2 volts from a 9.7v supply.
 
Welp, no dice.

I suspect a bad switch at this point because while it bypasses, the signal seems weak.

I don’t have any 3PDT in stock right now so I’ll remove the breakout board and install a DPDT temporarily. First thing I’m going to try is to just hardwire the jacks to the board and see if I get Output. That’s will save me the trouble of getting a new switch and determine if the circuit actually works.

I had a good run!

Not a huge fan of Aion’s stuff. I still have enough components to do this one over should PedalPCB do a Scrambler Board or if I end up doing my own board. Also, I’ve been looking for a real Clinch EP Pre to replace my Ares. We’ll see. Not a fan though.
 
A lot of your joints (and the boards) could be cleaned up. The braided ground shield could be a potential source of a short. How much heat are you applying? The jacks look like they've been damaged.

Also, are you sure about the value of R19? It looks like Brown-Black-Black-Brown-Brown (1k) from the picture. Dropping 2V from what is probably a series resistor with the DC in is suspect. You could check for continuity and confirm that it is a series resistor on the power rail and jump it if you don't want it.
 
A lot of your joints (and the boards) could be cleaned up. The braided ground shield could be a potential source of a short. How much heat are you applying? The jacks look like they've been damaged.

I reflowed all the joints last night. Again, troubleshooting typically makes things ugly where they were once pretty. Jacks are recycled pulls but perfectly functional.

Wire runs could use some touching up but I think ditching the breakout board will help me clean things up. Again, i hate Aion's breakout configuration. It makes for messy wiring. No shorts due to shielded wire.

Also, are you sure about the value of R19? It looks like Brown-Black-Black-Brown-Brown (1k) from the picture. Dropping 2V from what is probably a series resistor with the DC in is suspect. You could check for continuity and confirm that it is a series resistor on the power rail and jump it if you don't want it.

Bingo! Good catch.

This was admittedly a rushed build for me. Frankly, and this may just be me, I don;t treat Aion projects with the same respect, care and reverence as PedalPCB. They are always a pain in the ass for me.

I'm going to clean stuff up tonight and hopefully get this beast fired up.
 
I'm starting to think @Harry Klippton was onto something.

I'm scrapping this for now. If it wasn't toasted before it is now. We all have dud builds sometimes and frankly, I want to design my own board for this anyway.

Thanks for all the help guys. Now I can focus on getting my protoboard wired up so the support @fig is not in vain!
 
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