DAJE
Well-known member
I considered putting a Trigger Warning for rat nest wiring in the title, but it's not that bad really, I've seen much worse.
In a Troubleshooting thread, I posted about how I thought I'd killed the footswitch with too much heat, and eventually decided I had to ditch the footswitch and breakout board and just wire everything directly.
Well... I may have been a little too paranoid. I now suspect that it was OK and that the actual problem was one of the transistors not sitting in the socket properly. Moral of that story: double-check the simple stuff before you decide it's something complicated. I usually know that, but we could all use an occasional reminder lesson.
The footswitch breakout board also contains the LED and its CLR, and the reverse polarity diode and a capacitor. I wanted to keep all of that without the board, so I worked out for myself how to wire it, and got it almost exactly right. Then I had a couple of days off because it was doing my head in.
My remaining problem was that I ended up with two separate sets of ground connections which meant that some things were not grounded properly. I added one more ground wire to connect everything and it finally worked.
And it sounds great. Almost exactly like my first one, perhaps a tiny bit more sizzle in the high end. Cleans up really well with the Fuzz knob wound back and the guitar volume lowered, almost fully clean but still at a decent level.
The outside, at least, looks very nice. I'm sure the recipient will be happy, and now I can get back to making more pedals for me.
In a Troubleshooting thread, I posted about how I thought I'd killed the footswitch with too much heat, and eventually decided I had to ditch the footswitch and breakout board and just wire everything directly.
Well... I may have been a little too paranoid. I now suspect that it was OK and that the actual problem was one of the transistors not sitting in the socket properly. Moral of that story: double-check the simple stuff before you decide it's something complicated. I usually know that, but we could all use an occasional reminder lesson.
The footswitch breakout board also contains the LED and its CLR, and the reverse polarity diode and a capacitor. I wanted to keep all of that without the board, so I worked out for myself how to wire it, and got it almost exactly right. Then I had a couple of days off because it was doing my head in.
My remaining problem was that I ended up with two separate sets of ground connections which meant that some things were not grounded properly. I added one more ground wire to connect everything and it finally worked.
And it sounds great. Almost exactly like my first one, perhaps a tiny bit more sizzle in the high end. Cleans up really well with the Fuzz knob wound back and the guitar volume lowered, almost fully clean but still at a decent level.
The outside, at least, looks very nice. I'm sure the recipient will be happy, and now I can get back to making more pedals for me.
