Black Tiger Boost build issues now possibly made worse

[FleeRemi]

So i'm working on my first ever build, a pedalpcb Black Tiger boost. I finished last night and it worked decently well but had a weird "farty" sound to the signal like something on the board might not be functioning correctly. I decided to reflow all of the connections on the components of the pcb, and now when I engage the switch, the pedal has little-to-no signal. Signal is perfectly fine in bypass, and if i turn the knob down all the way, the dry signal will come thru in a bypass-like-manner.

What did i screw up? Worried i may have fried a capacitor or possibly the 4558 chip. Including a bunch of pictures that may or may not be of help.

Thank you in advance for any help!!

 

[cdwillis]

I use a Hakko FX88D set to 750 Farenheit, which is almost 400 Celcius, with 63/37 leaded solder. Get in and get out. I ususally touch the tip to the part/pad, count to 3, give a couple dabs of solder, count to 3 again, and take the iron off. I'm not saying I'm the best solder jockey ever, but I have yet to burn up a component or pad and the joints all look nice and shiny.

 

[FleeRemi]

Audioprobe :

Misc > Audio Probe : DIY Fever – Building my own guitars, amps and pedals

[DIY Fever] Audio Probe - very simple contraption that helps with debugging audio circuits

diy-fever.com

Soldering Iron temperature :

I'd say somewhere between 370 and 400 °C ?

I use 0.56mm soldering wire, and 380/390 °C is all right.

You might have to do some tests, to find the right setting. If it's hard to put the solder on the pad because it doesn't flow smoothly, you should increase the heat.
If there is lots of smoke, lots of dark residues around the pad, and the solder looks half-burnt, you should decrease it.

High temperatures are especially dangerous when soldering toggleswitches and footswitches, if you stay too long applying some heat, they can melt quickly and prevent the part from working correctly.

You are supposed to clean the tip of your iron on some almost-dry sponge quite often, when the tip is dirty.

Edit : You could also clean the pcb as much as possible, using an old dry toothbrush. Let's remember that even the slightest piece of hair can create a short.

View attachment 67771

I would also do some continuity tests between every ground points in the circuit, including jacks and DC power jack. Ground is a network, they are all supposed to be connected. Then i would do some continuity tests on the wiring (footswitch pads, pcb footswitch pads, jacks). They are usualy the most obvious suspects.

Check each wire pads carefully, sometime a tiny piece of wire missed the hole and is shorting the next pad.

Did you use some bubblegum to install the DC power jack ? May i ask what flavor ?

This is interesting because when I saw the original post about upping my temperature I was about to start the next board, so I upped my temp to 380c and felt like the joints looked shinier compared to my other one, maybe my iron wasn't hot enough to burn away all of the flux i used when reflowing. So I may honestly just try reflowing the the whole board with the hotter iron(slowly so as not to overheat anything) and see if that helps, but maybe i'll try testing continuity on the wiring first. Just touch both ends of any of the wire connections for that right?

Also LOL @ at the bubblegum thing - like i mentioned before the drill layout was off and the pot is too high for the dc to fit in fully, so i used mounting putty to hold in place about halfway, a temporary fix just because I really want to finish this first build.

Ok, lots to go over here, but let's start with the temp. I solder at 680F (not sure what that is in Celsius) with 60/40 rosin core solder, which seems to work fine for me. Rarely have I fried anything, and I don't usually have any questionable soldier joints.

Ok, on to the audio probe. You just need a probe that has a capacitor in series with the probe. The value isn't as as important as the voltage rating. Personally I use a .1uF at 400V. You just want to make sure you have a high enough voltage to handle the circuit you are testing.

You can take a guitar cable, cut off one end, and connect the center to your capacitor, an then the capacitor to your probe (anything conductive and pointy enough to touch a pad without touching anything else - can be a probe, can be a nail - just needs to be sharp and pointy). The shielded part of the cable will connect to ground, so soldier on an alligator clip to something that you can insert into one of the ground points on your enclosure (assuming that you are testing your board inside an enclosure). Otherwise, you just nee some way to connect it to ground.

Once you connect the probe to ground, plug it into an amp (I prefer to do this with the cheapest amp I have on hand (can be anything, but I don't recommend plugging it into a high dollar guitar amp (I use one of those $10 amps off of Amazon, so if I fry it, I'm only out $10).

Next you want to put a tone across the pedal, I use a tone generator, but you can use a guitar, or for convenience, you cn use a looper pedal. You can even use your phone or computer, if you have a way to send the signal to the input of your pedal.

Once you've managed all of that, you simply touch the probe to various points in the circuit (I generally start with the schematic and work my way through the circuit). You should hear the guitar tone from the input through different points on the circuit. When you get to the point where you hear something funny or the sounds drops out entirely, you have found your problem.

If any of this doesn't make sense, please let me know. I'm here to help.

This is also interesting, because 680f is 360c which is around where I was at initially. The audio probe sounds like a great idea but it sounds a bit intimidating in practice, so I'm going to hold off on that until I've exhausted all other options (which i'm obviously close too lol)

Well hold on a second, good people.

OP didn't say it was a faulty circuit, they said it was a farty circuit. Looks like full CCW is a 0db boost, so it should be very similar to the bypass signal and that's by design. It actually could be working, but we are ignoring two parts of the system.

I'd be curious to know what is your signal chain and amp or multi FX you are running the pedal through. I've run some pedals that sound great in one amp and really atrocious in another. I've also built some boosts (color sound) that at max completely overload the amp and make it sound like what could be thought of as farty.

Is there any level at which it sounds good? Is it mostly the low end that sucks? Have you listened to/watched demos to see how similar yours is? Tried it in different amps?

Hahaha yeah the "farty" thing was only the first time I tested it, and it mostly sounded like it did in all of the demos/videos I watched for it, but the fartiness sounded like something in the signal was failing or fault (i'm not an electronics expert but I am a degreed audio engineer and to my ears compared to all videos I watched, it was definitely not quite right), which is why I thought a component was not functioning quite properly which is why I originally reflowed everything and then got my current problem which is little-to-no-signal. I purposely didn't include anything else in the signal chain, it's just my guitar (Gibson Faded Flying V) directly into the pedal, which goes directly into the amp (Orange ADR30).

just stating the obvious -- make sure you have not mixed up which is the audio in and the audio out for the pedal when you are testing it.

I did check this, weirdly enough the signal comes thru in bypass regardless of which plug I have plugged in which socket. That's normal right?

 

[chris.knudson]

The audio probe sounds like a great idea but it sounds a bit intimidating in practice

It's actually easier than it sounds. Anyway, you'll probably end up needing to build one eventually. There are videos on YouTube that'll show you how to build one -- it's really very easy.

 

[eh là bas ma]

Just touch both ends of any of the wire connections for that right?

That's right.

However, there won't be continuity if there is a component in the way, resistors, capacitors, etc, are "stopping" the continuity.

In this example, in green there is continuity, in red there isn't.

R1 pin2 is connected to R2 pin2, so the digital multimeter (DMM) should ring. Same with R2 pin1 and C1 pin1.
There won't be continuity between C2 pin1 and C2 pin2. There is no continuity across a component. No continuity between R1 pin 1 and 2, unless IN is connected to ground (via the 3PDT) to bypass the circuit.


The guitar signal will go through a component, but not the small impulse sent by a DMM set in continuity mode.

I hope this is clear...

In a few cases, the soldering joint looks perfect, but the connection isn't very good. If you have to struggle with the multimeter probes to have a connection, or if the multimeter's ringing is stuttering and very unsteady, i'd suggest to reflow the pads, in order to improve the connection.

That's normal right?

Yes, that's why such a simple thing as plugging the guitar and amp's cables to a stompbox can be so confusing sometimes...

It happens to me a lot when i am a bit drunk, and trying to connect some stompboxes from an upside-down point of view.

 

[chris.knudson]

i am a bit drunk, and trying to connect some stompboxes from an upside-down point of view

I hate when the happens. I recommend that you close one eye and flip your workbench the other way around. That usually works for me.

 

[FleeRemi]

Figured i'd chime in here with an update: recently came back to this one, scrubbed the board with some alcohol and a soft brush, got new in/out/dc jacks and redid the wiring (also swapped the LED for a wired one with a bezel), now works like a charm. Reckon it must've been something in the wiring! Final product: