topher6345
New member
First time post!
Built a blue breaker yesterday, my 2nd non-kit built, sourced all the parts or used leftovers.
The enclosure is matte sand from Tayda. I bought it first and decided on the pcb later. I've built 2 rats that use the 3-knob layout and I was looking for something different but still in the 3 knob layout.
Socketed the diodes because I was eager to get soldering before all the parts had arrived.
I was missing a 47pf capacitor, so I put in some sockets and looked up online a way to combine the 100pf and 22pf. Turns out, you can wire two 100pf caps in series so I did that and it works! I looked in the schematic and this capacitor seems to be a part of the feedback loop so I suspect it has something to do with the frequency response of the distortion. I'll try some others I have on hand.
Everything was going great until the I cased everything up and I got no sound when the pedal was engaged.
LED was red, no sound, check the volume/drive knobs: still no sound.
I stepped through the schematic with a probe I had made. I noticed that the output pin (#7) of the TL072 was silent.The tone knob is behind the TL072 so I wondered if it was shorting out. I used a tone knob from a bread-boarding kit that had short pins, I clipped the pins and soldered wires to the pot. I'll probably replace this pot with a higher quality one. I disassembled the board and put a stack of post-it-notes (something I'll probably replace soon) as an insulator.
I could now get signal from pin #7 of the TL072! But still no signal to the amp. I traced further with the probe. While I was doing that I briefly got signal while the probe was connected to the output jack, I remember it clearly cause it had been about 20 minutes of intense troubleshooting, it was a thick chewy distortion, then it was gone. It seems to be related to the grounding of the output jack.
I unscrewed the output jack from the enclosure and I got signal.
I've had this happen before when I built a Stewmac Lightcycle phasor, and the fix was to replace the open style output jacks with some plastic closed ones.
I swapped the jacks a couple times, both input and output. The input jack was an enclosed TRS, and it had the same grounding problem when screwed into the enclosure - no sound. I disconnected it aside just to rule out anything about the TRS connection complicating things to a point I don't understand.
After 20 or so minutes of confusion and frustration, I tried putting a plastic washer between the in/out jacks and the enclosure.
This works but I don't understand why. I get consistent sound having insulating the jacks from the enclosure.
I have some new enclosed jacks on the way so I'll update with the grounding problem returns
Closing Thoughts:
Having my nano looper playing and connected to the input jack really helped probing - the first time I've effectively done this
I need to make a better probe. the cable strain was hard to manage
Gotta replace the pots and find some 3M foam pads to better insulate the tone pot
Sounds great! Really beefs up my strat with Seymour Duncan SSL-1s and turns the shimmery sound into something powerful.
Built a blue breaker yesterday, my 2nd non-kit built, sourced all the parts or used leftovers.
The enclosure is matte sand from Tayda. I bought it first and decided on the pcb later. I've built 2 rats that use the 3-knob layout and I was looking for something different but still in the 3 knob layout.
Socketed the diodes because I was eager to get soldering before all the parts had arrived.
I was missing a 47pf capacitor, so I put in some sockets and looked up online a way to combine the 100pf and 22pf. Turns out, you can wire two 100pf caps in series so I did that and it works! I looked in the schematic and this capacitor seems to be a part of the feedback loop so I suspect it has something to do with the frequency response of the distortion. I'll try some others I have on hand.
Everything was going great until the I cased everything up and I got no sound when the pedal was engaged.
LED was red, no sound, check the volume/drive knobs: still no sound.
I stepped through the schematic with a probe I had made. I noticed that the output pin (#7) of the TL072 was silent.The tone knob is behind the TL072 so I wondered if it was shorting out. I used a tone knob from a bread-boarding kit that had short pins, I clipped the pins and soldered wires to the pot. I'll probably replace this pot with a higher quality one. I disassembled the board and put a stack of post-it-notes (something I'll probably replace soon) as an insulator.
I could now get signal from pin #7 of the TL072! But still no signal to the amp. I traced further with the probe. While I was doing that I briefly got signal while the probe was connected to the output jack, I remember it clearly cause it had been about 20 minutes of intense troubleshooting, it was a thick chewy distortion, then it was gone. It seems to be related to the grounding of the output jack.
I unscrewed the output jack from the enclosure and I got signal.
I've had this happen before when I built a Stewmac Lightcycle phasor, and the fix was to replace the open style output jacks with some plastic closed ones.
I swapped the jacks a couple times, both input and output. The input jack was an enclosed TRS, and it had the same grounding problem when screwed into the enclosure - no sound. I disconnected it aside just to rule out anything about the TRS connection complicating things to a point I don't understand.
After 20 or so minutes of confusion and frustration, I tried putting a plastic washer between the in/out jacks and the enclosure.
This works but I don't understand why. I get consistent sound having insulating the jacks from the enclosure.
I have some new enclosed jacks on the way so I'll update with the grounding problem returns
Closing Thoughts:
Having my nano looper playing and connected to the input jack really helped probing - the first time I've effectively done this
I need to make a better probe. the cable strain was hard to manage
Gotta replace the pots and find some 3M foam pads to better insulate the tone pot
Sounds great! Really beefs up my strat with Seymour Duncan SSL-1s and turns the shimmery sound into something powerful.
