SOLVED Cobalt Drive problems…..SOLVED……..FINALLY!

Jeff C

Active member
New member here and also new to building pedals, as you will shortly see. I previously built a BYOC Reverb pedal kit successfully and it sounds great. I’ve also built from scratch a Strat, a Tele, a 59 LP, and an LP Junior. So, I wanted a blues driver pedal and thought I’d take a whack at the Cobalt Drive from PedalPCB. The directions are not as detailed as in a kit so I’ve had some difficulty. Clearly in over my head. I managed to procure the parts from the list (not without trial and error on my part) from Tayda. I mistakenly bought a switch without solder lugs so after consulting a patient, helpful friend, bought a daughter board and did my best to figure out how to marry the two - having no skills whatsoever in electronics. History major. I have managed to assemble it but I get nothing from it except static pops when I plug it in. Bypass doesn’t work. No idea what I’ve done wrong but I suspect it revolves around needing to do more with the daughter board on the switch. But what do I know? Here’s a couple of pics (the power jack is not there but I did connect it to test). And I haven’t installed the LED yet. Any and all suggestions are eagerly welcomed. You may recomemd I should just start over but I hope not….. Thank you!
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I assume you have signal on the gate? For R4 and R6 you can actually use your multimeter to measure them because they have nothing in parallel. Where did you source your transistors? Do you have a transistor tester?
I measured my r6 and it says 2.4K instead of 4.7K. I checked my extras and they read the correct 4.7. I confirmed visually they are the same. My r4 measures 1.0K. Checked the extras and they measure the correct 2.2K. Also confirmed visually.
 
Just out of curiosity, I used my multimeter to check connectivity between r2, r4, and 46 and the corresponding Q1 pins above them and they all have connectivity, respectively.
 
I measured my r6 and it says 2.4K instead of 4.7K. I checked my extras and they read the correct 4.7. I confirmed visually they are the same. My r4 measures 1.0K. Checked the extras and they measure the correct 2.2K. Also confirmed visually.
I thought that would work but I guess the readings are different because of current flowing through the transistors. Oh well. If the color bands match I’m happy with that!
 
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