comradehoser
Active member
Just for posterity, if I can give back to this awesome forum community (besides buying up all of pedal pcb's catalogue), hopefully this can help anyone out to learn from my dumb mistakes:
I Built the Aion Ember/Amptweaker Tightmetal, and it was exhibiting some weird issues: worked fine for a bit, then no signal in 9V mode, and in 18v, it would start out okay, then fade away and disappear. It was getting worse over time. Looked more closely and I had hit the edges of caps c19 and c20 soldering in the style switch and volume pot. I've done it before with no issues in other builds, but on closer inspection, I could see the metal interior under the plastic. Replaced both, reflowed everything, and high-gain awesomeness. Currently one of my favorite pedals in 18v mode.
Built the GCI Apostle, a Orange CR120/Matamp 120 clone. It was "okay", kind of quiet, thin, and unimpressive, not at all the gainy sludge preamp I was expecting. Kind of disappointed, but I was like, okay, GCI muffed it. Had it kicking around for a couple of months, until one day, I was looking at a loose connection or something, and uh, yeah, I had missed the socket with one of the legs of a transistor. Put it in and, yes indeed, it is a super loud and sludgy preamp. Funny how those electrical parts work when you put them where they are supposed to be.
Finally, the Duocast. Built it up, and got a fine signal from the "loud" side, and the teeniest-tiniest of the teeny-tiniest of signals on the "quiet" side. I thought, oh, maybe it's a faulty transistor (I don't have good luck with germanium). But no, I had mixed up the order of wires 3 and 4 on the selector footswitch (they are mirrored from the bypass 3pdt). Reversed, and it is rocking. Just have to figure out how to dial it in optimally.
Bonus: I used to "tack" in one pin on sockets and then bend them to alignment if needed, but I am 99% sure that practice lifted some pads and resulted in way more frustration than was really necessary in my recent twin face build. I also noticed on reflection that most of the issues in my builds required jumpering around socketed IC pins. Now, if I need to realign, I just reheat the tack joint to move. Haven't had any issues recently *crosses fingers*.
I Built the Aion Ember/Amptweaker Tightmetal, and it was exhibiting some weird issues: worked fine for a bit, then no signal in 9V mode, and in 18v, it would start out okay, then fade away and disappear. It was getting worse over time. Looked more closely and I had hit the edges of caps c19 and c20 soldering in the style switch and volume pot. I've done it before with no issues in other builds, but on closer inspection, I could see the metal interior under the plastic. Replaced both, reflowed everything, and high-gain awesomeness. Currently one of my favorite pedals in 18v mode.
Built the GCI Apostle, a Orange CR120/Matamp 120 clone. It was "okay", kind of quiet, thin, and unimpressive, not at all the gainy sludge preamp I was expecting. Kind of disappointed, but I was like, okay, GCI muffed it. Had it kicking around for a couple of months, until one day, I was looking at a loose connection or something, and uh, yeah, I had missed the socket with one of the legs of a transistor. Put it in and, yes indeed, it is a super loud and sludgy preamp. Funny how those electrical parts work when you put them where they are supposed to be.
Finally, the Duocast. Built it up, and got a fine signal from the "loud" side, and the teeniest-tiniest of the teeny-tiniest of signals on the "quiet" side. I thought, oh, maybe it's a faulty transistor (I don't have good luck with germanium). But no, I had mixed up the order of wires 3 and 4 on the selector footswitch (they are mirrored from the bypass 3pdt). Reversed, and it is rocking. Just have to figure out how to dial it in optimally.
Bonus: I used to "tack" in one pin on sockets and then bend them to alignment if needed, but I am 99% sure that practice lifted some pads and resulted in way more frustration than was really necessary in my recent twin face build. I also noticed on reflection that most of the issues in my builds required jumpering around socketed IC pins. Now, if I need to realign, I just reheat the tack joint to move. Haven't had any issues recently *crosses fingers*.
