So after seeing a local add on Kijiji for a PedalPCB pedal and it being around my birthday I decided after many years to take the plunge and build some pedals. Personally I did not want to buy a clone that someone else had made but had zero issues if I built it myself. The initial portion of sourcing all the parts was a bit overwhelming but I made a spread sheet with all the parts needed for each pedal and compiled a master list and ordered everything one by one. The day everything arrived I rushed into building the Duocast and once I finished it didn't work at all. After a bit of trouble shooting I couldn't find the issue so I started the Informant right away, by this time I got the hang of soldering a bit more. This time the pedal worked but was intermittent so I changed a couple things and it stopped working. A local guy who happens to be world renowned pedal guru offered to help me trouble shoot the first two pedals and we fixed the first two.
For the Duocast I had a bunch of cold solder joints as well the jacks I used had a NO and a NC and obviously I used the NO contact. I never figured this out as I metered everything out when my patch cable was out making the entire jack NC.
The Informant had a cold solder joint on a cap which is what caused the intermittent issue and when I re wired some things I switched the input jack to the NO open contact causing the pedal to be silent. The jacks I used also shorted against the back plate so I replaced the jacks with lower profile and chassis jacks (More on this later). So after fixing the cap and jack the pedal worked as it should.
Next was the Son of Ben, I had wanted to re arrange the knobs to match the original instead of what the build called for. So I extended the pot wires so I could move them around, however in doing this it caused a lot of unwanted noise so I reverted back to PCB mount and bought a new enclosure as I had already drilled my other enclosure. Then there was a grounding issue, again my stupid jacks I bought were insulated and did not ground the enclosure so I went out and bought metal jacks and replaced the jacks and now works beautifully.
Kliche was on the block next, this one I was adamant I would get it right the first try! I took my time with every solder joint and inspected each joint after I was done, tested every diode after it was installed especially the germanium ones as I broke the first trying to pull it tight to the board. After all is said and done I plug her in and it sounds like a pig squealing for its life. So look it over and start reflowing solder joints and to no avail she still squeals. Upon searching this forum for trouble shooting tips I stumbled across a thread that stated what the IC voltages should be for IC 1, 2 & 3. Low and behold all my voltages are about double so I start looking at the first couple components and they are all proper. Finally staring at the IC chips I realized I installed a LT1054 charge pump instead of the TL072CP as I must of mixed them up in the bags on a previous build, I swap those out and bamn my circuit works wonderfully.
I have learned a lot on the first 4 builds, now its time to come up with graphics for the builds and decide what I'm going to build next!
For the Duocast I had a bunch of cold solder joints as well the jacks I used had a NO and a NC and obviously I used the NO contact. I never figured this out as I metered everything out when my patch cable was out making the entire jack NC.
The Informant had a cold solder joint on a cap which is what caused the intermittent issue and when I re wired some things I switched the input jack to the NO open contact causing the pedal to be silent. The jacks I used also shorted against the back plate so I replaced the jacks with lower profile and chassis jacks (More on this later). So after fixing the cap and jack the pedal worked as it should.
Next was the Son of Ben, I had wanted to re arrange the knobs to match the original instead of what the build called for. So I extended the pot wires so I could move them around, however in doing this it caused a lot of unwanted noise so I reverted back to PCB mount and bought a new enclosure as I had already drilled my other enclosure. Then there was a grounding issue, again my stupid jacks I bought were insulated and did not ground the enclosure so I went out and bought metal jacks and replaced the jacks and now works beautifully.
Kliche was on the block next, this one I was adamant I would get it right the first try! I took my time with every solder joint and inspected each joint after I was done, tested every diode after it was installed especially the germanium ones as I broke the first trying to pull it tight to the board. After all is said and done I plug her in and it sounds like a pig squealing for its life. So look it over and start reflowing solder joints and to no avail she still squeals. Upon searching this forum for trouble shooting tips I stumbled across a thread that stated what the IC voltages should be for IC 1, 2 & 3. Low and behold all my voltages are about double so I start looking at the first couple components and they are all proper. Finally staring at the IC chips I realized I installed a LT1054 charge pump instead of the TL072CP as I must of mixed them up in the bags on a previous build, I swap those out and bamn my circuit works wonderfully.
I have learned a lot on the first 4 builds, now its time to come up with graphics for the builds and decide what I'm going to build next!
