Foot switch won't engage (Blue Breaker)

[busterjbrown]

Hey there...I'm fairly new to this stuff (this is my first build that isn't from a kit...although all my kit builds have worked great), so apologies if this is a stupid question.

So I'm having a couple of issues here, the biggest one being that the foot switch won't latch and stay engaged. If I hold it down, the LED comes on and I get a very noisy signal (albeit not exactly the signal I'm supposed to be getting from the pedal), but when I let off the switch the pedal turns off. I'm getting a clean bypass.

Could it be an issue of bad wiring somehow? Is it just a faulty foot switch? Since I'm such a novice, I assume it's something I've done wrong. Any immediate thoughts? Thanks!

 

[peccary]

It sounds like you've got a momentary switch rather than a latching switch. Happens to the best of us.

I can't account for the noisy signal, but getting a latching footswitch in there should at least keep the effect on and make it easier to troubleshoot.

 

[ADAOCE]

Are you sure it’s latching not momentary? Have you check continuity between both throws of all three poles?

 

[busterjbrown]

Oh man...as predicted, I'm an idiot. Would have sworn I'd gotten latching switches, but just checked my order and realized I got momentary. Not sure why I didn't think to check that. Thanks for the responses

 

[peccary]

Oh man...as predicted, I'm an idiot. Would have sworn I'd gotten latching switches, but just checked my order and realized I got momentary. Not sure why I didn't think to check that. Thanks for the responses

Lotsa people have done this (myself included), don't get down on yourself!

You might want to re-flow some of those solder joints while you've got the iron out as well. It's hard to tell looking straight down, but some of them look a little bulb-ish, which could mean that the solder didn't wet in to the pad that well.

 

[ADAOCE]

Glad it’s an easy fix! Are you having issues with the circuit too?

 

[busterjbrown]

Glad it’s an easy fix! Are you having issues with the circuit too?

Thanks! Not sure...I'm going to swap out the switch tonight and reflow some of the solder per @pecarry's suggestion, hopefully that'll give me a sense of what kind of signal I'm actually working with.

 

[fig]

you could drink one of those energy drinks and tap it really fast....just sayin...

 

[ADAOCE]

Thanks! Not sure...I'm going to swap out the switch tonight and reflow some of the solder per @pecarry's suggestion, hopefully that'll give me a sense of what kind of signal I'm actually working with.

Sounds good. You’ll like this pedal. I just built a protein pedal and the blue side (blues breaker based) is phenomenal.

 

[Feral Feline]

Keep the momentary and wire up the pedal with it alongside the latching. That way you can do Fig's stutter-on with the latching in bypass, or stutter off with the latching (pedal) engaged.

That's still just between effected/non-effected — to truly smash it, you've gotta have the momentary wired to ground to kill the signal completely for some Tom Morello-like or Buckethead-esque "tremolohno".