General Tso’s Compressor

[Twrog]

Just finished this and it’s baffling me a bit. All controls work, but it needs a very high input signal to trigger the LED’s to any extent. Humbuckers strummed triggers them, but still not enough to get anything when playing single lines. It’s worth noting that I have previously owned the Fat General, but this isn’t getting anywhere near with regard to compression. I have tried multiple LED’s of different colours and brightnesses, checked all components etc, but it just seems like there’s not enough signal to push those LED far enough. I am putting the back on to test btw.

is there a mod perhaps that will allow more juice to hits those LED’s?

Best Regards
Ben

 

[Username123]

Have you triple checked all of your solder joints? Check this image to make sure you only have the ok solder joints. They should kinda look like Hershey kisses. Also, check out this page for how to address the types bad solder joints and what can cause them.

Adafruit Guide To Excellent Soldering

A lovely illustrated guide to soldering and identifying & solving common soldering problems

learn.adafruit.com

Also, always post clear photos of your pcb and wiring. If you don't, we can't address your issue.

 

[Twrog]

Have you triple checked all of your solder joints? Check this image to make sure you only have the ok solder joints. They should kinda look like Hershey kisses. Also, check out this page for how to address the types bad solder joints and what can cause them.

Adafruit Guide To Excellent Soldering

A lovely illustrated guide to soldering and identifying & solving common soldering problems

learn.adafruit.com

Also, always post clear photos of your pcb and wiring. If you don't, we can't address your

Many thanks for the reply. Yes I’ve checked everything, and it is working, but not to the extent that it should. It needs a higher degree of sensitivity for the LED’s to fire.

 

[Paradox916]

In the original the lens of the LED is pointing directly at the face of the LDR.

However, they were enclosed in heat shrink tubing so although the color of the LED was visible it wasn't possible to identify whether they were diffused or clear... You could very well be correct. (This was a loaner pedal so I couldn't attack it with a scalpel)

Not sure if this helps but you can give that a try... there are a few troubleshooting threads for the general Tso, give them a read, the one I built seems to work pretty good but I have no frame of reference as It’s the only compressor I have ever had. Pictures go a long way with helping troubleshoot a lot of time all it takes is a second set of eyes. You might be surprised by how may problems have be resolved that way.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Where are the pix? Take a look at the other posts in this forum to see how we do things here.

 

[Twrog]

Not sure if this helps but you can give that a try... there are a few troubleshooting threads for the general Tso, give them a read, the one I built seems to work pretty good but I have no frame of reference as It’s the only compressor I have ever had. Pictures go a long way with helping troubleshoot a lot of time all it takes is a second set of eyes. You might be surprised by how may problems have be resolved that way.

Many thanks for the reply, and sorry for taking so long to get back. I’m away from home for a few days, but I’ll post some pics when I get back. I’m pretty sure the build is fine because it does work, it just needs more sensitivity from the LED’s. I did read another post with someone having the same experience, but after looking at the schematic I was just going to try modding it to push some more signal through.

Incidentally If I put a clean boost in front and attenuate after it works like the original, so it should be possible to alter it, or else find and different spec LED, which is probably far easier come to think of it .
Cheers
Ben