lumberjack
New member
Hey gang, just finished a General Tso tonight and everything seems to be working other than the fact that the LEDs associated with the LDR barely engage when playing, so I get no noticeable compression from the circuit. The biggest strum gets a very faint glimmer from them, almost imperceptible, so I double checked the resistors associated with the LEDs and they are indeed 1.5k to ground as called for. If I run a boost in front of the compressor you can see the LEDs light up a bit more, but I'm not sure what a realistic fix would be, or what's wrong. It's like the signal voltage the LEDs "see" from the guitar signal is too low to light the LEDs, perhaps the transistors associated with them aren't doing their job properly? I got them from Tayda and Mouser, and I haven't had any trouble sourcing components with them before.
The op amp seems to be working fine, as the volume knob generates quite a bit of boost, and the "sustain" control increases the volume as well in both modes, but again it just makes everything louder, not compressed. Would this be something as simple as running lower resistors to ground in place of the 1.5k? It seems like something else must be wrong though, as there's plenty of people who have built this and they used 1.5k for the LEDs.
Note: trimmer at right is for power LED brightness, and the tied resistors are just to get the right values.
The op amp seems to be working fine, as the volume knob generates quite a bit of boost, and the "sustain" control increases the volume as well in both modes, but again it just makes everything louder, not compressed. Would this be something as simple as running lower resistors to ground in place of the 1.5k? It seems like something else must be wrong though, as there's plenty of people who have built this and they used 1.5k for the LEDs.
Note: trimmer at right is for power LED brightness, and the tied resistors are just to get the right values.
![IMG_1815.jpg IMG_1815.jpg](https://forum.pedalpcb.com/data/attachments/39/39189-f50722aee4034e8a6ff063cc900f2b4a.jpg)
![IMG_1814.jpg IMG_1814.jpg](https://forum.pedalpcb.com/data/attachments/39/39190-b11885ce6419d8d4f3c6df604955b84e.jpg)
![IMG_1816.jpg IMG_1816.jpg](https://forum.pedalpcb.com/data/attachments/39/39191-b53322c6ccf4f5172392280750b2822d.jpg)