SOLVED Low Tide LFO pot has no effect. (Completely wrong)

[StratsRNeat]

I just finished my first Low Tide, I used BAT 41s, a J201 in the 2SK208-Y, and an LM358P. The pedal bypasses fine, and everything works as expected except that the LFO pot has absolutely no effect. I can get signal off it with an audio probe on both lugs 2 and 3 and the resistance seems fine as a roll it back and forth, however, I have no signal at R51, R49, R48 or pin 2 of Q3 (I have tried two different 3904s both from Tayda). The printed values on all of the caps and resistors from the Gate pot to Q3 all match, and I check the value of each component on install. I can control the gate with the internal trim pot and make the output signal range from muffled the clear with it, the LFO pot has no effect regardless of where I put the BBD or the Gate trims.

Q3: E=3.41 C=3.94 B=4.96
IC4: 1=0.98 2=2.34 3=2.48 4=0 5=2.46 6=2.46 7=2.45 8=8.36
Trim 2: Leg 2 = 4.1v-3.1v
Vref LPG = 4.21
VCC=8.36
5v=5v
LPG_Control @ IC3 pin5=2.13-2.24 pin12=1.67-1.78
Both ends of R29=0.98v

Thanks for your time guys. I'm sure you can tell from the values I've shared how much I understand this stuff. If anybody needs any more information I will be happy to oblige. Thanks for the education, oh great thinktank in the sky!

P.S. Don't judge the power jack, I use big dumb ones, and didn't realized it wouldn't fit where advertised with those

Here is the Low Tide Schematic

View attachment 20943View attachment 20942

 

[StratsRNeat]

turns out I'm just bit a obsessive and anxious, if I don't miss my guess its working now. I guess I was thrown off by the fact that I had to nearly crank my Gate trim to get it working right. It sounds like all the demo's I've seen now. The LFO just determines whether or not the base notes are affected by the 'chorus' right?

 

[bowanderror]

You're not alone in finding the Slew control a bit hard to grasp, it took me a bit of reading to get a good idea of what exactly was going on in the circuit:

The Slew knob acts like a "glide" control, smoothing out the abrupt transitions between LFO steps:

On a random LFO, it looks something like this:


Your Slew setting plays a big role in whether or not the random LFO is "noticeable":

1. With Slew all the way down, you'll hear abrupt pitch shift, almost like a sample & hold.
2. As Slew is turned up, those "steps" are turned into a smooth line (as shown above).
3. If you turn Slew up even more (especially at higher Rate settings), the transitions between random LFO steps happen so slowly that it can kinda average out to a flat line, meaning you won't hear much modulation. This is particularly noticeable if, like me, you used a B1M dual-gang pot in place of the hard-to-find A1M dual-gang pot. With a B1M pot, most of the control range will be bunched up down at the bottom of the pot range, so I usually use it between 0% and 30% of it's travel.

In general, as you turn the Slew control up, you'll need to increase the Depth control in tandem to continue to hear the same amount of modulation as you were getting at low Slew settings.

 

[Zip Durango]

You're not alone in finding the Slew control a bit hard to grasp, it took me a bit of reading to get a good idea of what exactly was going on in the circuit:

The Slew knob acts like a "glide" control, smoothing out the abrupt transitions between LFO steps:
View attachment 21090
On a random LFO, it looks something like this:
View attachment 21091

Your Slew setting plays a big role in whether or not the random LFO is "noticeable":

1. With Slew all the way down, you'll hear abrupt pitch shift, almost like a sample & hold.
2. As Slew is turned up, those "steps" are turned into a smooth line (as shown above).
3. If you turn Slew up even more (especially at higher Rate settings), the transitions between random LFO steps happen so slowly that it can kinda average out to a flat line, meaning you won't hear much modulation. This is particularly noticeable if, like me, you used a B1M dual-gang pot in place of the hard-to-find A1M dual-gang pot. With a B1M pot, most of the control range will be bunched up down at the bottom of the pot range, so I usually use it between 0% and 30% of it's travel.

In general, as you turn the Slew control up, you'll need to increase the Depth control in tandem to continue to hear the same amount of modulation as you were getting at low Slew settings.

Thank you so much, this is a huge help in understanding, I really appreciate your time and effort in explaining