Mooer E-Lady - Troubleshooting

J

Joben Magooch

Well-known member
Hi all,

Apologies if this is out of place but I thought there would likely be some folks here who could get me pointed in the right direction....Feel free to remove if needed.

Anyways...I am having an issue with a Mooer E-Lady flanger I bought recently.
It passes signal just fine - both bypassed or activated - but there's just no effect. When "on" it dulls the highs a bit, but other than that, nothing - no flanging, and none of the controls have any effect.

So, I ordered it from a Chinese Mooer distributor, only was around $40 USD new. But it wasn't really feasible to send it back to them in China for repair, so they just gave me a refund. I would really like to be able to get it repaired though, rather than just toss it or whatever - but there's no shops in my area that really do that sort of repair, so I'm figuring I've got nothing to lose and could take a crack at it myself.

Just need a bit of direction. I'm a fairly competent solderer (I guess that's a word) but my knowledge of circuit design is quite rudimentary. It's my understanding that the E-Lady uses BBD chip(s?) and I believe they're MN3207, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Like I said - don't know much about the design - but my first guess would be that the BBD(s) are bad and/or improperly calibrated/biased. I did test around with the internal trimpots a bit (assuming they were indeed for biasing the chip) but got no change at any setting there, either.

So, I don't know, maybe it's a lost cause. Don't really wanna pay anyone to repair it (I figure there's probably not anyone who could fix it cheaper than $40, so it'd just make sense to buy a new one) but not really sure where to start with it myself. So if anyone has any direction or ideas for where to start, feel free to send them my way. I can always get some gut shot photos too if that would help (FWIW, to my eye at least there wasn't anything noticeably wrong - bad joints or jumped traces or whatever, but who knows). And again - if out of place, feel free to remove. Thanks all!
 
If you are not already into electronic DIY, trying to fix a relatively inexpensive defective pedal would probably be a bad way to start, as opposed to building some new simple projects from scratch. It you are dealing with a new pedal that has surface mounted components it becomes even less likely that you can diagnose an issue, identify a defective part, obtain a replacement economically (including shipping), and then repair it yourself.

I suspect you are right that paying anyone else to try to fix this would exceed the cost of the pedal. Even if you were into DIY, the best use for your pedal might be to scavenge it for parts you could use in other proejcts (like the enclosure and the in and out jacks).

Having said that, though, you can see if you get any interest from folks that might contribute some guesses about the problem with the pedal if you want to post detailed images of the circuit board and parts.
 
There are plenty of other Chinese flanger pedals for that price or less. I'd try rolling the dice again. I managed to snag a Monoprice Mini-Flanger when they were available and it works great. I believe it is similar, if not identical, to most of the Chinese mini-flangers.

Have you performed an up-close visual inspection? I can tell you with some certainty that the manufacturer didn't. The problem could be as simple as a bad solder joint. Unless you have the skill, tools and desire to troubleshoot and repair SMT boards, I'd follow zgrav's advice.
 
So, for me it is more or less a question of knowing the right direction rather than ability, if that makes sense...I certainly won't call myself an expert, but I've built dozens of pedals and just as many pedal and/or amp mods, with limited experience in repair. Again, far from an expert, but I have done some very layman-level SMT work - so I guess what I'm getting at is that i'm not so much worried about being unable to repair it (or at least attempt to) but rather that I'm just not terribly sure where to start or what I should be looking at. Like, if someone were to say "You need to measure this part and if doesn't measure X then replace it" - I'm comfortable with that. I just don't know much at all in regards to how the circuit's built to be able to know where to start, ya know!

Anyways, I took a few shots of the guts over lunch. As you can see, it does have a stacked PCB, which I haven't bothered to take apart yet, so I suppose it's entirely possible there's some issue underneath the top board, but I didn't wanna pull it apart unless necessary, so... I gave it a brief once-over and there was nothing glaring to my eye, but perhaps I'll get lucky and someone will be able to point out a bad joint or something.

Here are some photos (link).
 
Looks very similar to the innards of my Monoprice. I don't have a schematic. If you are up to tracing the schematic from the boards, then I'll help you troubleshoot. The MN3207 is a 1024-stage BBD. There are flanger schematics on the 'net that use that device, so you could use those as a guide when you trace the circuit of your unit. You will have to separate the boards and make continuity measurements to follow all of the traces. Some of the solder joints on the MN3207 look sketchy.
 
Actually I just looked at your pictures, and I see something pretty simple: you have two trimpots in there, and it looks like when the pedal was assembled they marked the calibration spots with a sharpie. It looks like they were messed with and are no longer where they should be. One is most likely MN3207 bias, I believe the other is for the clock. Try turning them back to where the sharpie marks are and see if that helps.
 
Chuck D. Bones said:
I found this in about 20 sec. See if the part numbers and resistor values match up with your board.

View attachment 2218
Click to expand...
Hi Chuck, and others: please be aware this schematic is outdated. See the date 2.6.2011! All PCBs shown in the forum are V2.0 ++. The main circuit is similar, but the component identifiers are different. RT2 does not exist anymore (innecessary and substituted by a resistor divider) and some component values are changed also. Unfortunately there seems no newer schematic to be published .... I should do some reverse engineering + update, once I am bored ;-)
@Joben: Any success?

Regards
Michael
 
There's should be 6 IC's all together, my view would be that before you start doing anything to the circuit you should use your meter to check it's set up correctly as vigilante398 intimated, there are a lot of instructions out there that tell you how to use the trimmers to set it all up or you could email Mooer and ask which trimmer is which or use Chucks schematic and check the trimmer values and continuity check them to suss which is which

Looking at your pics I'd guess that the one nearest the CD4013 is the clock trimmer which you could confirm using your meter continuity check

I used these instructions for my build obviously trimmer names are specific to my build and trimmer values may be different

Calibrating the Flanger

First of all start with VREF_B trimmer you need to adjust it until you have half of the power supply
to output pin 14 of the LM324.

You should now have some sound coming from the circuit

Now place all potentiometers to their middle position and the switch to down position

Move to the BIAS trimmer when you start adjusting it you should hear some flanging
achieve the best sounding range with the minimum distortion

With the RATE potentiometer at minimum position, RANGE and COLOR at maximum
adjust the CLOCK trimmer until you have 45 hertz at pin 1 or 5 of the CD4013

If you cant measure hertz then adjust the CLOCK trimmer until you have a good sweep
if the flanger starts to whine or chirp at the extremes of the the sweep then adjust the CLOCK trimmer until it goes away

On my build the trimmer values were:

BIAS 100K
CLOCK 20K
FEED_SET 10K
VREF_B 50K
 
seems like the original poster has been silent on these posts since last November. perhaps he can report if he solved the problem or is still trying to fix the pedal.
 
zgrav said:
seems like the original poster has been silent on these posts since last November. perhaps he can report if he solved the problem or is still trying to fix the pedal.
Click to expand...
I never even noticed the date haha just seen it popping up in 'new posts' thought I'm bored let's have a look .............not checking dates......guilty!
 
Last edited:
It was a very useful suggestion. I only realized how old the thread was when I saw my earlier comment. Just not sure if the original poster is still looking for a solution.
 
Yes, I realize this is a 1-year-old-thread... but let's go...

I had the same thing occuring to two BBD pedals I have; The Mooer Ana Echo and a Madbean Pork Barrel (CE-2 Clone). In both cases the BBD was blown. I'm not sure how easy it will be for you to replace/work on the E-Lady board... I can tell you it was a PITA on the Ana Echo. Fortunately, the BBD and clock are not SMD in these.

BTW, both pedals worked for some time, until they simply would only allow the clean signal through. I'm still not sure what caused it - maybe crappy electricity at the apartment I was living at? I was using a 1-Spot only in those times. It's not clear to me if at first you flanger worked OK or not, but in case it did and then it just stopped flanging... blown BBD.
 
Hi,
very old topic but also...
I'm just wonder if somone is able to tell me how to add some nice (i think) change to e-lady LFO. Something like "width" pot. to change character of the "flanging" sound. Anyone could help me how to do that to this pedal?
 
meloman said:
Hi,
very old topic but also...
I'm just wonder if somone is able to tell me how to add some nice (i think) change to e-lady LFO. Something like "width" pot. to change character of the "flanging" sound. Anyone could help me how to do that to this pedal?
Click to expand...
60v4fe.jpg
 
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