Most infuriating testing moment?

Z

Zissou

New member
Just spent a good half hour trying to diagnose what was going on with my pedal checking, double checking, triple checking... nothing, not a peep. Trying different combinations of alligator clips, cables and anything else I could think of. Even the led had stopped working and I'd tested that already on the board and it had been working fine. Looking over at the power strip it began to dawn on me the switch next to the wall wart that should have been powering my new pedal wasn't switched on... Everything had been absolutely fine just my own fault for trying to power it with a turned off power supply.


What's the best/worst moment you've had where an incredibly simple omission almost sent you up the walls?
 
Here's an embarrassing one.

I built a reverb pedal, tested it through my amp, and to my amazement it worked on the first try. I switched it off, the LED went off as it should, but I was still getting a reverb signal. I panicked for a few seconds, only to realize I had the built in reverb on my amp maxed the whole time. 🙃
 
Well, let me just say, don't keep a lot of 1/4" cords laying around, you just may plug the wring one in. I have done all of these things, and so many more. You have to actually insert the ICs and transistors, they don't work laying on the desk.Note to self, don't solder the LED in backwards, solders the LED in backwards. Shit, everything is plugged in and turned on, power supply, amp, guitar.....test rig, uhhh no.
 
My very first build didn't work at all when I finished it. No bypass signal, no sound when engaged, nothing. I spent WEEKS looking up all the possible problems I could think of on the internet. Bought an audio probe, reflowed some potentially suspect solder joints, busted out the DMM and went through each individual component checking for some kind of reading, etc etc. Finally I got the bright idea of actually asking the internet for help and posted a picture of it. Right away someone noticed that I had wired my tip and sleeve backward on the input jack...

As frustrating as it was I learned so much from that whole process, and all of my subsequent builds have been pretty smooth sailing for the most part. Although the other day I finished one up and nothing happened when I engaged the pedal. Started going through that whole process all over again only to realize that I had forgotten to plug one of the transistors into its socket.
 
I'm sure I've mentioned this before but

Back in the day when I first started audio probing I built a probe from an old guitar cable

Anyway started probing a circuit probed it for 3 days wondering why I was getting nada

Eventually I probed the input pad not a sausage

At this point my brain switched on tried probing the 3PDT in bypass bugger all

My newbish brain thought this ain't right captain

So I stripped my test box no fault found

Then noticed there was some opposition to the jack going into my amp input so what does mastermind do? Thinks the jacks duff and

Correct! start taking my fender deluxe 90 apart got the amp in bits eventually only to discover board mounted jacks so thought nah I'll knacker it with my light fingered approach

Long story short after about 3 weeks headscratching and kicking shit I decided to use the amps other input still the sound of silence

Eventually for some reason I looked at the probe jack end and the damn tip had broken off into the amps input

So I slapped myself very roughly

I'd more or less took everything apart only to find its not a good idea to buy cables made in Uttar Pradesh
 
My first troubleshooting thread here was for my Abyss build that worked, but I was getting a ton of distortion. After much poking and probing and checking and swearing that I had checked every component value and solder joint at least 3 times, I discovered that I had 4.7k resistors mixed in with my 47k. Doh!
 
Zissou said:
Just spent a good half hour trying to diagnose what was going on with my pedal checking, double checking, triple checking... nothing, not a peep. Trying different combinations of alligator clips, cables and anything else I could think of. Even the led had stopped working and I'd tested that already on the board and it had been working fine. Looking over at the power strip it began to dawn on me the switch next to the wall wart that should have been powering my new pedal wasn't switched on... Everything had been absolutely fine just my own fault for trying to power it with a turned off power supply.


What's the best/worst moment you've had where an incredibly simple omission almost sent you up the walls?
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A broken RCA cable in a Princeton reverb build about broke me because I trusted that new cables wouldn't be the problem. Now I verify what I can during the build process and on the offhand chance it comes to troubleshooting, I adopt a zero trust approach.
 
Harry Klippton said:
Tip and sleeve connections on both jacks wired backwards. The effect worked but sounded awful. I looked over the board itself so many times before checking the jack wiring
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BuddytheReow said:
I spent probably a solid half hour troubleshooting why I got no output only to realize my volume pot was turned all the way down!!!
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JamieJ said:
The one I do a lot is test without fitting op amps in sockets. Also getting plugging the cables in the wrong way and struggling because it works in bypass 🤣
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These are the most usual ones, that I do almost every builds. Once, I even started a thread on diystompboxes because I left the volume pot turned off. I had to face the other members and tell the painfull truth... I'd say these omissions are coming from our enthousiasm, rushing things to complete and enjoy some new effect.
Coda said:
I hate it when you spend all day working on a pedal...testing components, selecting transistors, drilling the enclosure, adding artwork, soldering, wire up, etc...only to plug it in and nothing...because its actually a sandwich.
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This one I would be proud to experience it, that would mean that i finally accessed a whole new level.

My last build is a Moosapotamus classic 360 bass fuzz on perfboard, squeezed in a little box type B.
First try, some things worked, I didn't know exactly what to expect from the circuit because I had to make some questionable substitions on 2 transistors, demo on youtube gave me a general idea, that's all.
2 controls weren't working so I knew something was wrong. I spent 4 or 5 hours checking my soldering, isolating pots, hunting for shorts. I tried many transistors, tried the famous desperate magic trick (touching the soldering side with fingers), took some voltage readings and finally realized the circuit layout wasn't complete on my board.
I had a moment of self-questioning : "When will this end ? do i give up, even after all this ?". The layout was simple enough but I doubted that I would be able to find the missing connections on my board, which was already a dense jungle of links. I didn't even know how much was missing...
I managed to go to bed and find the links quickly the next day. My meter told me a transistor wasn't getting any current, that's how I found it.

It still didn't work properly though, because of a single little thread from a wire, that didn't go through the hole, and was shorting with a component close to it...took me only another 10-15 minutes to spot it. Pure luck obviously.

You can have a look on the build, reply #29636 :

Pictures! - Page 1482

Pictures! - Page 1482
www.diystompboxes.com
 
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My first Troubleshooting post here: I made a Son of Ben and followed the steps to set the bias, and it sounded terrible. Really starved like it just wasn't getting enough voltage to work more than slightly. Eventually I went to bed and came back to it the next day, at which point I realised that I had biased the transistors to .45 volts instead of 4.5 volts.

Decimal points matter, folks.
 
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I don't think I've ever made a mistake in building a pedal. Pretty sure that every single pedal I've made has worked perfectly first go. Hell, once I bought all the parts to a pedal, didn't even bother soldering anything - chucked them into an enclosure and what do you know? It worked first time.

It all comes down to what your expectations are.
 
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

Another decimal decimation of sorts, mmm kay?

I copied out a portion of a schematic to make it part of my own hybrid schematic, but I copied a resistor down as 390k when it should've been 390r.

I checked the build against my schematic, everything was correct. After wracking my brains about it overnight, I contacted my friend/mentor who spotted my mistake right away.
 
Feral Feline said:
I checked the build against my schematic, everything was correct. After wracking my brains about it overnight, I contacted my friend/mentor who spotted my mistake right away.
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The feeling of absolute certainty being demolished in that split second as the realisation washes over you of what you had looked at perhaps several hundred times but never seen once. The internal groan singed with the relief that it's something simple.
 
I can't remember which pedal it was, but these guys totally flummoxed me. I could not get a signal but everything checked out continuity wise, voltage wise. It just should have worked but it didn't. Then I realized that I had soldered the wires to the side where the blade lifts and breaks contact when you plug a jack into it.

stereo switched jack.jpg

I can't think of a single pedal that I've built that I haven't made a mistake on, but this is just next-level stupid here.
 
Mike52 said:
I can't remember which pedal it was, but these guys totally flummoxed me. I could not get a signal but everything checked out continuity wise, voltage wise. It just should have worked but it didn't. Then I realized that I had soldered the wires to the side where the blade lifts and breaks contact when you plug a jack into it.

View attachment 27718

I can't think of a single pedal that I've built that I haven't made a mistake on, but this is just next-level stupid here.
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Finished a junction box a while back and this exact same thing happened. I just assumed that it didn't matter which side was used tip to tip sleeve to sleeve everything should work right? Nope and like you couldn't figure it out.
 
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