I’m building my second and third pedals now, having successfully completed a the “Death Cap” Doom Bloom clone, and I’m having trouble with not getting signal through either board. I’ve had a lot of problems with 3PDT wiring and for the sake of troubleshooting am running straight to the board and out on both of these, and am connecting the ground pad to the SW pad.
I’m new at this and perhaps should have tried some verroboard builds first, or perhaps something simpler. I’ve soldered switches onto mechanical keyboards before, but nothing this involved. And I tend to learn best by biting off way more than I can really deal with and then powering through it. I’ve done continuity checking on both of these boards and signal flows as it should, and haven’t found any ground shorts. I need to clean the board a bit with some isopropyl alcohol, but the soldering looks like it should be fine. I’ve heard about “cold solder” joints and am not sure how to recognize or test for these. I got a DMM for doing these projects and am still learning how to use it, I’ve figured out how to test continuity and voltage, but not how to test resistors. I’ve double-checked that I’ve got the ins and outs going to the right jacks, and have been using alligator clips to connect the wires to the jacks. Both boards will bypass if I connect the in/out pads. I recognize that since I didn’t socket the ICs that I may have overheated them, but don’t know how to test that.
The first is a Calamity Fuzz, which I started before I realized the pots/switches should go on the back of the board:
The pad for the in jack burnt off, so I connected the wire directly to R1, which the schematic shows is junctioned with C1. There’s continuity from the end of the wire to C1. I recognize that with the pots on the wrong side of the board, full volume will be at anti-clockwise, and have been testing with the pot about halfway.
The second board is a Chalumeau and I soldered the pots on already because I couldn’t get them to sit in there and connect properly:
I’ve tried a couple of different LEDs for the vactrol but only a green one will light up showing it’s receiving signal. The wire for the SW pad had just snapped off but the “On” LED will light if I connect SW and Ground. I had a harder time testing continuity on this one because the PCB I received has a different layout than what’s shown in the build documentation.
I’m not really sure how to troubleshoot next, I was thinking of following the audio signal through each circuit and seeing what happens if I connect any particular point to “Out” to see where things might stop working, but would love some more seasoned advice.
I’m new at this and perhaps should have tried some verroboard builds first, or perhaps something simpler. I’ve soldered switches onto mechanical keyboards before, but nothing this involved. And I tend to learn best by biting off way more than I can really deal with and then powering through it. I’ve done continuity checking on both of these boards and signal flows as it should, and haven’t found any ground shorts. I need to clean the board a bit with some isopropyl alcohol, but the soldering looks like it should be fine. I’ve heard about “cold solder” joints and am not sure how to recognize or test for these. I got a DMM for doing these projects and am still learning how to use it, I’ve figured out how to test continuity and voltage, but not how to test resistors. I’ve double-checked that I’ve got the ins and outs going to the right jacks, and have been using alligator clips to connect the wires to the jacks. Both boards will bypass if I connect the in/out pads. I recognize that since I didn’t socket the ICs that I may have overheated them, but don’t know how to test that.
The first is a Calamity Fuzz, which I started before I realized the pots/switches should go on the back of the board:
The pad for the in jack burnt off, so I connected the wire directly to R1, which the schematic shows is junctioned with C1. There’s continuity from the end of the wire to C1. I recognize that with the pots on the wrong side of the board, full volume will be at anti-clockwise, and have been testing with the pot about halfway.
The second board is a Chalumeau and I soldered the pots on already because I couldn’t get them to sit in there and connect properly:
I’ve tried a couple of different LEDs for the vactrol but only a green one will light up showing it’s receiving signal. The wire for the SW pad had just snapped off but the “On” LED will light if I connect SW and Ground. I had a harder time testing continuity on this one because the PCB I received has a different layout than what’s shown in the build documentation.
I’m not really sure how to troubleshoot next, I was thinking of following the audio signal through each circuit and seeing what happens if I connect any particular point to “Out” to see where things might stop working, but would love some more seasoned advice.
