Promethium Volume

[georgefrankly]

Just finished building a Promethium Distortion. It sounds right, but there is a significant volume cut when engaged, even with the proper setting (all knobs cranked of course) the chainsaw sound is there, but the volume is still much lower than the clean signal. I thought these were supposed to be super loud?

 

[twebb6778]

Can you post some photos of the board, component side and solder side?

Could be a short, incorrect component, faulty part, incorrect wiring etc. There's a lot of options, let's try to narrow it down.

 

[georgefrankly]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Here are the pics of the PCB out of the box.

There's also a quick video to demonstrate the sound: https://streamable.com/8ve43o

Like I said it seems like it sounds right, but even with the pots maxed it cuts volume compared to bypass. At first I thought maybe I had the volume and gain pots switched but that doesn't seem right.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Barry]

There's a few solder joints that look cold

 

[twebb6778]

Orientation and wiring looks good. Where did you get your 2n5457 from? These are discontinued so you may have a fake.

As Barry mentioned, you've got a few cold joints. Go ahead and reflow any solder that looks dull and gray, or where they don't seem to be 'sticking' to the leads. Your solder should be nice and shiny. Just touch the iron to them for a few seconds, some flux will help too if you have it.

Some of your component leads still look a bit long and could be shorting. Trim them down and clean the board with isopropyl alcohol.

If you're still having issues, you'll have to go through and verify all your resistors and capacitors are the correct values.

If that doesn't do it, time to get out the audio probe and track down the issue!