Seabed Delay

JonahWR12

New member
I seem to be having some issues with the Seabed Delay that I just built. This is only the second pedal that I've attempted building, with the first being a BYOC kit, so I am very new and inexperienced with pretty much everything. The pedal only works bypassed, and has no signal through it when turned on. By playing around with the pots I can get some sort of oscillating delay, but nothing with the actual guitar signal. The LED also only worked for a few seconds before burning out, so I might have done something wrong with that as well. All of the components are the correct parts, with the exception of a 15nF capacitor that I used a 10nF in replacement. Being new to this, I really have no idea how to troubleshoot, or what I should even be googling to try and figure this out myself. I also have the components to build a few more pedals, so I'd like to try and avoid repeating any mistakes that I made with this one. Any tips are much appreciated, and thank you in advance! PCB Front PCB Back
 
I would check the values of all your capacitors (and stock up on film box types, those ceramic disk types are known to short out as they aren’t very stable). The codes can be confusing at first.

Secondly you will want to make sure no loose or bare pieces of wire are touching anything anywhere. If your LED bezel is metal the problem may be that it is grounding out on the bare legs, grab some heat shrink tubing!

Some of your soldering looks like there could be cold joints for sure. Anything that isn’t a nice volcano shaped, shiny and smooth joint will need to be gone over again. Some of your in/out wires look like they are barely hanging on.

Definitely give Jovi’s assembly thread a thorough read over, he did a really good job there.


I would order a few simple overdrives if I were in your shoes.Theres quite a range of low parts count, great sounding fuzz/OD pedals on the site that will hopefully get up and running smoother and really give you the itch! Haha.
 
Definitely need to reflow some of those solder joints on the back. Looks like a few are definitely cold joints. I recommend socketing your ICs especially being new at soldering. Do you have a DMM so you can measure the voltages on the PT2399, TL072, and voltage regulator?
 
I don't at the moment, but I am going to be picking one up in the near future for sure. Do you usually desolder the incorrect joints, or is it alright to simply touch it up?
 
I don't at the moment, but I am going to be picking one up in the near future for sure. Do you usually desolder the incorrect joints, or is it alright to simply touch it up?

You make sure your iron tip is clean and touch it to the joint in question. The solder.should flow and look kind of like a Hershey's kiss and have a shiny look.
 
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