How best to test for no signal?

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  • #14362 Reply
    Dan
    Participant

    Hello,
    Just finished the kit, and it went very well other than I’m not getting sound. The green LED pulses and otherwise behaves as it should with all the knobs and tap button, but when I switch the bypass there’s silence. I believe I’ve jumped the pads properly, and I’ve checked the components to make sure everything’s in its proper location on the board. I’m pretty new to pedal building, so it’s highly probable I have a bad join somewhere in there, but any hints on how to tell where things are going sour via multimeter or otherwise? Here’s some pics; the shrink tubing for the bottom optocoupler broke on one side when squeezing it, so I mummified it in electrical tape to be safe. Thinking that’s a red herring since the pulsing seems to be okay, but any advice greatly appreciated.

    bottom

    top

    Thanks, Dan

    #14393 Reply
    brach
    Moderator

    Dan,
    Thanks for the pictures. A lot of your leads seem really long, you may want to clip them shorter so they have less chance of shorting together. Make sure the the back of the pots aren’t shorting any leads on the board.
    Are you able to hear any LFO sound when the pedal is engaged and you turn up your amp loud? If so, is the rate and volume of the LFO adjustable with the controls?
    Are those little pieces of solder on the top of the board near R33? If so, clean those up (and any others around the board). Also, resolder R29 and push it closer to the board. If any of the components around that area of the board are touching or shorted out against anything then the muting circuit may be malfunctioning. So check all the solder joints on the components around R29 to make sure nothing is shorted.
    Let me know what you find.
    -Brach

    #14411 Reply
    Dan
    Participant

    Excellent — thanks for the hints! There is no sound at all that I noticed earlier. Shall give the problem areas you pointed out the ol’ college try tonight and report back…

    #14415 Reply
    Dan
    Participant

    Hello again,

    Not sure exactly what specifically fixed it, but something fixed it! I tidied up the couple of messy area and had a couple of near death experiences with resistor leads that I was expecting to break off when resoldering, but somehow didn’t. Thanks for the guidance!

    Follow up question: since I did the tweaks to the board after I’d already jumped the pads, do I need to go back and recalibrate the trim pots… or is it good to go as-is?

    #14430 Reply
    brach
    Moderator

    Dan,
    I’m glad it’s working now. Good job!
    You don’t need to re-calibrate the trim pots with a meter now…if the tone needs adjustment, just use your ears and make the adjustments that way. The calibrations process with the meter is just supposed to get things in the same ball park, after that you need to use your ears to tweak the tone the way you like.
    -Brach

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