Hello:
I’ve been using the pedal with no issues for a year now (after learning that sockets don’t work in this pedal. 🙂
I recently engaged pedal. I had no tremelo effect, just straight bypass signal. Tried turning off and on several times. No changes.
When the pedal is engaged, none of the pots change the signal.
Any suggestions? I do not see any solder bridges. Not sure why this would happen.
Hi Brach,
I did all the troubleshoot steps in step 5.
I am not getting continuity to R1 and from Vol.2 to output.
I am also not hearing the “click” like I used to hear.
Hi Brach,
I did all the troubleshoot steps in step 5.
I am not getting continuity to R1 and from Vol.2 to output.
I am also not hearing the “click” like I used to hear.
I agree that the problem is in the relay circuitry. The fact that you aren’t hearing a click means the relay either isn’t getting a control voltage to cause it to switch or it just isn’t responding when it does receive the control voltage.
Seeing that it used to work and now it stopped working, the problem is most likely a cold solder joint (I’m about 80% sure that this is the problem based on my experience helping people with this same type of issue). It’s very rare for relays to break and seeing that the other features of the microcontroller are working, that’s probably not the problem. It could be the transistors, but that would be much less likely than a solder joint going cold over time.
That’s all I can say for now.
Good luck!
-Brach
IF THAT DOESN’T WORK, you can test to see if the relay is working by very quickly connecting the round pad of one of the diodes (D2 or D3) to ground. This has to be done when the pedal in powered on. You can temporarily solder a wire to one of the ground points on the pedal and use the other end of the wire to quickly touch the round pad of D2 or D3. One diode pin flips the relay one direction, and the other diode pin flips it in the other direction. You should hear the relay clicking.
You can also check to see if there is continuity between all the components that are supposed to be connected (you might even want to do this before testing the relay)…As shown in the schematic:
Check to see that pins 13 and 14 of the microcontroller are connected to R32 and R31, respectively.
Check to see that the other pins of R32 and R31 are connected to the center pins of Q5 and Q4 respectively.
Check to see that the pins closest to the relay of Q5 and Q4 are connected to the round pads of D3 and D2 respectively.
When you check the continuity of these pins, put your meter probes on the pins AS CLOSE TO THE COMPONENT BODY AS POSSIBLE. Do not probe/test the pins at their solder joints. This is very important to ensure you are testing to see if the components are actually connected, not just the traces on the board that the solder joints are soldered to. This also makes it easier because you can do all these tests from the component side of the board.
Good luck.
-Brach