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[brach]

I forgot to address the solder shorting out your power jack issue…
Are you sure that the pins of the power jack are shorted together by the solder? This would be very unlikely…the solder would solidify as soon as it hit the board, which would keep it from flowing under anything. I don’t know which pins you found connected, but 2 of the pin are supposed to be connected on the jack when nothing is plugged into it. Try plugging a power cable into the jack (DO NOT plug the other end into the wall yet…we don’t want power in the circuit yet) and then re-test continuity between all the pins on the power jack. Hopefully they are not connected anymore.
You should be able to peel off the solder drop that fell on the board without much problem. If not, send me some detailed, in-focus photos.
-Brach

[brach]

Craig,
I’m sorry to hear about your jumper trouble. First of all, do not use a conductive pen to try to fix this. You need to just bypass the jumper pads with a jumper wire. It appears that you have your iron set to a much lower temperature than you should…i keep my Hakko FX-600 set to 575 F, which is around 300 degrees C. With the temperature set this much higher you’ll probably need to adjust your soldering technique. It should only take you about 1 second or less to thoroughly solder most of the joints on this board (the components with more thermal mass, may take a bit longer…like around 1.5 seconds). I wasn’t able to see your picture that you posted (sorry for the forum limitations) but you may want to re-flow the joints on your board with a bit of added flux (preferably the “no-clean” type).
To bypass JP3, solder a wire from pin 1 on U2 to TP3. Use the thinnest wire you can find. I use “wire-wrap” wire for these types of jumpers…which is either 28 or 30AWG. You can use the wire found in a cat 5 network cable or wire from an old VGA monitor cable…that stuff is usually thin enough, from my experience. You’ll need to tin the ends of the wire first; and also tin pin 1 of U2 (solder the wire to the pin right as it exits the body of the IC). Try to fit the other end of the wire inside the TP3 hole and then solder it. If you can’t fit in in the hole then just lay it across the top of the hole and solder it down…in which case you may want to use a tiny drop of super glue to hold the wire in place on the surface of the board, but make sure you don’t get glue on the solder joint.
If you have other jumper pads that are bad, just fix them the same way. You can find out where the jumpers wires are supposed to go by looking at the schematic in the back of the manual.
Good luck!
-Brach

[brach]

Yes, the “hold button” function could operate as a “mode change” switch. Simplified…good thinking!
I totally understand trying to get done with one project in order to move on to the next…I have such limited desk space! But the USB interface will make it really easy to make changes in the future.
-Brach

[brach]

The Micro seems to be a great choice.
That’s an even smaller enclosure than i was suggesting…that’s great!
One option for making it a little bit more universally usable is to add a dip switch to choose the number of program changes. A 4-pin dip switch could give you the option of selecting up to 16 program changes. I’m sure you’d have enough pins available with the micro. This feature would be nice if you wanted to only use 2 or 3 different presets so you wouldn’t have to scroll through all of them again to get back to the one you wanted.
Another thing you could do…you could add a different mode that toggles between 2 different selected presets when you press the foot switch, instead of scrolling through all the presets. You’d probably need to have a “mode select” toggle switch or something accessible from the outside of the enclosure. One position would be “scroll mode”, the other position would be “toggle mode”. The 2 chosen presets in “toggle mode” could be programmed by long pressing the foot switch (holding the foot switch for more than 2 seconds) when the desired PC number is selected in “scroll mode”…the number would blink a few times to show you that it was captured in memory.
I’m just throwing out ideas. I’m sure the project will turn out really cool. I am very excited to see it when it’s done.
Thanks again for sharing and keep up the amazing work!
-Brach

[brach]

Fantastic! Great work! Yes, that is a really good improvement.
What’s most intriguing to me is that it could even work on other pedals that use PC commands to switch presets, like the source audio pedal you mentioned.
I’m sure your code isn’t too big to fit onto a really small microcontroller, like one of the 8 pin ATTiny ICs…That way it could probably fit into an even smaller enclosure like a 1590A…to save pedal board real estate.
I’m very impressed.
I think you may be our most adventurous customer yet!
Good job! Keep us posted on how the rest of the development goes.
-Brach

[brach]

Yes, physical pins and Arduino pins are different…the pins in the code are the Arduino pin assignments.
Enjoy tinkering!
-Brach

[brach]

Anytime…i’m glad to help.

[brach]

Clive,
We don’t currently have a distributor there, but we do ship to the UK. I don’t know anything about your import duty taxes, but we have sent a bunch of stuff to customers in the UK over the years.
-Brach

[brach]

Yes, they should work for you just as well as our “roll-your-own” variety. The Quaverato circuit is actually pretty forgiving with what optocouplers you use, unlike the VPM-1 (which is our mod for the Ernie Ball VP Jr.).
We originally didn’t use Vactrols in production because they are hard to source these days. We ended up developing a procedure for testing LDRs that gives us good results and now i prefer our selection process over the ready-made optos.
-Brach

[brach]

Ok, thanks for the clarification….and welcome to the forum.
Something is amiss because you need to measure TP1/TP2 and TP3/TP4 while the pedal is powered on. The pedal needs to be off to measure the resistance across TP5/TP6. So if your pedal is not powering on then your reading on TP1/TP2 is not correct.
I suggest following the troubleshooting guide to try to resolve the power issue. It explains everything better and faster than i could type here.
Let me know if you need help on those steps.
Good luck.
-Brach

[brach]

Corry,
That noise is still a misery to me. It is very interesting that it just started happening after you re-soldered the microcontroller pins. This gives me an idea…I know in other high frequency circuits that i’ve worked with this type of issue has been caused by flux (from the solder) on the board. At high frequencies flux can actually be inductive. So i’m wondering if something like that is happening here. The Quaverato is only operating a 16MHz, so that’s not too fast but it may be fast enough for whatever flux you are using to be inductive. Clean off all the flux on your PCB around the microcontroller and the crystal (and associated components). I make my own flux cleaner by mixing equal parts acetone (you can use fingernail polish remover) and rubbing alcohol. I use a q-tip to clean it off.
This flux idea just came to me, so i have no idea if it’s related to the issue, but i hope so. The other times i’ve seen this issue, for some reason using linear power supplies has helped. Using a battery to test if the issue is power supply related is also helpful.
I’m sorry for the trouble. Let me know if you have any luck after removing the flux.
-Brach

[brach]

Brentv,
What do you mean by “I have and overloaded signal for my LPF in the test sockets”? What test sockets are you referring to? And what you do you mean by “overloaded”?
I’m confused.
Did you download the correct assembly manual for the serial number range you have? Did you notice the Note on page 13?
Have you worked through the troubleshooting guide located under the documentation tab on the Quaverato page of our website?
Help me to understand so i can help you better.
-Brach

[brach]

Clive,
You could use a regular pair of Vactrols with the Quaverato…it won’t hurt anything. Just make sure they get up to around at least 1M ohm when dark and at least under 10k when light. I can’t remember the VTL5x part number associated with these values, but the datasheet should tell you.
-Brach

[brach]

Daniel,
I hope other people chime in too, but i feel the same way about the feel of the EB VP Jr. The axle is in the perfect position to get good accuracy in sweeping through the taper…unlike those volume pedals build on a wah pedal chassis.
In designing this mod, i tried to make the sweep feel as natural as possible…and that’s why we gave it 5 different tapers, so people could choose the one that feels the best for them. I’ve also noticed that a big part of the feel (at least to me) has to do with where in the sweep the action happens…meaning where most of the volume change occurs. Through the calibration process you can decide where the 0 volume point is and where the max volume point is, so that, in conjunction with the different tapers gives a lot of options for setting it up in a way that feels right for your foot.
Anyway, i hope others pitch in with their opinions too.
-Brach

[brach]

Check out the troubleshooting guide under the documentation tab of the Quaverato product page. It gives the steps you should take to diagnose the problem.
Good luck.
-Brach

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