What are some weird issues that you've had stop builds in their tracks?
I'll kick off. I took everything out of my Boosted Moon Lander to replace the Dymo labelling with engraved artwork (it's loud, noisy, hurts my hand, and is fun.) Once done, aluminium dust gone, grooves filled with Indian Ink, biff the guts back in. Huh, maybe I should test it.
Bugger. Doesn't even light up.
Long story short, after testing every single thing, I found that the 9V wire going to the Boost had caught itself under a pot, the insulation had split under the pressure, and the 9V rail was shorting to the grounded case. (Luckily, it didn't take anything down with it.) Undo the Boost pot, move the bloody wire five millimeters, bolt it back down, all of a sudden it bursts back into life when I test it again.
The only reason I found out, too, was because I suddenly wondered why I couldn't move the red wire out of the way when I wanted to check something ELSE.
So, what's a weird little problem you've had that you'd never have imagined?
It's not really a weird issue, but it certainly made me feel stupid.... I once spent the better part of an hour wondering where that solder bridge from PCB input to ground was, and only then realised that it was already wired to the 3PDT, which, according to MB's Standard Wiring Diagram, switches the input to ground on Bypass...... Man, did I feel stupid!! Turned out that the pedal didn't work because I switched the signal and ground wires on the output jack, which made me feel even more stupid! Not a good day to build pedals..... ;)
Paul
When i built the echo base the modulation didn't work at all, i almost ripped the pcb apart before i realized that my generic 9v dc power supply was putting out 15V dc! dam...
Not sure this counts: I built an Engineer's Thumb, and tried to use NE5532s for the op amps. Didn't work even remotely properly, like it wasn't getting any power. I went nuts for hours, built a second that had the same problem, and it was probably a full 24h of troubleshooting before I "figured out" that it was biased for TL072s in a way that other chips simply *would not* work. It was a pretty bad experience all around: I had soldered the op amps in, so there was that bit of fun getting them out and replacing them. Come to think of it, those builds are why I started socketting all chips again.
I got the great idea of grabbing a power supply and keeping it hooked up to my work bench, so I could test LEDs, bias transistors, give a freshly boxed pedal a quick check before, etc, etc. Managed to grab the only one in the birds nest of spare power supplies I've got in the closet which was positive ground, and never bothered to check. Drove me nuts as to why I wasn't able to get proper readings on transistors, debugging the biasing rig, etc, etc, etc. Felt pretty stupid after that one.
Following the madbean true bypass 3pdt wiring....
I wired everything up, no sound. Huh. Started a tech help thread and everything. No dice. Switched out transistors, reflowed solder joints, etc..
I had wired everything on the damn 3pdt while it was rotated 90 degrees. .
Stupid stupid stupid.:P
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
I was troubleshooting a set of EMG active pickups one day and needed to eliminate the battery as a problem. I don't have another battery and never thought to use a multimeter.
So, I decided to plug my One Spot into the pickups and test. Great! Except I grabbed the wrong cable and fed the pickups 12V AC. :D
Ive done plenty of cock ups and continue to do so. Im nearly at the 2 yr stage of building.
1 empty ic sockets
2 wondering why the pedal is not getting any signal, spent over an hr double checking all the components and flipping the trannies only to find the cable was plugged into the guitar at one end and not into the test rig at the other
3 somehow managed to kill a tubescreamer by feeding it center pin positive dc while reverse wiring the power and ground the opposite way round to the power jack - it was an attempt to get one of those metal dc plugs to work, the ones that grounds the 9v to the enclosure
4 effects loop left unconnected
Man I do not want to know the numbers of how many times I forget to pop in ICs or trannies after building to test. I always feel dumb. That and also sometimes mixing up the pins on pots when doing PCB mounted pots.. I get mixed up with orientation.
Quote from: ch1naski on May 17, 2013, 03:34:10 PM
I had wired everything on the damn 3pdt while it was rotated 90 degrees. .
Oh yeah, I'd never do anything THAT stupid... ;D
When I built my first Hotcake, I spent a very frustrated hour trying to figure out why it wasn't getting signal. All my solder joints were good, no bridges, all parts accounted for...turns out, if you solder your 9V wire to the wrong terminal on your DC jack, it won't work.
I promised myself that I wouldn't make that mistake again.
I did it again on my very next build.
Testing a build today, the only thing the amp was putting out was hum.
Luckily, before I went nuts, I spotted that the guitar was not plugged in ;D
Quote from: alanp on May 18, 2013, 06:02:32 AM
Testing a build today, the only thing the amp was putting out was hum.
Luckily, before I went nuts, I spotted that the guitar was not plugged in ;D
I've done that one multiple times in one day.
A while back I went to drill the hole for my DC jack at the too side if an enclosure (after drilling holes for knobs/switches) and realized that I drilled a hole on the bottom side! I did it again a few weeks later! ;D. Luckily the second time i did it i noticed after drilling my pilot hole (i use a dremel to make a pilot hole rather than a center punch). i ended up adding a second LED to cover up the mistake!
Quote from: gordo on May 18, 2013, 02:37:08 AM
Quote from: ch1naski on May 17, 2013, 03:34:10 PM
I had wired everything on the damn 3pdt while it was rotated 90 degrees. .
Oh yeah, I'd never do anything THAT stupid... ;D
I did. on my first three builds.
This is officially my favorite thread.
Like a support group for dimwits. ;)
HEY, I resemble that remark!
Guys, I have a confession to make.
For those of you who've been around here long enough, you may have noticed that in Brian's build docs, a couple of years ago a disclaimer appeared on some of the drill templates - "This template is approximate. Be sure to measure carefully before committing to drill."
I think I'm the reason that disclaimer is there.
Let me explain. Three years ago, when Madbean Pedals was just a mailing list Brian would send out on a monthly basis, I ordered a pair of Zombiis (and a Sabertooth). One of the Zombiis was for me, the other two pedals were going to be a wedding present to two musician friends of mine who were getting married. At this point, the only thing I'd built was a BYOC Mouse (which fired up on the first try, and still works). I took my time with the builds, and everything went smoothly. I drilled out a couple of 1590Bs for the Zombiis according to the template in the build doc, and did a test fit of all my pots and hardware, and went to see where the battery would fit...
Well, there wasn't anywhere for the battery. I wanted to give my friends the option to use a battery, as they'd be playing out with the pedals, but I didn't notice that there wasn't room for one on the drill template. In my ignorance, I hadn't considered that people would build pedals without battery clips, and so the thought didn't occur to me that the template wouldn't include space for it.
Feeling a bit stressed, I emailed Brian, asking where I was supposed to put the battery. After all, the original pedal could fit a battery, so why wouldn't my clone? Brian was extremely, extremely gracious in explaining to me that he just hadn't considered that someone might not notice there wasn't a battery in the template, but still expect to put one in somewhere. After having it explained to me, I felt pretty dumb about not seeing what was (in hindsight) very obvious, and life went on. I ordered bigger enclosures for the Zombiis.
A week or two later, there was a new email from Brian, with some new projects. On their drill templates, for the first time, was a disclaimer. I believe the next time the Zombii was updated, it also gained a disclaimer.
I don't know for sure that this incident is what caused Brian to start putting the disclaimers on the templates, but the timing always seemed too close to be a coincidence.
If nothing else, I learned to always pay attention to what's actually pictured in the templates. After getting a few more builds under my belt, I decided I wasn't ever going to use batteries in my personal builds, so I stopped caring about whether there was room for one. Eventually, I recycled one of the failed Zombii enclosures into my testing rig.
The other one is still at the bottom of a drawer, serving as a constant reminder not to overlook the obvious.
Lincolnic, I did the same thing with my LaVache... except that I did that layout myself and only had myself to blame. (It had other issues too, like LED bezels going through the jacks.)
I turned mine into my testing rig as well :)
Solder bridge between lugs under 3PDT wiring board. Took me a while to find that one.
This could be a long list for me...
Most recent: dropping my iron square across my leg (ok, wearing jeans) but then catching it before it fell to the floor. And not by the handle.
Drilling six pot holes without realizing it when I only needed four. It's just so easy with fresh bits and a drill press... Spdt anyone?
Having access to a laser engraver but not making sure the person before didn't reset the zero before marking my box. I do this a lot actually. Can't imagine what the other guy is thinking. ;D
Soldering a 3pdt into a pcb, but 90 deg off.
I was using a pre-painted blem enclosure for my MusicPCB tap-tempo tremolo. I drilled the top for 6 knobs & 2 LEDs & 2 stomp switches. My first mistake happened when I went to drill the first LED hole – I realized that I marked my template wrong. So on the fly I recovered and moved the hole, only to realize that my template was actually correct and I drilled the hole in the wrong place. I stopped and spent some time figuring out how to lay out the internals to make do with the new LED placement.
My decal design used lines radiating out from the center of the knobs. After the decal and clear coat were on I decided that one of the holes was just slightly off center, so I figured it would be easy to widen the hole – the washer and knob would disguise the oval shape. To protect the finish, I put down some masking tape near the hole, which lifted the clear coat and about 25% of the decal when I removed it.
I sanded to bare metal and re-finished it from scratch (actually less than scratch, since I had started with a pre-painted enclosure). Several weeks later I finally boxed it. The end result is great, but I had a miserable time getting there.
Quote from: bcalla on May 19, 2013, 03:59:36 PM
I was using a pre-painted blem enclosure for my MusicPCB tap-tempo tremolo. I drilled the top for 6 knobs & 2 LEDs & 2 stomp switches. My first mistake happened when I went to drill the first LED hole – I realized that I marked my template wrong. So on the fly I recovered and moved the hole, only to realize that my template was actually correct and I drilled the hole in the wrong place. I stopped and spent some time figuring out how to lay out the internals to make do with the new LED placement.
My decal design used lines radiating out from the center of the knobs. After the decal and clear coat were on I decided that one of the holes was just slightly off center, so I figured it would be easy to widen the hole – the washer and knob would disguise the oval shape. To protect the finish, I put down some masking tape near the hole, which lifted the clear coat and about 25% of the decal when I removed it.
I sanded to bare metal and re-finished it from scratch (actually less than scratch, since I had started with a pre-painted enclosure). Several weeks later I finally boxed it. The end result is great, but I had a miserable time getting there.
Haha! ;D I can't count how many decals I've peeled up with tape or by taking pedals apart to mess around with them. I refuse to use waterslide anymore!!!
Yeah, I now won't even try to box a pedal until at least 24 hours after the 3rd coat of clear has been applied.
Clear nailpolish seems to be working for me so far :)
Quote from: alanp on May 19, 2013, 04:30:54 AM
Lincolnic, I did the same thing with my LaVache... except that I did that layout myself and only had myself to blame. (It had other issues too, like LED bezels going through the jacks.)
I turned mine into my testing rig as well :)
Cheers!
Be careful tightening nuts on DPDT switches.
I just had one fly apart on me. And I wasn't giving it the business, either. Grrrr.
On a related note... anyone in NZ got a DPDT switch going spare?
Quote from: alanp on May 23, 2013, 08:44:25 AM
Be careful tightening nuts on DPDT switches.
I just had one fly apart on me. And I wasn't giving it the business, either. Grrrr.
On a related note... anyone in NZ got a DPDT switch going spare?
I'd like to bring you one, just so I can see New Zealand.
:P
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
Here's another dum-dum mistake.
So, when I hit the stomp, I get half a second of sound, and the power fades away. I loosen the pots, check no wires are caught underneath, check for bridges, curse a bit, try it again... wander off. Maybe the gremlins will get bored and go away, or I'll think of the solution.
Yeah right.
So I've got the back off, and my thumb hits the switch by mistake. this turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as the indicator LED goes into Christmas mode. I try sticking my thumb in again, and realise why. My skin is providing ground to the circuit -- my thumb is touching the ground wire to the board and LED, and my hand is touching the metal body of the pedal.
Logically, then, this means a missing ground. I trace the grounding, and find I forgot to solder the bloody power connector and 1/4" jack ground to the 3PDT switch, it was just sitting loose in the lug. Now she goes like stink (with gobs and gobs of sustain and gain.)
From this week: Built a compressor, the effect worked but the bypass didn't... Easy fix right? I realized that I had wired both the input and output sides backwards. So I flip them around. The effect worked but the bypass didn't. I fixed one side, but had wired the otherside backwards again.
Probably the worst mistake I ever made: Noticed my solder tip seemed loose. Proceeded to start soldering anyways. The hot tip fell out and started melting my work bench why I quickly searched for pliers to pick it up with.
I built a Dr. Boogie, turn it on, LED works, but no sound, bypass works as well. I try to troubleshoot for a week, quit, and left for 8 months to university. I come home for the summer, look at the pedal again, and realize I labeled the input and output jacks opposite of each other. Switched the cables, the pedals worked fine. I took some time off of building pedals after that.
I was sick of recharging this old failing 9v battery all the time so i bought a new / expensive rechargable Energiser.
Was testing a freshly built rebote. No sound etc etc. I got called away for about 15 mins. Came back. Whats that smell? Hah, seems i found the problem. + and - on the battery must have been shorted because it was HOT and was no longer a rectangular shape. I didnt know you could actually DO that. One of the many things we learn along the path :)
Paul
A long time back with a build in a 1590B I noticed the LED would always be dimly on even with nothing plugged in to the input jack, checked all my wiring and it was all fine but noticed it stopped happening without the lid screwed on, turns out the lid was squeezing the battery snap end and shorting it together. Always used T-Style after that.