News:

Forum may be experiencing issues.

Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - taeagan

#1
Cool, I'll give it a shot!  Thanks so much!
#2
I don't want to stink at it, but I do.  I just tried another round of enclosure etching and my failure seems to be in the transfer of the image to the enclosure.  I sanded the tops of the boxes to 600 grit and cleaned them good with naptha and denatured alcohol.  I put the toner transfer paper on the top of the enclosure and ran the clothes iron over them on the highest setting for 5 minutes.  After letting cool for a bit and running under cool water, I peel back the paper and I only get about 50% adhesion. 

Anybody who's any good at this have any advice or suggestions?  I think that there are two potential areas where I'm failing:

1) Maybe I'm not getting good contact or heat transfer from the iron, through the paper, to the top of the enclosure?  I let it sit for a minute and then I start slowly pressing the iron around in small circles and short motions.  Is there another method of heat transfer that's better than the clothes iron? 
2) Maybe the toner has transferred OK but I'm just peeling it all off when I pull the paper back?  It feels to me like it's soaked through pretty well, but what do I know? 

Appreciate any thoughts or advice.  Thanks!
#3
So I made some progress. I swapped out the transistors with a different pair and it's more stable. I can play through it with the guitar volume at 10 and there's no squeal. I was able to put in a 220pF pulldown cap - 100pF or 47pF and I get noise when not playing.

However, it's still very glitchy - gated and staticky.  Is this what it's supposed to be?

Same result with battery or power supply, with test rig or wired up in the enclosure.
#4
Swapped the 47pF out for a 560pF.... Same. Grrrrr
#5
I hooked up the test rig and poked around. There's a high pitch squeal that seems to be present right at the input and is then getting amplified throughout the circuit.

To be clear - I have the input and output wires on the board connected to nothing. I have power going to the board. When I touch the probe from the test rig to the output from the board or the volume pot I can hear the noise really loud. It gets progressively quieter as I trace back through the circuit to Q2 and Q1. But, I can still hear it even when I'm touching the probe to the IN pad on the board.

Weird. Is one of the Caps or components in this circuit there to filter out gross frequencies like this? Like the 47pF? Any ideas where to look or what to try next?
#6
I wired it up as per the drawing in the document and there was no sound in bypass. I re wired the switch like this and it works. Thought I'd pass it along.

https://images.app.goo.gl/NVohNE3kdDDEeEHY7
#7
So this wasn't the source of the noise. I socketed R5 and dropped a 2.4k resistor in there. Got the voltage on Q2 down to just under 1V. There's still a really awful noise coming out of the circuit.

I have triple checked for solder bridges, loose wires, component values and orientation, etc... Could Q2 be bad? Not sure what else to look for at this point.

My Harbinger 2 build came together easier than this!
#8
Red wire is running to the A sized 3PDT #2 board.

So I think I'm seeing the problem. Q1 voltages are C=6V, B=0.65V, E=0. Q2 voltages are C=3V, B=0.53V, E=0. When I adjust the trimmer the collector voltage on Q2 goes between 7V and 3V. Can't drop it lower than 3 and the document is recommending to run it under 1V.

Voltage drop across R5 is from 8.3 to 7.6. Do I need to increase the size of R5?
#9
Had to use a couple of 1/2W resistors but there's enough room for them. Sockets for the transistors and clipping diodes. Thanks for your reply!
#10
Tech Help - Projects Page / El Troubleshooting El Guapo
February 15, 2020, 02:56:30 AM
I did an El Guapo build and it has a pretty nasty squeal when the circuit is engaged. It becomes less severe and more like a normal fuzz when I back the guitar volume WAY off but still not quite. I triple checked component values, polarity, solder bridges, etc... Any ideas?

When  I search the formm on "guapo" nothing comes up. Is this a new board? Anybody else built it with success?

Thanks!!!!!
#11
How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / Re: 1590A anxiety
December 27, 2019, 03:28:32 AM
Thanks for the reply. How do you mount the board to the jacks?
#12
How Do I? Beginner's Paradise. / 1590A anxiety
December 27, 2019, 12:38:17 AM
So I tried a few 1590A builds a while back and they didn't go so well. I had to do all kinds of baloney to get everything to fit and they still give me trouble. Eventually I'll need to make new enclosures.  Anywho...

I'm going to give it another shot with some 1590A builds and I'm looking over the build guide. I'm unclear about a couple of things... 

1) the boards are not actually mounted, correct? They're just sandwiched between the jacks and the bottom/lid of the enclosure?

2) is the goal to get the jacks as close to the top/face of the enclosure as possible to allow maximum room for the board (again, between the jacks and the lid)?
#13
The pedal gremlins got me.  I checked voltages and wasn't getting any negative out of the LT1054.  I re-melted all of the solder joints to the chip as well as to the diodes, jumper, and caps around it.  I've got a Naughty Fish again. 
#14
So I built a Naughty Fish a couple of months ago.  I had trouble with the Smallbear Maxon optocouplers and wound up getting the Xvive units which did the trick (there was a thread about this).  The pedal worked fine for a while with the exception of some abnormalities occasionally when I would flip the BP/HP/LP switch.  Every once in a while I would flip that switch into one of the positions and get no sound.  Then I would change it again and back and get sound again.  Just an odd quirk with the switch that I figured I could live with.

Now it doesn't work at all.  I get no sound out of the pedal at all with the switch in the BP or LP positions.  In the middle position (HP) I get the guitar signal out but with no auto-wah effect.  Just the guitar signal.  The gain and volume controls work, none of the other controls impact the sound. 

I tested the contacts on the switch with it still soldered into the board and it seems to be making contact everywhere.  Everything that is supposed to be making contact in each of the three positions is.  I tested continuity between the switch contacts and the next components in the board and everything seems to be making contact where it should.  I also swapped out the two Xvive units with two new ones and got no result, so those don't seem to be the culprits.

Can anyone think of a logical reason, looking at the circuit, why I would only get unfiltered signal from the HP position and no signal at all from the LP and BP positions?  I don't want to go through the hassle of un-soldering that switch from the board if it's not the problem.  Thanks in advance to anyone who replies. 
#15
Is the polarity of the tantalum cap reversed in the spec in the slurpee doc? That seemed to get me a somewhat functional auto wah. Still doesn't blow me away or sound like some of the bassballs clips I hear online.