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Pastyface LED stays on, even when switched off

Started by frankie5fingers, October 26, 2016, 05:55:58 PM

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frankie5fingers

Hello all. Been a while since I built/played so I'm afraid I've forgotten some things that used to seem so obvious.  Apologies if this is one of them.  I built a Pastyface a while back. It didn't sound right with my rig at the time so I stored it for a couple of years. I just got a different setup so I broke it out to see if it'd be better for what I want now and it definitely is.  It sounds great and works just as it should.  I use a pos ground cable (red) with a Carl Martin (Cioks) power supply.  The pedal works and sounds as it should, all controls function properly.  The LED however doesn't go off whether it's switched on or off.  When I built the pedal and used it before storage, the LED worked as it should.  What am I missing?
Thanks in advance

darrenw6000

The led will be touching ground continuously . Your switch 3pdt is meant to connect the led to ground when the effect is on. Hope this makes sense

frankie5fingers

#2
It does.  That's what I've been looking for; somewhere that the LED itself or the wire that connects it to the PS jack or board is touching something else.  Since it worked before, and for a while too, I eliminated a wiring mistake as a cause, unless of course, it was wired so as to be grounding against something else.
I assumed a bad joint would be intermittent, a bad LED wouldn't light at all, etc.  I'd hoped that a bad switch would manifest in other ways but all the connections are solid, all the potential spots for grounding are covered in plastic - nothing exposed or touching.  I can only guess that the 3PDT switches we buy today aren't old time Carling quality and that somehow, although not being used, moving it around or maybe a loosened pole during soldering worked itself into a failure.  I dunno.  Like I said, the pedal works and sounds glorious.  Maybe I should not worry about, it's not like I can't tell when the fuzz is on .  It's that damn anal retentive side that makes me want to spend $6 on a new switch and $8 to ship it.
I was hoping that it's (only) a grounding issue, not some other weird possibility.  Oh well.
Thanks Darren, much appreciated.

m-Kresol

you could desolder the wire from the 3pdt and see if the LED stays lit. If not, the grounding issue was with the switch. If it stays on, your grounding issue is somewhere else.
I build pedals to hide my lousy playing.

My projects are labeled Quantum Effects. My shared OSH park projects: https://oshpark.com/profiles/m-Kresol
My build docs and tutorials

frankie5fingers

THX much.  It's the switch.
Appreciate the reply.