Quasar Sound Issue

[jkedzuch]

I built the Quasar pedal and am having some sort of short somewhere. The sound will work and then will become faint or disappear when the PCB board moves. I've checked the connections and all appear to be fine. Please help!

[stecykmi]

it's almost certainly a loose connection, you can try wiggling the components around while playing to see what makes it cut out. failing that, you can re-flow the solder on all the connections.

it could also be the board shorting to ground somewhere, so make sure that the board is isolated from the enclosure (i often stick a piece of light cardboard behind the PCB if i'm floating them).

[hammerheadmusicman]

A tip from many troubleshooting days, Before I got a bit better at the soldering biz is this..


Use a signal generator, or if you don't have one an iPod or something, plugged in to the input so noise comes through.

Hold the board In one hand, and get some kind of pokey stick in your free hand (I have a set of cheapo dentist pokey things which are just the job!).

So, keeping the board very still go through and give all the individual components a bit of a poke and prod, then have a little tug (gently!) at all the wires to the board, try and make sure you're not pulling several things at once though, and when the sound crackles or goes of or does anything hinky, you Should have hopefully found your problem.

Hope this helped a little, Good Luck!

George

[jimilee]

Does bypass work all the time,regardless of motion? Check the input on the foot switch,and reflow it.

[jkedzuch]

Thanks for the advice everyone. There were a couple issues, but the volume pot was grounding out against the side of the enclosure. Got it working now!

[jkedzuch]

Anyone know how to get more overall volume? Is it as simple as changing a resistor value or pot?