Road Rage Board with a Perf Build

[bamadan5]

Howdy guys,

Well, i'm praying I didn't F up my lovely Tonebender. I have a Tonebender MKII on perf, and bought a Road Rage board to try and run it off the power supply instead of battery. Well, now it doesn't work. I've attached some pics, so hopefully someone will see what I did wrong and can help.
I have another PNP Fuzz that I'm going to do this to as well, so I need to learn what went wrong.

Thanks!

[jkokura]

You need to add C4. You may need to add more than that, but at least c4 is needed. Use your DMM and measure what your voltage is coming off the Charge Pump. If you're not getting -9V, then your obviously not going to have a working pedal.

Jacob

[stecykmi]

Ya, I think C4 is key. I would disconnect from the TB board and test for -9v before you switch it back on again. Germ trannies aren't cheap or easy to get so no sense in wrecking them over silly mistakes we all can make.

[bamadan5]

Well, I may be in the market for new trannies. I installed C4 and still nothing.
So, noob question, and I feel like an idiot for asking.. How do I check the voltage? Do I need to have the power supply plugged in to the pedal? I have a good DMM but only know how to check resistance and such.

Also, how do I know which components to install on the Road Rage, and in what order?

Sorry, I'm new to all of this and feel like I might have bit off more than I can chew.

[jkokura]

Well, add in the rest of the caps and diodes if you have the parts. I should really look into which parts are needed to do this, but adding all of them won't create a problem

As for your DMM, you need to set it to measure DC voltage. Attach the black lead to ground, and the red lead to where you want to measure the voltage. Some DMM's need to have their range set, but mines an auto ranging DMM.

Jacob

[bamadan5]

I was going strictly off the build plans of the Zygote which only show C3 and C5 being used.

Also, do I have to have the power supply hooked up, pedal turned on to measure the voltage? Sorry, just don't want to do something stupid and power confuses me.

Thanks for the help so far!

[jkokura]

Yes you need the power plugged in. Whether the pedal is on or not doesn't matter.

Glad to help!

Jacob

[madbean]

Disconnect the -9v wire to the Tonebender board. Add C4 to the Road Rage. Then use a DMM to verify you are getting -9v from the Road Rage. Then reconnect the -9v wire from the Road Rage to the Tonebender. If it isn't working and you have a polarity protection diode on the TB, try replacing it. I don't think you killed your transistors.

I've updated the Zygote docs to reflect the need for C4. I'm sorry about the confusion: I should have done that several days ago!

[bamadan5]

Thanks guys. I'll give this a shot again tonight after work.
I honestly can't believe that I just decided to hook everything up and test if it worked by turning on the pedal. I now know to make sure that I'm getting the correct voltage before hooking up the board. That and maybe pull out the trannies and make sure the pedal fires up....

I don't believe the circuit has a polarity protection diode. The TB doesn't have diode on it  (unless I'm missing something?)

Also, after I had installed C4, I gave a quick check with my DMM by touching red probe to the 9v wire where it connects to the board and black to ground. When I did this, the LED came on for about 1 second and then slowly faded off. Did I just fry the LED and/or circuit?

Ok, so I'm guessing that I should touch the red probe of my DMM to the -9V hole of RR board, and then black probe to... ground? But would ground be the sleeve of the input jack, center lug of the 3PDT, other lug of the 9v Jack? Sorry, like I said, very new to this.. as in, just started sourcing parts for PCBs and stopped building kits a month ago.

Again, thanks a ton for the help. Whether I screwed up the entire circuit or not, at least I'm learning something.

[bamadan5]

Well, I'm about the most excited guy on the planet right now! Did a good bit of reading at work today (sorry boss) on using my DMM to test my transistors (none of which went bad), how to use the Diode test function on the DMM (which is what "ignited" my LED, which is also ok!), and how to actually measure voltage.

It turns out that either my wiring on the DC Jack was wrong, or I had a faulty DC Jack. It measured only 1v. I swapped it out, soldered the two wires back to the new one, and voila! 9.1v (hmm?) came up on the DMM. I soldered the 9v wire back to the board, and it fired right up. Re-installed my OC44s and BAM, in your face ToneBender action.

Anyway, sorry for the long winded post but I'm amazed right now. Thanks for the help guys! 
Now....if I can just get my Trotsky Drive's Gain pot to work.......