Aquaboy problem

[bangerang101]

 Yeah, I know what you mean....

I did reflow solder throughout the entire board, but still nothing... maybe I'll just have to accept it's broken... just sucks because all the parts on this board seem fine, but will be wasted and $ for the chips and everything. Well, thanks for your help anyway... I'll probably experiment some more w/ it later.

[gtr2]

You'll get it.  Patience and persistence are your friends.  Just work on it in moderation. Sometimes the answer will come a day or even month's later.  It's not wasted money because we'll get it    Maybe someone else has something better to try as well.

Josh

[bangerang101]

 K, thanks man... appreciate all your help today! 

[bangerang101]

 I ordered all new chips, and I'm gonna desolder the old ones, socket the new ones (v3205, v3102), and see if that fixes my problem... if not, I'm probably just going to re-build a new one. Personally, I think it's the clock IC thats bad, and I'm pretty sure that this should fix my problem.

[gtr2]

Since your going this route.  I'll offer a suggestion for removing the clock IC.  You'll most likely finish off the clock desoldering whether it was working or not.  The best way to remove it is to just cut each pin on the IC where it meets the black plastic.  I use flush cutters, I don't know if this is the proper name for them.  Then you can desolder each pin individually without heating the board up to much.  Also, if you had access to an oscilloscope you could see if the clock was sending out the proper signal.

Josh

[bangerang101]

K... just changed the clock IC, I ended up desoldering each leg individually (I did it before seeing your post about clipping the legs, I don't think I heated it too much, though)... So, it still isn't working w/ the new clock ic socketed and inserted in the socket... same thing, just reverb sound... I guess I'll take it back out and socket the rest of the chips, then try it out... don't really know what else to try! I was wondering though, if the delay pot was broken, would this cause it not to adjust delay time, resulting in just that reverb sound no matter where the pots turned? I think this might be another option because the delay pot isn't changing the sound of the delay, except for at the very begginning of the pot rotation, it makes a little warble sound. Also, I was thinking, is it likely at all for a trimpot to go bad from turning it too much or something?  IDK, just trying to rule some things out.

[gtr2]

It could be a intermittent (now bad) solder joint on the pot or board.  I've had this happen on a pcb mounted pot before.  Took me a little while to find that because visibly it looked good.  Component failure is rare for things like pots, resistors, caps.  I've had a pot with a bad taper in my carbon copy delay but this was a widespread problem.  The wearing out of the trim pot is unlikely as well.  If you wanted to check the delay time pot you could always just pull one of the leads off and check it.

Josh

[bangerang101]

what should the resistance be? and By "pull one of the leads" you mean desolder one leg of it and probe it w/ the multimeter and the other side to one of the other legs? How would I know if it's bad or not?... Sorry, I'm not terribly educated w/ pots and testing them for stuff... a little explanation would do me good, thanks

[gtr2]

You can remove the wire from lug 1 or 2 of the pot.  It just needs to be taken out of the circuit to get an accurate reading.  Put you dmm in the ohms setting and place one lead on lug 1 and 1 lead on lug 2. (color of lead does not matter)

With the pot turned fully counterclockwise it should read 0, at fully clockwise you should be around 1MB.  The tolerance on most potentiometers is 20% so take that into consideration that it could be as much as 200kB difference and still be within spec.  Although it is usually much closer than that.

Josh

[bangerang101]

 Hey, thanks... finally figured out what it was after all this time, and I would have never guessed it... the delay pot was bad!!... either, it was defective, or somehow I messed it up from heating it up too much or something. This is definitely a first for me!

Anyway, thank you so much Josh (Gtr2), for helping me through all this, and I really appreciate it... let me know if you ever need help/advice on anything and I'll be glad to return the favor... God bless!

[gtr2]

Awesome!!!  Glad you got it working. 

Josh