Mangler Trouble Shooting Help

[AllenM]

I have a Mangler board on my bench that I was rehousing for a buddy. When I went to test the board after removing it from the old enclosure I only got a "clean" tone thru the effect and the volume and fuzz had no real effect. I noticed that it even passed audio with the battery disconnected. I tested my BYOC fuzz face and without a battery no sound as I would expect. I removed the trannys and still had audio battery powered and unpowered... tried it on my other fuzz face and no output. Checked the board for a solder bridge and everything looks clean. Wondering if any of the other parts could fail and cause this issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

AllenM

[jimilee]

Is the stomp connected? If it is, it will pass audio with no battery in bypass mode. Did it work ok before you removed it?

[AllenM]

Yeah worked before... running it thru my test box so it is wired without a bypass straight in > fx > out > amp.. was not expecting it to pass a signal without a battery. Wondering what part could fail and allow it to pass signal.. and with the battery the volume and fuzz pots have no affect.. even removed the transistors and it still passed signal. I did remove the original pots and install new ones but other than that its original.

AllenM

[jimilee]

Isn't that effect a +9 instead of -9 polarity? I imagine on the test bench thats gonna matter. But it is odd that it passes signal even with no trannies. That can't be right. I'm no expert, but I think without trannies it shouldn't pass anything. have you read through the silly mistakes thread? :-D

[AllenM]

Here are some pics... he did a pretty decent job.. other having the pots originally solder backwards. I DYI me some PCB mountable pots

[Bret608]

Hey man,

I had a similar experience trying to test a PNP tonebender on my test rig with a battery. Somehow it was just allowing the input to connect directly to the output, and yes, it did work without a battery or trannies. Just use your test rig's wall wart power if it has it, and reverse the positive and negative leads if it's a PNP circuit (which this looks to be). I'll bet that's it. A battery doesn't work right on these test boxes (although it might if you had a ring/sleeve/tip jack on the input).