Lowrider aka. how everything went wrong

[m-Kresol]

Ok, this is going to be part build report, but mostly a rant. Not ranting about the circuit in any way! Brian did a great job, but I didn't. This is the story of a build going seriously wrong...

It started with me and my mum misdrilling. Since I didn't intend to use PCB mounted pots, it didn't matter too much, but it bugged me. Then I used some transparent adhesive foil for the labelling, which didn't turn out as I wanted it to and also, because of prior misdrilling, it didn't align too well.

Populating the PCB went pretty well. It didn't fire up right away, because I accidentally switched two wires at a pot despite my colour coding. I wasn't content with the sound of the upper octave, or it wasn't as I expected - despite watching the demo. So i modded it with Brian's help and trial and error and found a configuration which I thought was ok.

During boxing, I realized that my ground and power wire where too short, so I replaced them and I also ripped the ground connection to one of the jacks. After replacing them and boxing, I didn't get any signal. I traced the problem to the power supply and somehow had a brain fart thinking (and measuring) that I fried the DC jack itself. So, I waited for my next projects and orders to arrive with a new DC jack. That took about 2.5 month. Nevertheless, when I started looking at the thing again last week, I at least managed to find a single teeny tiny wire braid shorting at the PCB power input and found the DC jack working fine of course. After fixing it, I already had destroyed about 5 pads on one side of the PCB by often soldering and desoldering parts during modding and fixing ripped wires. I improvised with some really bad solder joints and pieces of resistor legs to achieve a working pedal.

So I boxed it again. Did it work afterwards? Of course it didn't! I only realized the next day, because it was 2am already and I did neither have the nerve to endure another failure, nor could I torment my neighbour at that hour. Today, I took the whole thing apart and found that because I used short wires between the 3PDT and PCB I ripped out the input and ground from the PCB while boxing. After deciding not to harvest ICs and pots and throw the rest out of my window, I struggled to put new wires in.

Of course, it didn't work. Again! So, I reflowed the joints I just made and the power and ground pins and looked for errors with a magnifying glas. I didn't find anything, but I somehow solved the problem after another half hour of doing random things. It works fine now, but I still don't really like the sound of it. I guess, I just expected too much from the analog circuit.

I guess, it clearly showed me, what a rookie I still am and how much can go wrong in a build. But on the bright side, I learned a lot and I like the knobs
Enough ranting, here's some pics from my phone - the pedal didn't deserve better quality

[alanp]

You got there in the end!

[m-Kresol]

Hey Alan, what's the time in NZ at the moment? Like seven in the morning? On a saturday? And you're already up and checking the forum? That's what I call commitment!

[alanp]

At the time of typing, it's 1:19pm saturday

I tend to get up early anyway, it's a habit you pick up when you get up during the week at 5am for work (I go in at 6am for setup.)

[billstein]

Way to hang in until it worked. I'm a baby when it comes to trouble shooting. I need more of your tenacity.

[jimilee]

It's kind of like an accident scene really, you can't stop looking. I tend to keep after my builds till i fix them or destroy them, good on you for making it work.  It looks great fwiw.

[lincolnic]

The fastest way I learn is by making mistakes. Now you've got all this new knowledge you can take to your next build!

I agree with Jimi, it still looks good.