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Need some help with a Noisy Cricket (no sound/anything)

Started by jcsul, November 12, 2014, 03:34:20 AM

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jcsul

Sorry if this is the wrong area to post this, but after looking around this seemed the best place to post on the forum.

So like the title says, I put together a noisy cricket based off the radioshack generic PCB build over at Beavis Audio (link at the bottom) and upon completion it worked initially. It was getting intermittent sound, but what was coming out intermittently sounded correct. I hadn't trimmed any component legs at that point, and figured I either had a bad solder joint or component legs were shorting against one another.

So I took it back to the bench, mended any suspect looking solder joints and trimmed my component legs. Went to plug it back in, and got nothing. I get a little pop whenever I cut it on, but no sound. Not even him when all the pots are fully cranked, and noise at all when I adjust any of the pots. So I triple checked my solder work and nothing seems to be amiss there. So I pulled out the old DMM and began the "shotgun" approach. Sadly, my understanding of electronics isn't quite refined enough for me to figure out the issue just based on voltage readings.

Here's what I know so far: I'm definitely getting voltages that seem correct on all the pins of the IC (lm386) and pins that are grounded seen to be grounding just fine, except pin 2. I'm reading +.007 VDC on pin 2. Not sure if this is correct or not. Also, I subbed a 2n5457 for the recommended MPF102. Could this cause a large enough issue to cause the circuit to fail? The biggest issue right now is that I'm not sure what voltages I should be reading on the IC or the FET. Pin 2 of the IC is the only leg that's getting basically no voltage though. I should mention I did add some solder to the IC socket with the IC still in. They don't like heat so I could have fried it even though I only hit it for a few seconds with the soldering iron. I plan on trying a new one tomorrow. Any suggestions would be awesome though.

TL;DR: noisy cricket isn't noisy. Not sure what voltages I should see on IC and FET.

Here's the project link:  http://www.beavisaudio.com/projects/NoisyCricket/MarkII/NoisyCricketMarkII_RadioShack_Rev2.pdf

Also, sorry for being so long winded.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯