Rat build worked perfectly and now it doesn't.

[turkeypills]

Hello collective.

I recently completed an Aion Electronics Helios board with a JMK panner as a clean blend. It was my first multi PCB build and it turned out really great.  For about 3 weeks it was 100% operational and was quickly becoming my favorite pedal. In the last week it died.  At first I was getting a weak splatty signal with intermittent functionality.  Shortly after that, it got worse and is producing nothing at all really.  My first thought was to manipulate the clean knob to try and isolate the problem board.  Full dry yields no signal at all.  Full wet yields a very quiet distortion that is only audible with the volume dimed. Even at that, the distortion tone is very weak sounding.  I feel like it could be the panner, but the blend function works smoothly and I am not sure how to explain it.  My second thought was that one or both of the ICs are bad.  I'll be swapping them out to see if that fixes the issue.  My expectation is that it will fix the issue temporarily but then die again. 

I do not own an audio probe and I don't really know how to properly troubleshoot this issue.  It seems like there isn't a whole lot of thorough or concise information out there on exactly how to go about tracing the signal path and what points are most key to test.  More than likely this boils down to a bad component but I'd like to figure out how to isolate that.  I triple checked for solder bridges or areas where there could be a short, and everything is clean and clear.  I can post more detailed photos to support this but I am trying to figure this out without completely disassembling the pedal. 

Any helpful advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

[thesmokingman]

the most obvious answer would be to remove the blend circuit completely and cut your troubleshooting in half immediately.

[rmfroyd]

Are your jacks tight?

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[Timko]

This happened to me on my Bloodstone last month.  I took the whole thing out of the box, and it worked fine.  My guess was something was grounding out.  So in it went, and it's back on the board!

As suggested, remove the panner and verify that the Rat is indeed the problem.  Remove it from the enclosure, and remove the footswitches/jacks/power and make sure that isn't the problem next. 

[jtaormina]

This happened to me on my Bloodstone last month.  I took the whole thing out of the box, and it worked fine.  My guess was something was grounding out.  So in it went, and it's back on the board!

As suggested, remove the panner and verify that the Rat is indeed the problem.  Remove it from the enclosure, and remove the footswitches/jacks/power and make sure that isn't the problem next.

+1 on grounding out. That's what I think you are describing as well. Anytime audio is faint like that on my builds is a rogue wire touching something it shouldn't be.

[Martan]

This happened to me on my Bloodstone last month.  I took the whole thing out of the box, and it worked fine.  My guess was something was grounding out.  So in it went, and it's back on the board!

As suggested, remove the panner and verify that the Rat is indeed the problem.  Remove it from the enclosure, and remove the footswitches/jacks/power and make sure that isn't the problem next.

+1 on grounding out. That's what I think you are describing as well. Anytime audio is faint like that on my builds is a rogue wire touching something it shouldn't be.

Or sometimes for me a wire thats nearly broken at a joint.