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Faultline Troublshooting - No Treble

Started by evokapyro, January 04, 2012, 03:17:55 PM

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evokapyro

Ok, I just built the Faultline last night and I have a strange issue going on.  The pedal powers up and everything seems to be working.   However, it seems that the unit is very bassy and has no treble at all.  The treble pot does vary the treble somewhat but not at any useable level.  Everything else seems to work just not the treble pot.  It almost sounds like a bass guitar with the tone knob turned all the way down. 

This is a standard build with the exception of the pots.  I have swapped the 1MAs for 500ka.  I am thinking that I have a value wrong somewhere or miss calculated something.  I have looked but don't seem to see anything out of place.  Does anyone who has more experience with this circuit have any suggestions?  Maybe a location I should be double checking specificlly?  I appreciate any suggestions...

*Note - I have attached a picture of the board.  Please disregard the wiring.  They look bad because I have been tugging on the wires while I was troubleshooting.  They have been eliminated as an issue. 

JakeFuzz

I've built this effect twice and it has been ridiculously bassy each time. Actually this is the reason I sold mine in the first place. I am not quite sure it is as extreme as you describe but it is something to keep in mind. A few weird little things about this pedal, it should be run a 18 volts; even though you can run it at 9 it just doesn't sound right. The other thing is to test or swap out a few 2n5457's; My second pedal sounded much better than the first. Don't swap the buffer positions. Also this effect was too muddy with my single coils and sounds better with humbuckers. Good luck!

evokapyro

Thanks for your reply... I am using 18volts with this pedal.  I just ran two 9v in series and still the same issues with treble.  I am using a American Standard P bass through a small Fender practice amp for testing.  I will try replacing the 2n5457's and see if that makes a difference.  Maybe, I overheated one of them when soldering.

Any other suggestions on the treble circuit?  Maybe a cap or specific resistor location I should double check?

JakeFuzz

Double check the capacitor and resistor values around the tone stack. Specifically R13-R15 and C7-C10. There are also dual low pass filters on the output to simulate a speaker. You can try removing  C13 and C14 to see if that brings any treble back. You could also lower the value of several of the coupling capacitors to see if that helps at all; C1 and C12.


evokapyro

Ok, I finally had a chance this week to double check my work and sure enough, I found the issue.  The first thing I did was to disconnect the low pass filters as JakeFuzz suggested.  As soon as I did that, my treble and tone came back.  I then checked the caps that I was using and realize what happened.  I used .22mf caps instead of the .0022mf caps that were needed.  The numbers on the top look almost identical with the exception of one number  222J100 instead of 224J100 which I used.  As soon as I replaced them everything worked perfectly!..  It turned out to be my mistake in the end.  The Faultline sounds great, so much that my guitarist wants his own now.  I also modified the "gain" pot and replaced it with a 1MC pot for better control. 

Thanks for your help JakeFuzz.  It would have taken me much longer to figure out!