Current Lover - tone is too dark

[Jack5]

Hi all,

First post here.  Built a few madbean pedals, sunking, retrograde, in the middle of a couple of dirtbag builds (one mn3005 one v3205).

I've just built a current lover and its flanging.  I think I've biased it OK.   But its really dark sounding compared to the bypassed tone.  Had a quick search here and at diysb and fsb and haven't been able to find much on this.

Checked the components and didn't find anything (not saying I haven't missed something). 

Not sure where to go from here.

Any help appreciated.

[marmaliser]

Some good quality pics of both sides of  the board might help

[madbean]

Hmm...that IS weird. You can hear on my demo of the CL that it is not particularly dark.

Couple things I can think off the bat: if you checked all the caps and they are the correct values, it's possible that a resistor might be slightly off. That could definitely affect the filtering.

OTOH - it could be something simple like a cap grounding out somewhere that should not. Actually, that's not so simple from a de-bugging standpoint.

You may have to audio probe the build to find out where the darkness gets introduced.

Depending on how much trouble it is for you, a short sound sample in a addition to a few pics of the pCB and your wiring might help.

[Jack5]

Its amazing what a good nights sleep will fix.

Followed madbean's advice and checked all components again, one by one against the schematic and the parts list.  I had 100n for C3 instead of 1n.  Reckon I checked the signal caps three times already but just missed it.

All good now and very happy.  All boxed up had a quick play and onto the next build have spent the last couple of hours putting components in some dirtbag boards.

Missed the first aquaboy so looking forward to the new one.

[madbean]

Sweet! You built a big badass effect AND debugged it, too! It's a good day (I'm not being facetious--I really think like this, ha ha).

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

That's the way you do it!! Any chance of some pictures? 

[Jack5]

I find it really frustrating when builds don't work first up but debugging forces me to think about how the circuit actually works - up til then its a bit more 'painting by numbers'.  So I find it more satisfying when I get it to work - just as long as I haven't thrown it at the wall first.

Picture attached.  Note the flying C20 cap to avoid the input jack - I found this a really tight build in my 125B (clone I think which may have been a bit smaller).

Nothing inspiring on the front I'm afraid my enclosure decoration/artistic skills are nonexistent.

Have been thinking about some TZF experimentation - would have to rehouse it.

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

Nice job! It totally looks like the tip from the input jack is touching the enclosure which would ground your input signal. If its working don't worry about it but if you have problems, try adjusting that.. 

[Jack5]

Yeah its tight there but its not touching, clearance is less than 1mm.  I couldn't place the output jack the same way as it was making contact. ended up having to check with a continuity meter whether the output jack would make contact with the lid when a jack was inserted - lucky it didn't but can't see how much the clearance is.  I spent more time getting it boxed up than I did putting components on the board!  If it starts giving me issues I rehouse into a bigger box, which I'll have to do anyway if I do TZF.

[Scruffie]

I've been playing with TZF... personally I feel the Electric Mistress filtering/clock doesn't cut it that well unless you play overdriven/distorted constantly, not saying it doesn't work but it just doesn't do it for me.

[Jack5]

I've been playing with TZF... personally I feel the Electric Mistress filtering/clock doesn't cut it that well unless you play overdriven/distorted constantly, not saying it doesn't work but it just doesn't do it for me.

interesting...  I do remember reading somewhere that mxr117 was a good candidate for tzf.  What do you prefer Scruffie?