Dinky Drive HELP??

[aaronishere]

So I just got done building the Dinky Drive everything was looking great. I plugged everything in, pedal was off bypassing great, I turned pedal on and got a really low signal through, like barely even there and it was really fuzzy/overdriven. But barely coming through.

I went back and rechecked everything, recheck solder points, connections and such. I had the Treb pot wired backwards, fixed that and now im getting bypass signal but nothing when pedal is turned on. Not even the faint barely there signal like before.

Any help would be great!! THANKS A BUNCH.

[aaronishere]

pictures

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[aaronishere]

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[jkokura]

I can see that your soldering looks pretty good, but you should check them over for bad solder joints.

Jacob

[aaronishere]

Thanks for the reply... I checked them over and over and then rechecked, I really cant find any problems there. Could it be a wiring issue with how I have the 3PDT wired up?? I wired the slam box the same way and it works great.

Here is what Im doing with the wiring...

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[ckyvick]

Do you have a signal tester? If not you can make one with an old jack or cable, it lets you find where the signal drops/dies out.
http://www.diystompboxes.com/wiki/index.php?title=Debugging

[jkokura]

I'd check the joints again. I blowed it up on my screen, and I can see a few of your joints are a little suspicious. I also see that the tranny right in the middle might have a solder bridge between two of the pins.

Jacob

[aaronishere]

Sounds good, thanks so much for looking and helping! Im still learning and figuring out. Only built a few pedals like this, I used to build loopers all the time but this is a hair more in depth!

[aaronishere]

Ok did everything and now just barely getting sound again. But something is going through just not much at all. Any other ideas??

i think im gonna take the board completely out and de solder it and start over. I tried the probe and still couldn't figure out what joint was bad. Where I heard it was dropping signal I re solder it and still the same after all testing.

Not sure what else to do. Any other help is awesome! Thank you for the ideas so far!

[aaronishere]

I took the board completely out and re-solder the whole thing, and getting the same barely any sound passing through. Could it be a bad component???

Any help is great! Thank you!

[jkokura]

Yes it could be a bad component. You said you tried an audio probe? Where does the problem occur on the board when you use the audio probe? Start at the input and trace the signal towards the output and tell us where it goes bad.

Jacob

[aaronishere]

Ok after building the probe and testing the pedal, i came down to resistor R8 (220k). When it leaves the volume pot, hits R8, on the other side of R8 the sound / VOL drops considerably. I changed it our with a lesser resistance and it got a little better but still not functioning properly.

Then, when it goes the the other side of Capacitor C7 (33n) It drops even more, therefore putting my output volume extremely low.

Any Ideas would be soooooo HELPFUL!!

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[madbean]

What are you reading on the drains of Q1 and Q2? Have you adjusted them for 4.5v, or close to that?

It could be a bad transistor. The effect should have a lot of output. The 220k at the output serves to dial it down a bit. The 33n is for decoupling, although if you use a cap with a high ESR it could effect the output.

[aaronishere]

Yeah Q1 & Q2 are reading 4.5 almost on the dot. I was sort of iffy on the 33n I got from mouser, its and oversized yellow cap that is double the size of the normal yellow box caps Ive seen. I did switch out Q1 thinking it was bad when I went across it with the probe, turns out my trim pots weren't set correctly.

Whats a good way to test or check Q2 & 3?

[aaronishere]

I figured out how to check my transistors with my meter on the diode setting on my meter. Ive got current reading the same as a brand new uninstalled transistor and the transistors on my board. This is the video I looked at top give me the direction to do this. Make sure this is correct.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VK_4gZU__I&feature=related

Other than that, im still stuck on that R8 resistor bringing down the volume. But that may be completely off.