Problems You'd Never Dream Of

[ch1naski]

This is officially my favorite thread.


Like a support group for dimwits.

[gordo]

HEY, I resemble that remark!

[lincolnic]

Guys, I have a confession to make.

For those of you who've been around here long enough, you may have noticed that in Brian's build docs, a couple of years ago a disclaimer appeared on some of the drill templates - "This template is approximate. Be sure to measure carefully before committing to drill."

I think I'm the reason that disclaimer is there.

Let me explain. Three years ago, when Madbean Pedals was just a mailing list Brian would send out on a monthly basis, I ordered a pair of Zombiis (and a Sabertooth). One of the Zombiis was for me, the other two pedals were going to be a wedding present to two musician friends of mine who were getting married. At this point, the only thing I'd built was a BYOC Mouse (which fired up on the first try, and still works). I took my time with the builds, and everything went smoothly. I drilled out a couple of 1590Bs for the Zombiis according to the template in the build doc, and did a test fit of all my pots and hardware, and went to see where the battery would fit...

Well, there wasn't anywhere for the battery. I wanted to give my friends the option to use a battery, as they'd be playing out with the pedals, but I didn't notice that there wasn't room for one on the drill template. In my ignorance, I hadn't considered that people would build pedals without battery clips, and so the thought didn't occur to me that the template wouldn't include space for it.

Feeling a bit stressed, I emailed Brian, asking where I was supposed to put the battery. After all, the original pedal could fit a battery, so why wouldn't my clone? Brian was extremely, extremely gracious in explaining to me that he just hadn't considered that someone might not notice there wasn't a battery in the template, but still expect to put one in somewhere. After having it explained to me, I felt pretty dumb about not seeing what was (in hindsight) very obvious, and life went on. I ordered bigger enclosures for the Zombiis.

A week or two later, there was a new email from Brian, with some new projects. On their drill templates, for the first time, was a disclaimer. I believe the next time the Zombii was updated, it also gained a disclaimer.

I don't know for sure that this incident is what caused Brian to start putting the disclaimers on the templates, but the timing always seemed too close to be a coincidence.

If nothing else, I learned to always pay attention to what's actually pictured in the templates. After getting a few more builds under my belt, I decided I wasn't ever going to use batteries in my personal builds, so I stopped caring about whether there was room for one. Eventually, I recycled one of the failed Zombii enclosures into my testing rig.

The other one is still at the bottom of a drawer, serving as a constant reminder not to overlook the obvious.

[alanp]

Lincolnic, I did the same thing with my LaVache... except that I did that layout myself and only had myself to blame. (It had other issues too, like LED bezels going through the jacks.)

I turned mine into my testing rig as well

[Rockhorst]

Solder bridge between lugs under 3PDT wiring board. Took me a while to find that one.

[wgc]

This could be a long list for me...

Most recent:  dropping my iron square across my leg (ok, wearing jeans) but then catching it before it fell to the floor.  And not by the handle.

Drilling six pot holes without realizing it when I only needed four.  It's just so easy with fresh bits and a drill press... Spdt anyone?

Having access to a laser engraver but not making sure the person before didn't reset the zero before marking my box.  I do this a lot actually.  Can't imagine what the other guy is thinking.   

Soldering a 3pdt into a pcb, but 90 deg off. 

[bcalla]

I was using a pre-painted blem enclosure for my MusicPCB tap-tempo tremolo.  I drilled the top for 6 knobs & 2 LEDs & 2 stomp switches.  My first mistake happened when I went to drill the first LED hole – I realized that I marked my template wrong.  So on the fly I recovered and moved the hole, only to realize that my template was actually correct and I drilled the hole in the wrong place.  I stopped and spent some time figuring out how to lay out the internals to make do with the new LED placement.

My decal design used lines radiating out from the center of the knobs.  After the decal and clear coat were on I decided that one of the holes was just slightly off center, so I figured it would be easy to widen the hole – the washer and knob would disguise the oval shape.  To protect the finish, I put down some masking tape near the hole, which lifted the clear coat and about 25% of the decal when I removed it.

I sanded to bare metal and re-finished it from scratch (actually less than scratch, since I had started with a pre-painted enclosure).  Several weeks later I finally boxed it.  The end result is great, but I had a miserable time getting there.

[Stomptown]

I was using a pre-painted blem enclosure for my MusicPCB tap-tempo tremolo.  I drilled the top for 6 knobs & 2 LEDs & 2 stomp switches.  My first mistake happened when I went to drill the first LED hole – I realized that I marked my template wrong.  So on the fly I recovered and moved the hole, only to realize that my template was actually correct and I drilled the hole in the wrong place.  I stopped and spent some time figuring out how to lay out the internals to make do with the new LED placement.

My decal design used lines radiating out from the center of the knobs.  After the decal and clear coat were on I decided that one of the holes was just slightly off center, so I figured it would be easy to widen the hole – the washer and knob would disguise the oval shape.  To protect the finish, I put down some masking tape near the hole, which lifted the clear coat and about 25% of the decal when I removed it.

I sanded to bare metal and re-finished it from scratch (actually less than scratch, since I had started with a pre-painted enclosure).  Several weeks later I finally boxed it.  The end result is great, but I had a miserable time getting there.

Haha!    I can't count how many decals I've peeled up with tape or by taking pedals apart to mess around with them. I refuse to use waterslide anymore!!!

[bcalla]

Yeah, I now won't even try to box a pedal until at least 24 hours after the 3rd coat of clear has been applied.

[alanp]

Clear nailpolish seems to be working for me so far

[lincolnic]

Lincolnic, I did the same thing with my LaVache... except that I did that layout myself and only had myself to blame. (It had other issues too, like LED bezels going through the jacks.)

I turned mine into my testing rig as well

Cheers!

[alanp]

Be careful tightening nuts on DPDT switches.

I just had one fly apart on me. And I wasn't giving it the business, either. Grrrr.

On a related note... anyone in NZ got a DPDT switch going spare?

[ch1naski]

Be careful tightening nuts on DPDT switches.

I just had one fly apart on me. And I wasn't giving it the business, either. Grrrr.

On a related note... anyone in NZ got a DPDT switch going spare?

I'd like to bring you one, just so I can see New Zealand.


Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[alanp]

Here's another dum-dum mistake.

So, when I hit the stomp, I get half a second of sound, and the power fades away. I loosen the pots, check no wires are caught underneath, check for bridges, curse a bit, try it again... wander off. Maybe the gremlins will get bored and go away, or I'll think of the solution.

Yeah right.

So I've got the back off, and my thumb hits the switch by mistake. this turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as the indicator LED goes into Christmas mode. I try sticking my thumb in again, and realise why. My skin is providing ground to the circuit -- my thumb is touching the ground wire to the board and LED, and my hand is touching the metal body of the pedal.

Logically, then, this means a missing ground. I trace the grounding, and find I forgot to solder the bloody power connector and 1/4" jack ground to the 3PDT switch, it was just sitting loose in the lug. Now she goes like stink (with gobs and gobs of sustain and gain.)

[drezdn]

From this week: Built a compressor, the effect worked but the bypass didn't... Easy fix right? I realized that I had wired both the input and output sides backwards. So I flip them around. The effect worked but the bypass didn't. I fixed one side, but had wired the otherside backwards again.

Probably the worst mistake I ever made: Noticed my solder tip seemed loose. Proceeded to start soldering anyways. The hot tip fell out and started melting my work bench why I quickly searched for pliers to pick it up with.