Problems You'd Never Dream Of

[alanp]

What are some weird issues that you've had stop builds in their tracks?

I'll kick off. I took everything out of my Boosted Moon Lander to replace the Dymo labelling with engraved artwork (it's loud, noisy, hurts my hand, and is fun.) Once done, aluminium dust gone, grooves filled with Indian Ink, biff the guts back in. Huh, maybe I should test it.

Bugger. Doesn't even light up.

Long story short, after testing every single thing, I found that the 9V wire going to the Boost had caught itself under a pot, the insulation had split under the pressure, and the 9V rail was shorting to the grounded case. (Luckily, it didn't take anything down with it.) Undo the Boost pot, move the bloody wire five millimeters, bolt it back down, all of a sudden it bursts back into life when I test it again.

The only reason I found out, too, was because I suddenly wondered why I couldn't move the red wire out of the way when I wanted to check something ELSE.

So, what's a weird little problem you've had that you'd never have imagined?

[DutchMF]

It's not really a weird issue, but it certainly made me feel stupid.... I once spent the better part of an hour wondering where that solder bridge from PCB input to ground was, and only then realised that it was already wired to the 3PDT, which, according to MB's Standard Wiring Diagram, switches the input to ground on Bypass...... Man, did I feel stupid!! Turned out that the pedal didn't work because I switched the signal and ground wires on the output jack, which made me feel even more stupid! Not a good day to build pedals..... 

Paul

[Parra]

When i built the echo base the modulation didn't work at all, i almost ripped the pcb apart before i realized that my generic 9v dc power supply was putting out 15V dc! dam...

[midwayfair]

Not sure this counts: I built an Engineer's Thumb, and tried to use NE5532s for the op amps. Didn't work even remotely properly, like it wasn't getting any power. I went nuts for hours, built a second that had the same problem, and it was probably a full 24h of troubleshooting before I "figured out" that it was biased for TL072s in a way that other chips simply *would not* work. It was a pretty bad experience all around: I had soldered the op amps in, so there was that bit of fun getting them out and replacing them. Come to think of it, those builds are why I started socketting all chips again.

[GermanCdn]

I got the great idea of grabbing a power supply and keeping it hooked up to my work bench, so I could test LEDs, bias transistors, give a freshly boxed pedal a quick check before, etc, etc.  Managed to grab the only one in the birds nest of spare power supplies I've got in the closet which was positive ground, and never bothered to check.  Drove me nuts as to why I wasn't able to get proper readings on transistors, debugging the biasing rig, etc, etc, etc.  Felt pretty stupid after that one.

[ch1naski]

Following the madbean true bypass 3pdt wiring....
I wired everything up, no sound. Huh. Started a tech help thread and everything. No dice. Switched out transistors, reflowed solder joints, etc..

I had wired everything on the damn 3pdt while it was rotated 90 degrees. .

Stupid stupid stupid.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

[rodstewart]

I was troubleshooting a set of EMG active pickups one day and needed to eliminate the battery as a problem. I don't have another battery and never thought to use a multimeter.

So, I decided to plug my One Spot into the pickups and test. Great! Except I grabbed the wrong cable and fed the pickups 12V AC.

[Hangingmonkey]

Ive done plenty of cock ups and continue to do so.  Im nearly at the 2 yr stage of building.

1 empty ic sockets

2 wondering why the pedal is not getting any signal, spent over an hr double checking all the components and flipping the trannies only to find the cable was plugged into the guitar at one end and not into the test rig at the other

3 somehow managed to kill a tubescreamer by feeding it center pin positive dc while reverse wiring the power and ground the opposite way round to the power jack - it was an attempt to get one of those metal dc plugs to work, the ones that grounds the 9v to the enclosure

4 effects loop left unconnected

[selfdestroyer]

Man I do not want to know the numbers of how many times I forget to pop in ICs or trannies after building to test. I always feel dumb. That and also sometimes mixing up the pins on pots when doing PCB mounted pots.. I get mixed up with orientation.

[gordo]

I had wired everything on the damn 3pdt while it was rotated 90 degrees. .

Oh yeah, I'd never do anything THAT stupid...   

[lincolnic]

When I built my first Hotcake, I spent a very frustrated hour trying to figure out why it wasn't getting signal. All my solder joints were good, no bridges, all parts accounted for...turns out, if you solder your 9V wire to the wrong terminal on your DC jack, it won't work.

I promised myself that I wouldn't make that mistake again.

I did it again on my very next build.

[alanp]

Testing a build today, the only thing the amp was putting out was hum.

Luckily, before I went nuts, I spotted that the guitar was not plugged in 

[RobA]

Testing a build today, the only thing the amp was putting out was hum.

Luckily, before I went nuts, I spotted that the guitar was not plugged in 

I've done that one multiple times in one day.

[Stomptown]

A while back I went to drill the hole for my DC jack at the too side if an enclosure (after drilling holes for knobs/switches) and realized that I drilled a hole on the bottom side! I did it again a few weeks later!  . Luckily the second time i did it i noticed after drilling my pilot hole (i use a dremel to make a pilot hole rather than a center punch). i ended up adding a second LED to cover up the mistake!

[atreidesheir]

I had wired everything on the damn 3pdt while it was rotated 90 degrees. .

Oh yeah, I'd never do anything THAT stupid...   

I did.  on my first three builds.