Build Your Own Clone Message Board

I've seen a couple posts similar but not exactly my situation. My build actually sounds pretty good and seems to function perfectly BUT there is a significant volume drop and tone loss when it's engaged. It's slightly better with something in front of it like a compressor or overdrive but SO quiet without. Any thoughts?

Sorry for this late reply. As always we'll need to see photos of both sides of the PCB. Make sure they are in crystal clear focus and fairly large without being TOO large. We need to see as much detail as possible. The higher the quality of the photo the better. Grainy and/or blurry photos are useless.

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"It’s your soldering."

Having trouble uploading pics. Anything above 1 MiB is too big

You could try hosting the photos online (PhotoBucket is one example) and then linking to them here on the forum.

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"It’s your soldering."

https://www.flickr.com/gp/135088537@N02/Ubq197

Hope this works! Just signed up with Flikr for this reason.

For the most part your soldering looks OK but there are several places the joints look pretty wonky. A few examples would be R13, R23, C5, C7, C9, C12, the bottom of C6 but that could be the angle of the photo. There may be others under the pots that can't be seen. Someone who isn't colorblind will have to check for misplaced resistors. A resistor in the wrong place could easily bleed the signal off to ground which could account for your low signal level.

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"It’s your soldering."

I don't see any resistor placement issues. I would recommend doing THIS. It may be a crude approach to troubleshooting, but it resolves issues like this one with amazing frequency. Pay special attention to looking for possible solder bridging or other signal shorts as you go through the PCB.

If that still doesn't do the job, you may need to get into more in-depth troubleshooting methods, like taking DC voltage measurements. Actually, the best way to pinpoint such a problem is to work through the signal path with a signal tester, but most forum posters don't have one of those. But you can always buy one or make your own from the posted BYOC instructions, since it's a very simple device.

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“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

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