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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 11:04 pm 
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So I finally finished my lazy sprocket and of course it doesnt work. I knew it wouldnt. Even though I was extremely careful I knew it wouldnt work. True bypass works, the LED comes on when I activate the pedal but i get no sound at all. I went back and cleaned up a few soldering points and trimmed excess leads etc bt it did nothing. Im wondering if its my footswitch but I check continuity and everything and it acted and gave reading exactly like a backup footswitch I have here. Would yall mind looking at my work and seeing where I went wrong please? Maybe I got some resistors wrong or backwards or something but I thought I nailed that part. Thank you in advance.

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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 11:11 pm 
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 11:21 pm 
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 8:31 am 
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Can you post a clear photo of the solder side of the pcb? That is likely where your issue is.

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 12:11 pm 
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Just a first impression from looking at the top of the PCB: you appear to have inadequate solder flow. When the solder flows as it should, it should ooze through the eyelets from the back side of the board and be visible around the component leads on the top side. This is not the case for the vast majority of the component eyelets in your build. I would strongly suggest that you do this: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52188

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 12:32 pm 
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hard to tell but it doesn't look like you have lugs 9 and 4 connected on the footswitch

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 12:41 pm 
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BTW, the resistor placements are all correct....

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:15 pm 
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Hey guys thank you for getting back to me! I will answer all these in order.

1. Yes I will definitely get a picture of the backside of the PCB for you. Sorry about that I hadnt thought of that.
2. Thank you for the tip. I will go back and make sure I get the solder to flow all the way through. I figured if it was enough to keep the components in place, it was enough to make a signal path. Thanks for the link too Ill check that out as soon as Im done writing this post.
3. Yeah sorry I know its a jungle in there. I used a small run of the same white wire to connect lugs 4 and 9 as I used for the entire pedal. They are connected and have continuity but maybe I should go back and do it again. It was kind of a pain and maybe I fried the wire. It looked fine though.
4. THANK YOU FOR CONFIRMING THAT! That was my first worry since it seems its very easy to get backwards or use the wrong ones and lots of people make that easy mistake. Thats a relief.

As I stated earlier true bypass works great and the LED DOES turn on when the effect is engaged. I couldnt hear any buzz or hiss. Its dead quiet, but I did hear a tiny bit of scratchiness when I aggressively pulled on the wire connecting footswitch lugs 4 and 9. Not all the time, just a little bit at first and then it stopped making any scratching noise at all.


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 8:49 pm 
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Ok guys so I went back over the board and let the solder get sucked through every point I could and Ive got an update. The pedal DOES let a signal get through to the amp when its both bypassed AND with the effect on now! BUT theres problems. With the effect on, the signal is much MUCH quieter. Like the only way I can tell its getting through to my amp is if I cut the switch or roll back the volume pot on my guitar. Also it appears as through the internal trim pot as well as the 2 main control pots have no effect at all on what the pedal is doing. So here are some pics as well as a couple videos. The first pics are of the board before I cleaned up the soldering points as well as other parts of the pedal in general. The 2nd set of pics are of the board after I got the solder to suck through the board. Then a couple videos showing what the pedal is doing. I kinda burnt the board a little while trying to heat the solder to melt into the leads of their respective components. Anyways does what Ive just explained and shown give anyone some clear indicators of a specific problem? Thank you! Im getting less bummed out and more excited at this new breakthrough.

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Now THESE should be AFTER I took the iron to the board to rework those points. I did notice that a lot of them allowed the solder to suck into the other side of the board but others did not, like they were already done well enough.


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Waiting for videos to upload now. So theyll be in the next post...


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:42 pm 
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Heres a couple videos. Sorry if it is a bit screwy but I had to hold the phone in one hand, strum with the other and switch the pedal on and off with whatever was left lol. You gotta listen closely but I think you can clearly here how the pedal makes the guitar signal quiet, but still working. OH and trheres one more important thing! When I first tried this my amps dirty channel was on, but when I switched on the pedal it would sound clean! It confused me at first I thought my LED was off when the pedal was on and somehow my pedal turned into a distortion pedal lol. That ended up not being the case and what was happening was when the pedal was on, it somehow sucked all the dirt out of my amps tone. Which seems to me like maybe its a control pot problem since they also did nothing at all when I turned them. What do yall think? Ill have to double check and make sure I did not wire up the pots backwards or something. I know I had to do them over a couple ties because I kept getting the wires crossed. Anyways, heres the videos:


Well that didnt work. Theyre not uploading to photobucket. I went through a lot of trouble to actually show yall whats going on but I hope what Ive explained will be sufficient. Ill keep trying to get them hosted. Thank you.


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:26 pm 
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Actually I think those pics that were supposed to be after shots of the soldering points fixed up, arent. They still look huge and like round balls in the pics but I assure you they are all much smaller and look like tiny hersheys kisses. Except the points for the white leads going to the pots and footswitch. about half of those look about the same. Just wanted to clear that up before someone tells me they dont look any different lol. I think photobucket uploaded my pics out of order again.


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:33 am 
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Anyone?


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 9:36 pm 
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The soldering looks quite a bit better now, but it still sounds like there might be connection problems somewhere. What you describe sounds like signal loss is occurring somewhere. This may explain your amp's dirty channel sounding clean--the amp probably isn't getting a strong enough signal for it to put out a dirty tone. Same idea as "cleaning up" your output signal by rolling off your guitar's volume knob.

Have you dialed in the pedal's trimpot adjustment per the procedure shown in Step 4 at the bottom of page 5 of the Lazy Sprocket instructions? If not properly adjusted, that can cause severe volume loss, as well.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:30 pm 
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I messed with the internal trimpot as much as I did the sensitivity and attack pot controls. I didnt follow a specific instruction other than starting out with the trimpot in its default position. Ill look back at the instructions and see if maybe I missed something. I was thinking it was the pots because they didnt seem to do anything at all, I had to undo and resolder them a few times because I got the wiring moxed up(the orientation of the pots in relation to the board is what got me) andat one point when I wasnt getting any signal at all, i used my continuity tester on the pot lugs to the board and I swore 2 of them were grounding out on each other but thats gone now.


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:35 pm 
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I think Im also gonna triple check and make sure my pots arrent in the wrong spots. Ill check the trimpot again but I tried adjusting it with the attack all the way down and didnt notice any difference in signal. I feel like Ive gotta be either super close or waaaay far from fixing this thing lol. Thank you for sticking it out with me.


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 11:29 pm 
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Ok so I went through the trimpot procedure with the attack knob and it didnt help. I tried every posssible combination between the pots and the trimpot. No change. I did however notice that I can now hear a much louder POP when I press the footswitch. Also should I be getting continuity between 2 of the 3 wires for the main pots? On each of them, out of the 3 wires that they use, I am getting a continuity beep between 2 lugs and their respective points on the board. By that I mean out of pot lugs 1,2 and 3...lug 2 gets a beep from lug 3s point on the board and vice versa. Its like this for both pots. Is that supposed to be there? Im completely lost here. Do I need to replace the footswitch or the pots or something? Damn thing works great in true bypass. Its the whole "effect" and "electrical" part of the board thats a disaster. Thanks.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 12:04 pm 
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Are you certain that the .68uF tantalum cap is oriented correctly? I can't tell from your pic.

I would suggest removing T6 (the 2N5457 JFET). This will make the circuit do nothing, so that the sound should be about the same in bypass as it is in the on position. This will give us a better idea as to whether your problem is in the signal path or in the envelope trigger.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 1:32 pm 
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byoc wrote:
I would suggest removing T6 (the 2N5457 JFET). This will make the circuit do nothing, so that the sound should be about the same in bypass as it is in the on position. This will give us a better idea as to whether your problem is in the signal path or in the envelope trigger.

Excellent suggestion here from Keith! If/when you do this, just be careful removing the JFET, since de-soldering components with 3 or more legs gets a bit tricky and it's easy to damage the PCB if you're not careful. I would suggest removing as much of the solder as possible from the three eyelets using a solder sucker, and then clean up any residual from both sides of the PCB using good quality de-soldering braid. It's necessary to get all three legs loose from the PCB--if you try to force the transistor loose while there is still solder adhering between a leg and the PCB, there's a good chance you'll rip the eyelet out of the board. Of course, you can use your soldering iron to facilitate the final removal, but it's a bit tricky to apply heat to more than one leg at a time.

The other option is to clip the head off of the transistor and de-solder the legs individually, but this requires having a spare 2N5457 to replace the one you cut apart.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 5:49 pm 
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Oh boy...I guess things are about to get real. Is the part in question the trimpot youre talking about or is it a little black square? Ill check it out when I get home. I believe I have it on the correct way. I triple and quadruple checked each and every component before soldering. Im at my parents house now but as soon as I get home tonght Ill check it out and report back. Thank you.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:58 pm 
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Jackstand Johnny wrote:
Is the part in question the trimpot youre talking about or is it a little black square? Ill check it out when I get home.

It's the transistor (black body, three legs) labeled Q6 on this diagram:

Image

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 9:44 pm 
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So I am very confident that the .68uf is soldered in the correct way. I still have to remove that transistor and check to see if the volume comes back up. I will report back. Thank you so much for helping me out with this,


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 11:04 pm 
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UPDATE: I removed the Q6 transistor and got the same volume as the bypassed signal. With the effect ON, the volume is much louder with the transistor removed then before. Whats next hefe? And what does this mean exactly?


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 1:05 am 
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Does this mean my transistor is bad? Or does it just mean there is a fault somewhere in the effect circuit? Im anxious to move forward from here. Do yall think this is a big help towards diagnosing the problem and Im close togetting it working right? Or is this the beginning of a very long process? Hahaha thank you so much for your help. I tip my hat to thee.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 12:01 pm 
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Unfortunately, this is probably the beginning of a much longer process.

What does this mean? The SG-1 is an envelope trigger effect. That JFET that you pulled out acts like a passive volume knob to ground. When it is idle and there is no input signal, the JFET bleeds off most of the signal to ground. When you play something, you trigger the envelope. That envelope tells the JFET to slowly start bleeding less and less signal to ground, creating the volume swell effect. I would assume that the envelope trigger section of the circuit is where the problem is, since yours seems to be stuck in idle. The good news is that we don't need to look at the signal path section of the circuit. The bad news is that the envelope trigger portion of the circuit is what makes up most of the PCB.

I suppose for starters, let's see if the trigger is generating any output signal. This will be tricky. You need to take a voltage reading on pin 6 of the op amp...while you are playing the guitar. You need to give the strings a good hard, fairly short strum. You should see the voltage jump from around 4.5v close to 9v. Be sure to turn the sensitivity knob full turn clockwise.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 2:47 pm 
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Alright! This sounds like a 2 person job. Looks like I know what I need to do. Ill try it out and report back. Once question though, where shoyld I attach my probe for ground with my DMM? Thank you for your help, BYOC


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