For my "teach myself for to solder" project I picked up a BYOC Tremolo. I recently finished putting it together and I'm having an issue with the pedal making a loud pop when I turn it on. It also pops when I turn it off, but not as loudly. I did a test where I plugged it into my audio interface's guitar input, set my gain so the guitar was hitting around 60-70% of the meters, and when I turned the pedal on the pop would briefly clip the input. The levels were fine after that pop - until I turn it off and there is another pop, but at least this one doesn't clip the input.
Other than the popping, the pedal seems to work fine. It powers on and it tremolos - but I do find it starts to distort if I have my Epiphone Les Paul's volume above half way, but I'm less concerned about that for now.
This is my first project that's more than reconnecting a wire to an XLR jack, and I believe most problems are user error. So I'm guessing I made a mistake somewhere along the way. I thought the footswitch was the hardest thing to wire so I'm not surprised it's the thing giving me trouble after the build.
In terms of troubleshooting, I read that LED pop could be the issue, so I lifted one of the LED legs but that didn't fix it. I've double checked that my footswitch wiring matches the instructions, but haven't rewired the switch yet. I've read a bit about pull down resistors, but since this is my first project I don't have any spare parts to experiment with. At this point I've stared at this PCB so much that I'm sure I'm overlooking something. Attached are photos of the build with hopes that someone more experienced than me can spot what's wrong.
PXL_20211026_175743036 by
trendyrico, on Flickr
PXL_20211026_175800576 by
trendyrico, on Flickr
PXL_20211026_175823365 by
trendyrico, on Flickr
PXL_20211026_175855201 by
trendyrico, on Flickr
PXL_20211026_175916496 by
trendyrico, on Flickr