Build Your Own Clone Message Board

I was probably a bit hasty but after completing the Confidence Booster kit as a first build attempt with no problems, I plunged in and bought the Divided Octave pedal kit.

I carefully triple checked every component before installing it, read and viewed various soldering instructions and spent three days building the pedal.

The LEDs work, they turn off and on with the foot switches but there is no guitar sound coming through, only a loud buzzing. The buzzing reduces in volume when the bypass LED is lit.

I checked my work and found a few problems:
The ground wire from the DC power jack had come out
I had wired the all the jacks in the wrong way round
I hadn’t soldered two of the bypass footswitch wires

I rectified all that, but it made no difference.

So my questions are:
Will the non-ground power input have damaged any of the components?
Will the wrongly wired jacks have damaged any of the components?
Shall I resolder all the components again or test them first?
Was I an idiot for trying such a complicated pedal as a first build?

My soldering probably isn’t very good. Is the solder meant to come through to the other side of the PCB?

I’ve got pictures if necessary but thought I’d try to sort out the obvious problems first.

Thanks.

Yes, when you're getting good solder flow & wetting, there should be some (not a lot!) solder coming through the eyelets to the component side of the board.

None of the wiring mistakes you describe would do any damage.

A common mistake on this build is miswiring the input jack. It happens because the input uses a mono jack unlike most of the BYOC effects. So the sleeve and tip tabs end up on the opposite sides of the jack vs. a stereo jack. I rotate the jack around so that the long tip "finger" is on top, which keeps the wire runs to the PCB short. See "gut shot" of my Divided Octave below.

If that's not your problem, we need to see photos....

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

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Well I got it working eventually. I resoldered all the jack plug connections and also found that a lot of the footswitch connections weren't soldered well at all. Works perfectly now.

Things I've learnt:

Refer to the photo when in doubt
Check all the connections and solder points

I've also used a 9V battery connector instead of the DC adapter. Anyone got any ideas how to create some sort of add-on case for the battery?