Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Hi there,

I've tried to put together a silver pony for my first attempt at building a clone, and in retrospect I'm thinking that was ambitious. Where I'm at right now:

- The LED lights up just fine
- Signal passes fine when the pedal is bypassed
- Signal is really low when the pedal is activated. If I crank the tone knob, it does this almost self oscillating whistling. If I crank the other knobs, not much happens.

I'm pretty much at a loss as to how to go about debugging this. Are there any go-to resources y'all would recommend? I've got a multimeter and an interest in learning, but that's about it!

I don't see anything misplaced, so that's to the good. I would recommend cleaning up the area around the six connections for the Drive pot, which looks pretty rough. You can gently scrape away the crud and solder splash with the blade of a small screwdriver, and brush it away with an old toothbrush or the like. I would also apply more solder to the wire connection on eyelet 4 above the footswitch, which looks solder-starved. If those actions don't help, you'll need to take some DC voltage measurements on the IC pins; we can walk you through that process, if needed.

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

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

Thanks for taking the time, I really appreciate it! I cleaned up around the drive pot, and flowed some more solder into that eyelet. The drive pot was extra rough because the first time I soldered it, I think it was grounding out on the back of the board so I had to desolder and redo it. Unfortunately that didn't change anything, I still just get a gnarly whistle when cranking the drive pot.

OK, let's get those DC voltage readings from the pins of each of the three IC's. To do that, set your multimeter to the DC voltage mode, indicated by a solid line above a dotted one. Use the 20VDC range setting if it's not an auto-ranging meter. Your power source needs to be connected and there needs to be a cable in the input jack. If the pedal is assembled into the metal enclosure, put the black probe into one of the corner screw bosses of the enclosure--this is your ground connection. If the "guts" are out of the enclosure, use the sleeve tab of the input jack for the ground connection. Then touch the red probe to each point that you want to measure. See image below for the numbering of the pins. Report your results here. Be aware that a couple of the pins should show negative voltages, so pay close attention to the readout of your meter as you take each measurement.

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

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

Here's my findings. The diagrams are laid out like they sit in on the board. Again, really appreciate it

Your voltages are perfect. Have you reflowed all of your solder joints yet? Give that a try and let us know yow that goes.

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com

Detailed guidance for that process here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52188

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

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

I reflowed everything, and I still just get a whistling when cranking the level knob. Sounds kind of like turning up the resonance uncomfortably high on a synthesizer. I think the tone knob might be working? Hard to tell.

I'm a little confused. At first you said turning up the tone knob caused the self-oscillation. But now you say it's the volume knob. So as it stands now, the gain knob does nothing; the tone knob maybe does something, but not much; and the volume knob makes it go into self-oscillation? Does the volume knob increase the volume at all?

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com