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Need some help on a bass OD pedal build. This is my first build. I have power to the LED and sound in bypass mode. When engaged, I hear a hiss that increases or decreases with the volume knob. Per other posts, I have re-wet my solders, without success. I have also replaced several of the wires. Please excuse the color of the wires as I grabbed whatever I had, which was usually left over push back cloth wires.

I know some of my solders are not pretty. I was excited to dive in and did some of it with a chisel tip as that is all I had. Thank you in advance to the community.

Pictures of the front and back should be attached.

Rest of my photos. Yikes, these look worse than I thought when way zoomed in.

You NEED a better solder iron. This board needs major repair. Cold joints and partial-fill solder everywhere.
Get that resolved be fore you look further.

You need some solder wick to clean that board up or maybe a sucker pen.

Get so some lead-tin solder, 60/40 is nice , cos the non-lead I think you are showing us can be harder to work with .

Get a wee tub of flux ( Ive been using a non-lead flux on my lead tin rosin core , without issue ) and tiny brushes,
you may be able to rescue the solder work so far by painting a little flux & re-soldering with a correct iron.

With all those cold, flaky joints, its too early to trouble-shoot, time to trouble-resolve

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- Technically, alcohol IS a solution ..

Pardon my bluntness, but your problem undoubtedly relates to the quality of your soldering, which is extremely poor.

First, two questions:

1. What kind of solder iron are you using? Is it temperature controlled or just plug in and go? Do you know its wattage?
2. What kind of solder are you using? Is it leaded or lead-free? Rosin core?

Next, it's time for some "homework." I would strongly encourage you to read the informational posts linked below. You may also want to go on to YouTube and view a couple of "How to" videos on soldering technique. Once you've done that, we can talk about next steps for cleaning up your build and hopefully get it operational.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6401

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52211

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52188

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

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

By "cold and flaky joints" are you saying that it looks like the solder was not hot enough to fill the joint?

Soldering Iron is a Weller 25 watt plug and go. It was my understanding that higher wattage could be too hot for the components. Is that incorrect? If there is another suggestion on brand, please let me know.

Tried to do some of this with a chisel tip, which was a mistake. Some of the scuffing on the board is from using soldering wick when too much solder got on the board. I now use a solder pen instead of the wick and did so when replacing the foot switch due to it originally not working unless I jumped 8 and 9 per other posts.

Solder is 60/40 with a rosin core. Alphafry brand. It's what I had from wiring some pickups.

I will look into the flux and may start by removing and re soldering all connections.

I did read those three posts before posting this, but after I had already gotten this together. I wasn't aware of the forum until after I put this pedal together. Just went off the instructions downloaded from the site.

I don't mind if this project fails, so long as I learn from it. Looks like I need to do some practicing.

ok ok that was lead tin so there is hope to save the board ... it was just that that the results look like what I suffer with using ROHS-happy crap.

Dunno if 25W will suffice, apparently not , since this solder work was done too too cold

My goal when soldering is to heat the VIA firstly (via= the drilled & plated holes) & heating the wire at the same time ... kind of wedging tip between the two surfaces , using a small enough & hot enuf soldering tip. I am trying to make firm contact with both surfaces, to get good heat transfer.
The solder should go liquid, shiny, in a few seconds, if you stay too long it will wick excessively onto the far side of the board

A hot enough iron takes only a few seconds to puddle the solder , dick around much longer and the flux burns away, making tip sticky , making those "stale Herseys" looking solder patches.

If it looks flaky like that I would try 1st ) more heat or 2) a dab extra flux involved ( but if you deliver[b] [b]enough fast heat, you dont need as much flux!

all I'm saying is the board etc is not getting hot enough to allow solder wet out .

Need more heat. Hotter heat, not longer heat , if you catch my drift

by the way, the photo work is spectacular. are they real ?

Owen_Tu,

Thank you. Those comments are VERY helpful. I am going to look around for a better iron and see what I can do.

Yes, the pics were real. Had to down-size them as they were originally 2.5 MB. Phones these days.

Thanks again, man. I'll try and give an update in a couple of weeks.

I used one like this for almost 10 years before I bought the hakko fx888d. It’s like the one BYOC would sell, but is out of stock. I bought the hakko for no reason other than I wanted one.


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Pedal building is like the opposite of sex. All the fun stuff happens before you get in the box.

UPDATE: I ended up doing two things with this build - 1. ordering replacement guts and 2. upgrading to a Hakko fx-888d. All I can say is that, holy cow, tools matter. My first go around was slow and frustrating because iron was not hot enough. The Hakko made it much easier.

After plugging version 2 in, I had no power at first when engaged. Re-wet the solder on one suspicious connection and all was good.

One other comment, if you aren't getting a signal when engaged and you decide to turn the volume all the way up to see if anything is coming through, make sure you turn that volume down again. It can be a bit loud.

Thanks again for the comments.