Build Your Own Clone Message Board

So - I do not know if this is expected behavior where the answer is "Well, don't do that?", but :

I finished building the Crown Jewel, and aside from finding exactly how many swears I knew while getting the switches and pots lined up, everything seems to be hunky dory EXCEPT:

If I have both clipping switches in the middle/"off" position, the distortion is like "My Rat from 1989 is running out of battery, is super fizzy, and kind of sounds like I'm running a ring modulator as well.

I get the exact same sound if I have hard clipping off, and soft clipping set to LED.

If I back off the drive to between 8 and 9 o'clock, it gets less gonkulator-sounding, but still sounds like a pedal with a dying battery.

Both sides of hard clipping, and Si soft clipping work as expected, this is purely happening on LED soft and "all off"

The one photo I happen to have until I get home later : https://photos.app.goo.gl/g8l0FWwV4Iym3gL63

I'm still planning on giving the board an alcohol/acid brush cleaning and pulling out the magnifying glass (and sending more and better focused pics, unless someone says "Oh yeah, we've seen this before and..."), but I've reflowed the board, don't believe I have any solder bridges/inadvertent shorts, and am 99% sure nothing's installed backwards, and have spare opamps on the way to test with. I do have a multimeter that I am learning what I'm doing with to test.

Any ideas/"where next" suggestions?

Any chance you could post a sound clip of this weird/bad pedal output?

Tough to see much in that photo since much of the main PCB is obscured by the boost module and dry blend board, plus it's shot at an angle rather than straight on. Also, it needs to be larger, better focused and better lit.

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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

I'll do that once I'm home and the kids are asleep enough that me futzing around with garageband won't wake them.

Alas, that photo was the "Hey look what I made" to my friends - I'll get ones that show my soldering talent or lack thereof when I grab the sound samples.

Okay - now that I'm not knocked on my butt from a chest cold, here's the sound file, images incoming as I'm taking it apart now.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc1j6xevfdol8jv/CJSounds.mp3?dl=0

Clean/Soft Si (sounds as expected)/ All off / Soft LED / Clean

It sounds less gonkulator-y than it did last week, but there's no discernible difference (to me) between soft LED and all off.

will edit post to add photos in a few minutes.
(and yes, I will be rewiring the switches and jacks now that I see 'em all blown up)

gallery:
https://imgur.com/a/Y2opC18

Update : replaced the op amp with another one I had around - one problem solved - the only remaining issue is that the LED clipping is fizzy/noisy/ring-modulator-y at 9v - when I put it all back together and started goofing around with it, everything actually seemed pretty OK at 18v, so this might just be the nature of the beast.

This is normal. The OFF/OFF clipping and the LED/OFF clipping settings will not sound as good at 9V if you have the dry blend add on board because their output is too loud. If you noticed in your recording, the outputs of the no clipping and LED clipping are significantly louder. This is normal because the more a signal is clipped, the weaker it gets. The weird clipping that you are getting is not from the distortion part of the circuit. It is from the EQ section. The EQ section needs the higher 18v for more headroom so that it can handle the louder output from those clipping settings. So you should switch to 18v mode if you want to use no clipping or soft LED clipping.

The dry blend add on board is designed to produce a clean boost comparable in dB to the Klon while having parity with the lower outputs of Hard Ge clipping (like the Klon) and soft Si clipping (like the tubescreamer) since these are the most popular. You can make it so that no clipping or soft LED clipping do not cause so much clipping in the EQ section by adjusting the parity to match their higher outputs. You would do this by increasing the value of the R2 56k resistor. Maybe try a 100k. This may make the Soft Si and hard Ge clipping feel a little weird when blending because the clean dry signal will be just as loud and maybe even a little louder.

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*patience is a virtue*

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

Awesome - thank you kindly!