Tag Archives: DIY

The road to a simple DIY Pedal, pt 9

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Last night I got around to desolder and replace the transistor in my simple Bazz Fuss circuit.

Getting it off the board proved every little bit as frustrating as I had imagined, and I ended up demolishing it to a point where it could not be tested for functional errors.

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Either way, I soldered in a new one and tried it out.

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Unfortunately it made not difference. The clean, bypassed signal sounds normal, but as soon as I engage the effect I get this oddly clipped, blorring and ‘farting’ sound which increases in awfulness as I turn up the volume.

It is a distorted signal, but somewhere something is still way off….

If you have any tips or thoughts, please share in the comments.

Der Angel from Musikding

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I got a package in the mail today containing a DIY pedal kit, Der Angel from Musikding.

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This is the first time I order from them, but based on the service and the quality of the packaging I suspect it wont be the last.

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Let’s see when I can carve out some time to actually solder it together :).

The road to a simple DIY Pedal, pt 8

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Ok, so mechanically all should be connected and soldered properly, but for some reason I’m not getting anything but farting noises out of the effect signal. The clean, bypassed signal sounds great (at least the footswitch and status LED seems to be working :) ).

Given the simplicity of the circuit that leaves only two suspects.

Either the diode is fried, or the transistor has given up its ghost.

Thus, today I removed the diode and tested it with the multimeter, only to confirm that there was no problems with it. I tested a new one and soldered it into the circuit, confirming that there are no shorts.

So, back to square 2. Tomorrow I will test the transistor as well. If you have any tips on how to remove a soldered in transistor please share :)

The road to a simple DIY Pedal, pt 7

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After essentially hitting the wall and running out of ideas yesterday, my good friend Nicklas pointed out that I had a suspicious solder joint in the lower left side of this photo:

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And of course he was right. If ever there was a cold joint :). A quick resolder took care of that, now the signal is at least stable.

Lesson learned: Always check, check and check your solder joints again. A bad solder won’t always come loose right away, but can let go while you are fiddling around with your contraption.

Rechecking all the other joints revealed nothing out of the ordinary…

The road to a simple DIY Pedal, pt 6

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The short is gone.

But!

I’m still not getting the signal I expect. The clean is coming through nicely, but the effected signal sounds extremely muddy and gritty. To the point where its really unusable.

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A bit unsure where to go from here to be honest.

On the bright side, I’ve added the status LED to the circuit, and it lights up just fine :)

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