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I've been trying to revamp a vintage small stone I had lying around to get it to work better on a pedalboard and in a live context. Basically, I'm just trying to make it true bypass with an LED and Boss-style 9V jack (and fix the volume drop that I've heard comes with true bypassing these, if it happens). I got the jack wired up easy enough, but I haven't been as successful with the rest of the bypass and switching.

All I get when I turn the effect on is the resonant/feedback portion of the circuit, with no guitar wet signal coming through. I suspect it has to do with where I have my input and output coming from, since there were two wires initially coming from the input jack before modding, one going to the switch (an SPDT that either sent it into the circuit or to the output) and one running directly into the board. Similarly, for the output, a wire was running from the lower left lug (or maybe upper right if my switch got flipped around while modding) of the color switch straight to the ouput jack, so I used that point as board out.

Anyone have any experience working with these? No one really seemed to have a good explanation of this anywhere online. I'll link to an issue J schematic and some pictures of what I've done below. Thanks!

http://www.montagar.com/~patj/smlstone.gif
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=119710.msg1118153#msg1118153

Awesome! Thanks for all the help. Can I ask why they use a 24V supply if it's knocked so far down in the circuit then? (unless I'm completely misunderstanding)

Quick question about the Road Rage, just to make sure it can do what I'm asking.

I want to use a road rage (or 2, if need be) to replace the power supply for my Deluxe Electric Mistress (a 24V center-positive wallwart). It says in the build doc that the inverter and charge pump can be used simultaneously, so am I correct in thinking it can take in a 9V or 12V center-negative and output 18V or 24V center-positive to the circuit? Or would I have to daisy-chain 2 Road Rages together, one doing each part of that?

If anyone can walk me through how to do all of this, that would be great. Thanks!

I just finished a project rehousing an early 2000s big box Deluxe Electric Mistress into a smaller enclosure so it could actually be used on a pedalboard. Everything went smoothly, but I noticed that when i turned it on there is WAY more clock noise than there ever was before with this pedal (which was normally very little). It kept getting weirder from there, with the noise sometimes disappearing depending on how I jiggled some wires, and the noise also coming through when the pedal was bypassed as long as the power supply was plugged in (the same power supply I used with the pedal before rehousing - an original EHX supply for this pedal).

This makes me think there is some sort of grounding issue/cross-talk thing going on, since it shouldn't be coming through with just the dry signal. The clock noise also has more of a "thunk/tick" kind of noise to it than it ever had before, which was usually just the standard swooshing hiss thing going on. Everything about the pedal is completely the same as it was (just pulled the circuit board and everything with it and put it in a new enclosure), except for the switch wiring and an LED. I followed these instructions for the new wiring:
http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-29/1681331-

Anyone have any idea what to do? None of the trimmers were moved either in the process, I have pictures of their locations before. I can post pics and voltages if that would be a help. Thanks.

Thanks, I will give them a try. I might throw the question about alternative switching options Haberdasher's way, since I believe he designed and fab'd the board in question.

Haberdasher, any suggestions on how to wire up switches for alternate clipping option for the circuit? Or if you had any other mods you've tried out for the Double Take, I'm all ears.

I could just use an SPDT on-off-on, right?

Hi all,

Just a quick question about what might be a very straight-forward modification. I recently built the Double Take project from Lectric-FX (essentially just a KOT - two Bluesbreaker circuits on one board), and was curious about including some of the switching options seen on the newer King of Tones (different clipping diodes, making the DIP switches external mount, selectable values on input cap, etc.).

Anyone have any input on how this would be done or if it is possible with the layout for the board? Any information or useful links would be really appreciated. I'll include the link to the build doc below. Thanks!

http://lectric-fx.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Double_Take.pdf

Great, I figured the LED wouldn't have affected it at all, but I wasn't sure if any other components were somehow damaged in the process. The transistors are an MP39B and an MP20B (the silicon is a 2N3094), so I will check out the voltages and go from there.

Hi all,

So I picked up a fuzz face clone from Big Knob Pedals a little while back, and absolutely love it. But as I was going to take the battery out of the pedal a couple of weeks ago (to finally be rid of it), I accidentally knocked the leads of the LED together, and maybe into the jacks as well, which caused the LED to flash on for a second. I immediately took the (live) battery out and let the pedal sit for a while before testing it. It still produced a fuzz sound, but the fuzz was definitely different than before (a lot more noise and more of a nasally, gated type of fuzz). I didn't have any extra LEDs on hand, so I continued to play on it for another week or so before new ones came in. I swapped the LED for a fresh one, but the pedal still doesn't sound like it did before (still a load more noise and not as smooth, volume and attack have to be up way higher for the same output level as lower settings before).

I don't really have any idea of how to go about troubleshooting this, what voltages everything should be, etc., other than just swapping the transistors. Any help would be really appreciated. I will post pics below.

Replaced Q1 and after some more poking around with an audio probe realized there was a place where the trace was cut within the board. Wired point-to-point across there, and now it works fine! Thanks for the help, glad to finally get this build off the ground.

Update:
Not surprisingly, the signal breaks down around Q1. It comes into the base fine, but I don't get signal on either of the outside legs (even above where they meet the pads, which I don't fully understand), and additionally there is no signal across R1 (it comes in fine on the C1 side, but on the far side where it meets the emitter of Q2 there is no signal).

Yep, clean signal comes through fine. And I made sure the pots were clear of the leads before testing, even with the longer wires sticking out

Hi all,

I put together a Cherrybomb build the other day with BC184s, but couldn't get any sound out of it. After triple checking everything and going through some of it with an audio probe (and then walking away and checking it again), I couldn't find anything wrong.  I thought I might have reversed the pinouts with the swapped-in BC184s, so I tried to take them out and flip them around, but in the process managed to lift a number of the pads (which hadn't happened in any other builds).

I put 2N5088s in after cleaning up the remaining pads to make sure that the pinout was correct, and did some point-to-point wiring for the legs with lifted pads. I still have no sound out of the pedal, and after checking the voltages realized that the voltages across the transistors were constant whether or not the pedal was engaged (and are pretty far off from the listed voltages).

Any advice on what to do/check going forward would be greatly appreciated. I'll post voltages and pics below.
Voltages:
Q1: C - 3.49, B - 3.49, E - 3.06
Q2: C - 2.9, B - 3.5, E - 2.8
Q3: C - 7.4, B - 2.2, E - 1.6

Great! Added a ground outside of the enclosure and it worked, and then boxed it up and it worked like a charm. Thanks a lot for the help, I am really digging this pedal.

Cheers!

Hey all,

First-time builder here, been admiring madbean's stuff for a while and finally decided to get my feet wet. I finished a Karate Shop build a couple of days ago, but I haven't been able to get any sound out of the pedal.  At first all I got was silence, with the pedal engaged or bypassed, and after re-soldering a wire now I just get a loud buzzing whenever the pedal is plugged in, still no guitar sound both engaged and bypassed.

I followed the wiring diagram and can't seem to see anything wrong with the switching assembly (since I'm not getting any sound at all, I understood this to be a switching problem), other than some char on the outside of a few wires. I'll post pics below, but if anyone has any idea what's wrong it would really be appreciated.