No worries, thanks for your thoughts anyway.
I'm happy to report that it is fixed.
I have a friend who has a TU-3, and he was kind enough to let me borrow it to compare with mine.
The way Boss laid out the circuit board in this pedal is interesting. When you lift off the bottom cover, you'll see the back of the circuit board. To get to the side where most of the components are you have to lift the board up.
But, there are a number of spots that have connection through the board (to the side you can see when you remove the cover) and are labeled as "TP". (Test point, maybe?) After a bit more poking around, I found a drop of solder bridging one of the test points, which connects to a transistor (that, from it's position, I believe is the output buffer) to ground. And after I popped it off, the pedal has worked perfectly
I don't think it looks like anyone has been soldering anything in it before, so it's possible that it's been there since it was new. But how that would have passed QC, I'll never understand.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and offer your thoughts.
I'm happy to report that it is fixed.
I have a friend who has a TU-3, and he was kind enough to let me borrow it to compare with mine.
The way Boss laid out the circuit board in this pedal is interesting. When you lift off the bottom cover, you'll see the back of the circuit board. To get to the side where most of the components are you have to lift the board up.
But, there are a number of spots that have connection through the board (to the side you can see when you remove the cover) and are labeled as "TP". (Test point, maybe?) After a bit more poking around, I found a drop of solder bridging one of the test points, which connects to a transistor (that, from it's position, I believe is the output buffer) to ground. And after I popped it off, the pedal has worked perfectly
I don't think it looks like anyone has been soldering anything in it before, so it's possible that it's been there since it was new. But how that would have passed QC, I'll never understand.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and offer your thoughts.