Hi, this is my first post and my first guitar pedal project. I built it a little while ago and it worked fine, then I decided to put the LED in, so I drilled the extra hole and I'm waiting for the bezel to arrive in the mail.
Since I've drilled the hole it's had some problems with noise which wasn't there before. I opened it up and tried adding a wire to ground the output jack (by joining it to the ground of the input), I understand this probably wasn't necessary at all but it hasn't hurt it.
The main feature of the buzz is that it goes away when another pedal is turned on before it in the signal chain, but it is not affected by anything being turned on/off after it. Here's a link to a sound demo I have demonstrating it.
https://soundcloud.com/oliver-thompson-17/1a-1
In the first section of the clip I demonstrate the clean signal, then turn the offending pedal on, and then turn another pedal on in front of it to demonstrate the noise going away. The next section shows how its affected by the middle position on my guitar (two humbuckers), when it's in the middle position some of the background noise goes away (probably just my guitar, I know). The final section is me taking my hand on and off the bridge of the guitar, it get's more intense as I put my hand on the bridge like I'm palm muting. I still have my hands on the strings while doing this so you don't hear much of a difference from the grounding.
I've attached a picture of the insides, I guess the logical next step for me would be to take out the board and check the other side for possible metal shavings from drilling the hole, but the way I have it in means it's a little fiddly and you guys might have an easy answer for me.
Thanks for reading this far, hopefully someone can help me out because it's making it unusable right now, thank you in advance
Welcome!
So I understand, the only change you made before the noise started was drilling that hole?
Was everything still in the pedal when you did that?
My guess is mechanical vibration shook loose a bad solder joint. Wiggle the wires a but and see if any joints move.
Yep, the only change was drilling the hole. Now that you mention it I did notice a couple of solder joints I thought could do with re-flowing. I'll try that and see if it makes a difference
Tried going over a lot of joints that looked the worst, and tried it out again. It feels like it might just be slightly better, but the problem is still there. Are there any other options?
The dc jack, is it grounded to the 1/4"input anywhere?
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Both the dc hack and the input are grounded, so I suppose they're probably connected. Should I try grounding them together directly to make sure?