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Did I mention that the old TAPLFO works just fine?

Feck man. Now I will have 2 of them that I don't need, when the 3rd one arrives.

So the conclusion of the story is - it was the crystal. Fecking hell.

Oh well...

Ugh, I feel like I am losing my knack for pedal building as I am making more and more premature conclusions - the waveform is fine, I just had the Balance all the way to the right so some of the waveforms were pretty imperceptible with Balance set that way. It all works fine and is ready for boxing! Woo-hoo!

Thank you gents so much. I persevered, but only because of your support, I have less and less patience these days, but I really wanted this and boy did it pay off. Fantastic pedal Jon! Amazing sound, goes straight to the board.

Cheers gentlemen!

Playing with it some more I noticed that my Waveform control only works to half-way up and then after 12 o clock, regardless of the mode I'm in, nothing happens. Is this normal? The pot is a dual B10K pot.

I also biased Q1 to 7.5V as 6V had been giving me distortion on my high output SG pickups. Sounds spongier, not necessarily worse. Will have to spend some more time with the pedal to know which bias I like more.

Thank you lovely people!

I still haven't tried the old chip on the pcb, it might work! If it does then it was the crystal for sure. But right now I am ultra happy to just have it going.

Jon, it sounds pretty good although I am not sure if I have it at it's best still. I have yet to revisit one of your demo videos to get used to the sound some. For now, I was floored by how much difference the Balance and Waveform controls make, I expected them to be subtle but man they can make or break the sound. Is this what they are supposed to be like?

As for the two LEDs, they are 3mm red and green diffused, correct? I don't have 3mm leds right now, only one red so I put one 5mm green in there just so that the effect would work. They have to be of a certain type so that the effect would be at it's best right?

EDIT: Saw your video in the meantime, well mine sounds pretty much like that. Just gimme some advice on the two LEDs and I'll be off to box this baby! Woohoo!

I did notice a bit of distortion on the dry signal, but I think I had volume above unity all the time, and in the Bright mode it's no wonder to have some right?

Ok, so I thought of the slight possibility that I may have f-ed up something on the breadboard and since I haven't tried the combo of the new crystal and the new taplfo on the pcb at all I tried that and the frickin thing works now!!!!!! It works as it should from what I can tell. Will get back to you guys soon with a confirmation but it looks like it's working well now.
Jesus. Finally

Not the crystal. Changed it, and it's the same. Bloody hell.

Thank you for the crystal tester, I will give it a go!

Ninja edit: Dude, don't order another TAPLFO. The chances of two of them being bad without trauma is extremely small.

Brejna told me that he ordered several from another guy from Germany and it wasn't until he got one from the place I just ordered from that he got his Cardinal working. Who knows, maybe some contingent of bad ones got to Germany or whatever...

As for the crystal, I just saw that there are some locally, in Belgrade. Lol. I will go there after work and get me some. We'll know more afterwards.

Hehe yes the blue wire hanging is the one that I tap to ground, and yes the trimpot is oriented correctly.
Feck it man, I just ordered a 3rd taplfo from a source from which Brejna confirmed it worked for him (same source Felix mentioned). If that one doesn't work Imma cry.

It's just warped like that as I couldn't push it into the breadboard socket easily, but it connects ok. It's a 1K for the LED, I tried it all without that resistor as well and it's the same as one would expect. It says 20.000 Mhz on my crystal, that's ok right? Just triple-checking, as I am desperate.

I think a picture, however rats-nesty it might be will be useful.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B--6F_4JB7SYajM4amx0eEF0Qm8/view?usp=sharing
I don't think I can shoot this in a way that'll make it presentable :/ the crystal is on the left as I removed it from the pcb.

I assume you're getting a good 5V in at pin1? (Pin 8 is the multiplier and showing 1x, so that looks fine.)
Does pin 4 zero out when you tap?
6 and 7 should be oscilating between 0 and ~2.5 when the thing is on, if its a constant reading it is possible its oscillating too quickly to read, I suppose.
Is pin 5 connected to anything?

I do get 5V on pin 1.
Pin 4 zeroes out when I tap, yes.
5 is not connected to anything, on pin 6 I get 1.47V flat. Then I stepped away from the breadboard to have some lunch, got back, measured the voltages again and I was getting flat zeroes on pins 5,6,7. Now I can't even get 1.47 like before. Great. Just... great.

Thank you so much guys, the support means a lot as I am very discouraged by this :/ I am lusting for this pedal so will continue to put the effort for sure.

This is the crystal I use - http://www.banzaimusic.com/Quartz-Crystal-QM020.html

And no, I don't have a scope :/

@Brian, I will try that!

@Jon - I could send you a picture of my breadboard but I feel you will get a headache if I do! I used those probes and like 20 of them so the whole thing looks like a rat's nest, but since I am getting the same voltages like on the pcb I am guessing I have done it right.

Hi guys, major taplfo problems here :/ My tap tempo cardinal is sitting on my bench for a month as I am unable to get the LFO part working at all. Jon has been a great sport and helped me a lot to try and debug it but we came to a conclusion that  my TAPLFO is simply not working so I bought another one (ouch!). And that one isn't working either.

Basically I've got this thing on my breadboard



cause I am trying to get the LFO working but it ain't happening. It just won't oscillate. I bought one from Banzai Music and the other one from Musikding, both are from Germany. I bought my crystal from Banzai too. Could it be the crystal?

Here are my voltages for the LFO pins (depth at max, all other controls half-way up):

2 - 2.17 V
3 - 2.39 V
4 - 5.02 V
5 - 0.51 V
6 - 2.19 V (someslight oscillation from 2.18 to 2.21 but that's probably my multimeter)
7 - 2.18 V
8 - 5.05 V

The other taplfo chip I received shows 0.03 on pins 6 and 7.

It's a total mess. I can't believe this. Any thoughts guys? I would really like to finish this and put it on my board :/ some other tests I could do? Is it possible that I got 2 dead-on-arrival taplfos? I can't be that unlucky. I did not abuse them, they should be in good operational condition.

Thank you for any help you might provide. Cheers.

https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/calling-parliament-take-second-look-eu-referendum#.V3EXA_wLWDM.facebook

Devastating read.

Happened to me a couple of times, and always vero sounds better. It's a bitch to build on vero in comparison to pcb but there is something about it, seriously. I've heard some stories that vero being what it is can produce parasitic capacitance or something like that which influences the sound. A dude that's designing pcbs for living for a huge company/factory told me that. Dunno.
Best muffs (pharaoh) I've made have been on vero.

Yeah I heard somebody say that the Bosstone is good for slide, I've never built one, what would be a good known schem/layout that some of you guys have built in the past?