Harbinger issues - related to weather?

[mshuptar]

Hey everybody,

Can the cold weather damage pedals? I built the Harbinger in July 2014 and it has been one of my favorites since.
I played a bar gig a few days ago and it was cold outside. I finished my set and had to wait around for someone else. Now, I hate leaving gear in my car, but in this situation it couldn't be avoided. It got cold here (like -2F) and my amp and my pedal board were in my trunk for about six hours. As soon as I got home, I unloaded all my gear and left it until today.

When I fired up my rig today, the Harbinger didn't work. It passes a signal when the effect is both on and off, but there's no modulation. The lightbulb doesn't pulse anymore, but the brightness changes when I adjust the internal trimpots. Any quick suggestions? (Aside from completely unboxing and going through the standard troubleshooting procedures.)

Also, has anyone had this happen to gear that was exposed to the cold?

[gordo]

I'd suspect that the warm gig to cold car to warm house has messed with a solder joint somewhere. I'd lay eyes on external wiring first. Normally you have to worry about condensation but that's more of a cold car to warm gig and fire up the pedal while it's still cold scenario, which you don't have.

[madbean]

Very cold temps could cause a joint to crack I suppose. Or, it could just be coincidence. The thing I would probably do first is look at your voltages around the LFO. If that looks right then maybe re-flow the solder on that area and the speed pot.

[mshuptar]

I finally had a chance to troubleshoot this pedal. Thanks for the suggestions. I checked all the solder connections first and they were fine. When I pulled out the DMM, I found that one of the transistors had been jostled a slightly loose from its socket. Hooray for the easy fix! This problem and the weather were just coincidental in this situation.