DIYstompboxes.com

So I have an MXR micro amp clone, built a few weeks ago & boxed up.
Sounded great .... went on holiday for two weeks.
Got back and decided to play it for a while and see if it needed any "tweaks"
...perhaps reducing the VERY high end that this thing passes etc ...
Sounded like poo .... very "farty" and "mis-biased" sounding !
I thought ... Huh ! what happened here ...
Three hours of "tinkering" and checking with a DMM ....

....... then I thought, "check the battery"



....... it was reading only 6.3 volts  !!!
Seems part of the board was touching the case and shorting it out
fot two weeks !
I hadn't used my usual "piece of black foam/plastic" on the inside back
of the lid.

What a "dumbass"    :icon_redface:

Marty.

Always good to know...

What, the battery or board touching the case drains the battery?? I haven't noticed that, and I've never seen people use foam or plastic to prevent this...

Quote from: Herr Masel on October 05, 2005, 04:28:40 AM
What, the battery or board touching the case drains the battery?? I haven't noticed that, and I've never seen people use foam or plastic to prevent this...

AHEM ....
In EVERY single Boss pedal, there's a chunk of plastic between "back of board" and "Back of case"

Thats only about 9 million pedals !!   :icon_wink:

Part of the board was "just" touching the metal case and causing the "short" which = battery drain !!

Marty.

Oh, I see. I am thankful I was able to benefit from your stupidity :icon_wink:

I've had lots of that. The VPD-1 TC Electronics pedal has a black foam block sticked on the back of the PCB.

http://aronnelson.com/gallery/Schematics-etc/geXtrs_003v

Hmmm, well not quite the same but I had my Vintage Phase 90 ( script ) wired up and working after being without a box ( board was given to me ... ) and I didn't pay much attention when I put it back in. Unfortunately something shorted somewhere as I had to replace an op-amp and all 4 fets ( so they would be matched ) to get it working again! ...

Here's another stupid thing I did last week ... populated the board for a BSIABII while watching exhibition Hockey on the tube ... forgot a jumper and a cap! ...and I put the  "in" and "out" on the wrong sides of the box! :D .... Lesson learned ...  :icon_mrgreen:

I'm sure there's more stupid mistakes to come ....

I could beat you at this game any day of the week, but I'd prefer not to state what I've done :P

I can beat that. Yesterday I was trouble shooting with a pedal and went to test it and tuned on the amp and picked up the guitar . Started strumming........  No effect when i engaged the pedal?  A few minutes later I realized i was plugged straight into the amp.

I think sometimes you get so focused on the internal parts and function that you forget about the fundamentals of checking the battery, plugging in cables.....etc.....

                                      your not alone, Garrett

My best one was testing a LED and LDR combination on broad daylight......... took me three days to figure out why the unit worked in the evening and did not work the next morning ;)

I can out-dumb you all.

You know how you can have an elastic band in your hands, and while you're talking with someone you absent-mindedly stretch and release the elastic, over and over?  Well, many many years ago, I was in the midst of a post-coital conversation and happened to have something very elastic affixed to a rather sensitive (and at that point VERY sensitive) part of my body.  I did what I usually do.  I stretched the "elastic" out to its maximum length and let go.

Yep, some of the worst moments of our lives happen because we just weren't paying enough attention.

 Â Well instead of thinking it out [actually I spent three days pondering on this simple little puzzle]...
 I spent an hour oversize drilling, making [trying to anyway] a non conductive plate, trashing them [too small for their own strength]...
 Then opting to use Two non conductive plates [perf with copper side away from box side]...and installing that.
 This morning I figure out that I'll just invert the cable coming to AAll the jacks, and then these ASSignable Polarity RS 9vdc jacks should work just fine...Dohh :icon_redface:
 The oversizeness of the hole I drilled should be easy enough to overcome, then the rest of the jacks should go in alot easy.
 I'm getting BrainBlok I ghuess.

Quote from: Melanhead on October 05, 2005, 07:49:55 AM
Hmmm, well not quite the same but I had my Vintage Phase 90 ( script ) wired up and working after being without a box ( board was given to me ... ) and I didn't pay much attention when I put it back in. Unfortunately something shorted somewhere as I had to replace an op-amp and all 4 fets ( so they would be matched ) to get it working again! ...

Here's another stupid thing I did last week ... populated the board for a BSIABII while watching exhibition Hockey on the tube ... forgot a jumper and a cap! ...and I put the  "in" and "out" on the wrong sides of the box! :D .... Lesson learned ...  :icon_mrgreen:

I'm sure there's more stupid mistakes to come ....

Sit in the box, man.  That's 2 minutes for being a dumbass.  :icon_mrgreen:

I've done stuff like that.  And I've done the old plugging straight in to the amp, going to test a circuit without power applied (more than I want to admit), transistors in backwards.  Oh, and one late night this one got me.....the guitar wasn't plugged in.  :icon_redface:    :icon_biggrin:

Ok, as long as we are sharing:

I posted a little while ago about a problem I was having with the DOD 250 circuit (no sound when effect was ON). 

I got some very good pointers: build a adioprobe (DONE), check the Switch (Removed it from the circuit), Polarity of Electrolytics (check), then I looked at the IC (UPSIDE DOWN).

Ummmmm  ??? :icon_redface: :icon_biggrin:

Quote from: vanhansen on October 05, 2005, 09:43:53 AM

Quote from: Melanhead on October 05, 2005, 07:49:55 AM
Hmmm, well not quite the same but I had my Vintage Phase 90 ( script ) wired up and working after being without a box ( board was given to me ... ) and I didn't pay much attention when I put it back in. Unfortunately something shorted somewhere as I had to replace an op-amp and all 4 fets ( so they would be matched ) to get it working again! ...

Here's another stupid thing I did last week ... populated the board for a BSIABII while watching exhibition Hockey on the tube ... forgot a jumper and a cap! ...and I put the  "in" and "out" on the wrong sides of the box! :D .... Lesson learned ...  :icon_mrgreen:

I'm sure there's more stupid mistakes to come ....

Sit in the box, man.  That's 2 minutes for being a dumbass.  :icon_mrgreen:

I'm sure it'll get worse ... It all starts tonight!  :icon_mrgreen:

Quote from: GVC on October 05, 2005, 01:05:58 PM
Ok, as long as we are sharing:

I posted a little while ago about a problem I was having with the DOD 250 circuit (no sound when effect was ON). 

I got some very good pointers: build a adioprobe (DONE), check the Switch (Removed it from the circuit), Polarity of Electrolytics (check), then I looked at the IC (UPSIDE DOWN).

Ummmmm  ??? :icon_redface: :icon_biggrin:

Ha, I had this once too; the problem was that the IC (a 741) also worked in the around position but the sound was thin, bad and did not react to the pots....... Took me the whole dismanteling of the board before I noticed (a well, I did not notice; I just took it off once and forgot how to put it back so I checked)  :icon_redface:

On my Ross Phaser, I left a wire too long on the copper side of the board (actually I didn't cut it at all).  The wire was long enough to jump across 2 traces.  The phaser worked fine pre-box.  Then I boxed it up and the wire got pressed (and shorted) across the 2 other copper traces.  My boxed up phaser sounded horrible, like some kind of bad vibrato thing.  Finally I took it apart and found the offending wire. 

Then I understood why so many people enjoyed the phaser. 

A lot of times I also solder something wrong on the footswitch.  And I have put ICs in backwards, that maks circuits do weird things.

Had our first rehearsal since our start-of-the-Summer gig last Friday. Got to the solo, kicked in my Tripple Fuzz, and  - nothing. Had left it plugged in all summer on my pedal board - no power socket. Duh.

::)

"Re: Have you ever been this dumb ??"

Dumber

and I'll just leave it at that...

Answer:  oh, yeah!

And I'm takin' the Fifth on exactly "wah-t" it was...

Quote from: dv8 on October 05, 2005, 02:55:43 PM
On my Ross Phaser, I left a wire too long on the copper side of the board (actually I didn't cut it at all).  The wire was long enough to jump across 2 traces.  The phaser worked fine pre-box.  Then I boxed it up and the wire got pressed (and shorted) across the 2 other copper traces.  My boxed up phaser sounded horrible, like some kind of bad vibrato thing.  Finally I took it apart and found the offending wire. 

Hands up, everyone who has ever had to say "It worked fine before I boxed it up."  Am I allowed to stick up more than two hands?

Quote from: Mark Hammer on October 05, 2005, 04:18:57 PM

Quote from: dv8 on October 05, 2005, 02:55:43 PM
On my Ross Phaser, I left a wire too long on the copper side of the board (actually I didn't cut it at all).  The wire was long enough to jump across 2 traces.  The phaser worked fine pre-box.  Then I boxed it up and the wire got pressed (and shorted) across the 2 other copper traces.  My boxed up phaser sounded horrible, like some kind of bad vibrato thing.  Finally I took it apart and found the offending wire. 

Hands up, everyone who has ever had to say "It worked fine before I boxed it up."  Am I allowed to stick up more than two hands?

hands, feet, misc appendages....  :)

I'm pretty good for wiring pots backwards.  I put in an SPDT switch to select diode pairs, boxed up the effect and marked the positions wrong.

Recently I went outside (I don't have a garage) to drill some holes for a tremolo.  I ran out of daylight, my pencil markings on the PVC got hard to read and i misread the sizes for the input/output jacks.  Not enough for it to dawn on me when I picked up the 7/8" drill bit, but enough to make the 5/8" jacks float around in their holes.  Good thing those drain caps are cheap.

The one about the LED/LDR one is a classic.  I didn't get bit by that but i thought about it in that context-  "I wonder how many guys pull their hair out when they should take it into a dark room..." etc..

All my brain farts are usually way worse than that!  Mine Usually takes a full cranialrectomy! If that's worst you ever do, you're in pretty good shape.

i'm always good for a reversed transistor ... obviously (http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=37925.0).   :icon_rolleyes:

i did the exact same thing with a fuzz face clone. 

i think that i win. when i was making my crash sync, i finished it at about 4:30 am and was thus pretty beat. i plugged it in and fired it up, but it didn't work. i turned in.

next day, i go back after it at about 1:00 am. the result is that i discover the primary problem. this problem is that i have not yet placed the chips in their sockets.

this is where it gets interesting.

in order to solve this problem i proceed to desolder my sockets and then install both chips upside down. believe it or not, it didn't work. i realized my error, and destroyed both chips getting them free. after resoldering the sockets, i placed fresh parts in and it still didn't work. that was when i realized that i had plugged my battery into an effect pedal residing on my breadboard... and then, with that fixed, i had the noise.  :icon_cool:

yep. takes it's toll on you.