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DIY Stompboxes => Building your own stompbox => Topic started by: bassplaya12 on February 08, 2009, 10:40:59 PM

Title: Trouble shooting booster
Post by: bassplaya12 on February 08, 2009, 10:40:59 PM
I just tried shoving my BYOC confidence boost into a 1590a enclosure.  Its a tight fit but i got stuff in there.  I went to fire it up and a couple weird things happened.  When the power supply is in, but there is no chord in the input the LED lights up very bright.  When i put a chord in, the LED weakened and looked as if it was dying.  When playing in bypass, signal flows fine and there is sound (some static but i know its just a crappy connection on one of my solder spots).  When engaged, nothing.  Weak LED and no sound.  Any one ever encountered this?  What should i do?  It worked fine before i tried wiring it with led and such.
Title: Re: Trouble shooting booster
Post by: kurtlives on February 08, 2009, 10:49:57 PM
Read about debugging in the FAQ and the thread at the top of the page.

Every single person on the board has had a build that did not produce sound. There is no one thing that causes this.

Things to check...
Solder joints
All ground points have continuity with ground?
Have a limiting resistor for the LED?
V+ shorting to ground?
Bypass wired right?

Etc...etc...etc..
Title: Re: Trouble shooting booster
Post by: petemoore on February 09, 2009, 10:45:06 AM
.  Its a tight fit but i got stuff in there.
  Clue #1...
   I went to fire it up and a couple weird things happened.  When the power supply is in, but there is no chord in the input the LED lights up very bright.
  Clue #2
  ....sounds like a big voltage drop causes the LED to dim when the input cables input sleeve makes contact with the Gnd./Sleeve lugs of the jack, completing a short circuit.
  I would prefer the LED be switched with everything elses power at the input jack, but in this case it seems to be a way of reading voltage input and then voltage drop.
  Tight fit/ stuff in there, very dim LED...perhaps there's a shorted PS, remove the battery and test for continuity between V+ and Gnd. [beep mode of DMM].