A tale of true stupidity: How I finally got a compressor working.

[DK1]

Tldr: fml, had a short in my testing rig.  I never checked voltages, and rebuilt a pedal three times before I figured it out.

Last time I tried a compressor build, I never got it to work. It passed signal but never compressed. I actually got so frustrated at it that I stopped building for a month or two.

I decided to try a different design, and went with an engineer's thumb. I found a verified vero layout, courtesy of tagboardeffects.blogspot.com, and away I went. Got it slammed together pretty quickly, as I'm about 10 or so pedals into this hobby now, and I've gotten most of the bugs out if my process... Or so I thought.

Damn thing wouldn't do anything. Wouldn't even pass signal. I'd gotten my ca3080 off of ebay, and after checking every jumper and passive component, I thought maybe I'd gotten bad chips. So, since my first attempt was a 5-knobber, and there were some questions about the extra knobs, I rebuilt the whole thing, ground up, as a two knob version, hoping that perhaps I just needed something simpler. Or maybe my brain was not seeing some problem bridge or cut or something. I even used different ics.

Still didn't work.

At this point, I'm pretty sure that it's the China ca3080s,  so I order some LM13700s and (after waiting for them to come in) try the conversion harness tagboard mentions. Doesn't work. Frustrated, I try a totally different layout, provided by sabrotone, since it is designed for the LM13700 from the ground up. Mind you, this is the third total rebuild... Which doesn't work.

I've been running the vero through my breadboard for the offboard jacks and power. I've used it many times, and knew it was fine. But I'm checking voltages (for the first time), and now I'm noticing I can't get 9v directly from my power supply (which I also know is good). Now, I'm super confused... I change the power cable out, and have the same problem... Except the new cable pins directly into the breadboard instead of going through a jack, and I noticed that it sparked when I plugged it in. And that's weird, because the 9v and ground shouldn't be connected anywhere.

Flip the breadboard over, and, lo and behold, diode legs stuck in between several pins including the power rail. Pull them out, and guess what? Worked. Every knob. The bright switch. Everything was perfect.

Hey, it only took about three weeks, but I finally have a working compressor. :-/

[EBK]

You wouldn't have learned as much if it worked the first time.   . Good for you sticking with it for so long.  Happy to hear you got it working.    

The thought occurred to me that if your circuit doesn't pass any signal, you've successfully built a compressor that happens to have infinite ratio and zero threshold.   

[PRR]

I once got hung-up for 5 months before I saw the power wires were swopped.

[banjerpickin]

Now you have extra compressors to give to your friends 

[merlinb]

I'm checking voltages (for the first time),

Now, what have we learned?