The sound of silence

[thegarne]

Hi all, could someone please help I have built three pedal kits on pcb's and all have the same problem, silence! their all simple begginers kits and i'm sure its an off board problem (I'm testing as recommended without foot switch ect) its as if the volume control on the guitar is turned down any help would really be appreciated Thanks.

[antonis]

Hi & Welcome..

Could you please post some build photos together with pedal description..??

P.S.
A "silent" pedal is much more easy to fix than a hissy/squealy/hummy/tinky/blinky/smokie one..

[Mark Hammer]

1) Despite how long I've been at this, I still manage to forget to make critical ground connections between controls, jacks, switches the ground on the board.  So check those.

2) Check the orientation of critical polarized components like electrolytic caps and diodes.  I recently "fixed" something when I realized that one of the op-amp chips needed to be rotated 180 degrees.

3) Solder bridges can happen to the most seasoned of us, but moreso to novices.  One of the things I often recommend to beginners is to use some form of solvent to dissolve and remove build-up of solder flux on the board.  Flux is not "wrong", but it IS shiny and can often make it hard to spot unintended solder bridges.  So I like to get the flux out of the way so that I can see and confirm  that pads/traces which should not be joined are in fact not joined.

But as someone else is sure to do any second now, check the "debugging page" link at the top of the screen here.

[iainpunk]

welcome to the forum (Mark, where are your manners?)

we'd like to see pictures of the boards and offboard wiring, that be a step one
IC and Transistor voltages when turned on
https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=29816.0

check this out!

cheers, Iain

edit, try to do ONE debug at a time, not all tree at once.
maybe even start a separate thread for each pedal

[EBK]

More often than I'd like to admit, when I get the silent treatment from a build test, it is because I have messed up my external cables, either trying to plug the guitar into the output jack, or missing the guitar altogether.    It is always worth checking the simplest things.

Statistically speaking, I would agree with Mark that missing ground connections are likely.  I've messed those up too.   

Also, welcome!