Rehousing danelectro CTO-1 no signal when engaged :/

[bluesjammin]

Ive followed a rehouse guide step by step of the Danelectro cool cat trem here http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Forums_General/acapella-94/294239-
I assumed my CTO-1 would be the same as far as wiring up goes.
when testing the pedal with pots and jacks and new dc connected, the pedal seems to be not getting power (led connected correctly and not coming on) the signal passes through pedal fine when turned off but just dead when engaged. ( vol pot light dusty/crackly noise can be heard when pedal is on and turned up and down.)
Im not sure if my power is connected properly. I have double checked soldering joints and wiring and cant see any bad connections. please help!!

[vigilante397]

I'm not an expert on these matters, but my bet is on the power jack. I know if you're looking at the back, the top is your hot lead and the left (where you have the black wire connected) generally goes to ground. Where does the other wire you have connected go?

[bluesjammin]

its power from the pcb not sure which is pos or neg etc. "Now take the two power wires running from the middle of the PCB, one is red, one is brown. The red wire goes to the tip of the DC jack, the brown goes to the sleeve. Then take the jumper from the output jack lug and solder it to tip of the power jack. You can do this to test the function of the pedal before housing it

[vigilante397]

its power from the pcb not sure which is pos or neg etc. "Now take the two power wires running from the middle of the PCB, one is red, one is brown. The red wire goes to the tip of the DC jack, the brown goes to the sleeve. Then take the jumper from the output jack lug and solder it to tip of the power jack. You can do this to test the function of the pedal before housing it

Hang on, standard power supplies are sleeve positive, which means board power should be attached to the sleeve, and negative should be attached to the tip.

I know this because I wire all mine backwards because I use backwards power supplies

[bluesjammin]

here are closer pics and a cool cat diagram i found showing the dc connection on pcb




so by the looks of that diagram i have the ground from board connected to tip of dc input

[bluesjammin]

that top photo diagram is from this link http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=86301.0;prev_next=prev

[HOTTUBES]

Do you have a multimeter to check for proper polarity & for 9 vdc at the board ?
That would tell you right quick if you have things around backwards ...
If not , follow the B+ lead from DC jack to circuit board , and do the same for the ground side just to make sure .
Center pin is ground as far as i can remember , standard Boss type 2.1mm !
Good luck , keep diggin , you'll fix it !



I have done this exact same rehouse job , it turned out to be nice OD !

[bluesjammin]

totally jealous!!
i have a multimeter but no idea how to check polarity :/
bit of a newb.
the tip is the one closest to the 'tip' where the 2.1mm input is correct? i have that connected to ground from the pcb

[HOTTUBES]

You see where its marked DC J1 on the circuit board ...
Ok , the pin marked " DC " is your ground , so black wire goes there .
The pin marked " J1 " will be the Positive DC , so Red wire goes there .


Now to the pic with the DC plug !!

The Black wire on the Left is good , leave it alone .
The Red wire should go on the middle lug
The orange wire should go on the far right lug as your looking at the pic .

[bluesjammin]

the brown and red wires coming out of dc and J1 have been unmoved since opening up the pedal. Do i need to remove the red and replace with black?? where does that end of the red go if i remove it from pcb?? it goes where brown is you say? sorry lol. confused still.
the black wire coming from the dc socket is going to the leftt over connector on the OUT jack. is that not correct??

[duck_arse]

erm, just to confuse you more, what are you going to re-house into, a metal box? from what I can see, that dc socket counts as "a metal one", one that has the metal mounting nut continuous with one of the connection pins. this usually means the jack shorts the positive supply to the (negative, 0V, earth) case, rendering your circuit powerless and your supply overheating.

if you don't want to use a battery internal to the finished case, you only need 2 connections to the dc socket. how/which depends on the supply you are using, a normal boss/ibanez is centre negative, barrel positive, because the plug opens a change-over switch when inserted into the socket.

[bluesjammin]

Rehousing into metal box yes. I have not rehoused it in testing though so that can't be problem. So I need a plastic dc socket then I'm guessing? I won't be using a battery. So which dc lugs will I be using? Any ideas?

[vigilante397]

Rehousing into metal box yes. I have not rehoused it in testing though so that can't be problem. So I need a plastic dc socket then I'm guessing? I won't be using a battery. So which dc lugs will I be using? Any ideas?

Yes, plastic jacks are the way to go. On the metal jacks you should be using (correct me if I'm wrong but this is how I do it) the top and left (looking at the back) prongs.

[bluesjammin]

You see where its marked DC J1 on the circuit board ...
Ok , the pin marked " DC " is your ground , so black wire goes there .
The pin marked " J1 " will be the Positive DC , so Red wire goes there .


Now to the pic with the DC plug !!

The Black wire on the Left is good , leave it alone .
The Red wire should go on the middle lug
The orange wire should go on the far right lug as your looking at the pic .

ok i followed these instructions and ran a black wire from the dc pin to the spot it was on on the dc jack, and ran red wire from J1 pin to the spot you told me to connect on jack. when testing, the led now worked when pedal engaged but only a lot of 'unearthed sound' came out of the pedal.
your instructions meant that i disconnected the brown wire from the pcb plug (you called it orange) because i had to place the black wire in its spot. sorry if thats confusing lol. that meant that there was nowhere for the orange wire to go to from the dc input.
might be easier to go from this pic of how it is now-
i have black connected to DC pin on board (ground)
and red wire to J1 (positive) connecting to 'middle lug' on dc input (sleeve). man its confusing what to call the DC lugs!!
am i supposed to connect the jacks up to 'ground' somehow? bit confused
whats next step??  thanks in advance guys!

[bluesjammin]

just when it was all being so easy (lol) one of the original wires wore loose and broke above the plug it was in.

was this 'shielded'? it breaks into 2 wires connecting to the IN jack. (as I was told to do on original rehouse guide page).
im not sure if i can just strip this one and solder it to the underside of the plug it snapped off of?  

[bluesjammin]

really thinking i should just rewire it all to a new 3dpdt switch and new IN and OUT jacks. I have some lying around. at least that way I can just follow some generic OD hook up guide out there.

[duck_arse]

if that broken wire is terminated correctly, the braid is only connected at one end, seemingly not the broken end. the broken wire is therefore, signal, in or out, I can't tell. to get at least working, you can solder a wire to the jack and then to the board, copper side. then, get yr meter on low ohms or continuity, find a point on the main pcb that is 0V, gnd, earth, and meter from there to each of the jack sleeves, and the dc connector. with power off, obviously. 0 ohms or very close, is the reading you want in each case.

[bluesjammin]

if that broken wire is terminated correctly, the braid is only connected at one end, seemingly not the broken end. the broken wire is therefore, signal, in or out, I can't tell. to get at least working, you can solder a wire to the jack and then to the board, copper side. then, get yr meter on low ohms or continuity, find a point on the main pcb that is 0V, gnd, earth, and meter from there to each of the jack sleeves, and the dc connector. with power off, obviously. 0 ohms or very close, is the reading you want in each case.

thanks for reply.
this really shows me how little i know about this stuff haaha. I wouldnt know where to start with all of that. Im more at the modding stage of 'follow soldering directions and hope they are accurate' stage lol.
I really need to do some homework on basic electronics/current flow and pedal modding. Any suggestions where to start with that? diy forum for newbs is what i need.
one of the main issues with this pedal is not knowing which connection is which on these plastic input/output jacks. Seems like i need to know how to work a multimeter properly in order to find out what lug is what

[bluesjammin]

using the volt meter i measured power getting to the main pcb at a good 9.45V. some components on the board though measure 9.45V and others between 5.2V-5.3V.
When measuring at the pots all connections read the 5.22ish volts but the volume pot connections read 0V
one of the solders on the switch read 7.5ish Volts
are these normal numbers or am i dropping power somewhere along the way where i shouldnt?

Note: at the moment, the pedal led lights up when engaged but there is NO sound when engaged or when bypassed.

[duck_arse]

you're geting there! what you really need is a circuit diagram, which will tell you and us where the volts go, and what we expect them to be doing. it is good to see you have battery volts on the board, but random other voltages tell us not much. if you get any voltages above battery volts, you know you're doing something wrong.

I'm sure there are plenny of movies on the ewetube thing covering using a meter and stuff.

do you have an empty jack-plug, no wires soldered? if so, power off, meter to ohms or continuity/beep, plug your mt plug into a socket. you can see the outer/sleeve/ground/shield/earth connection, so the other is tip or signal/hot. one probe there, and poke the other on the contacts of the socket, until you find 0 Ohms reading. that is the tip connection for that socket. do the same for the sleeve, to make sure, and write all these pin-findings on a diagram as you go.

follow you tip connections (from each of the sockets) to the footswitch, then from the f/s to the circuit board. draw the diagram. work the footswitch and see what eventuates. that ought to keep you going for a while .....