EHX Bassballs Clone Build - Help Needed! (Constant tone when engaged)

[slacker]

Audio probing might help narrow down where the problem is, start at pin 2 of the toggle switch, one switch position should be clean signal the other should be distorted with the response pot controlling the level/ amount of distortion. If everything is ok there then test pins 1 and 7 of the other opamp to see if both stages are oscillating or if it's just one.

[Mark Hammer]

...or just lift one end of the 2k7 mixing resistor from one filter stage, and then from the other filter stage, to see which half the oscillation is coming from.

[duck_arse]

To be honest, I'm so pissed off with this build, I'm seriously considering ripping the circuit out, and wiring the Kraken into the same case - I can use all the same drill holes and it looks like a slightly more simplistic build. Then again, if I do that and IT doesn't work, I'll really lose my patience lol.

http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/madbean-kraken.html

when in doubt, absurdist satire ..... (stick with it)

[steveyraff]

I actually found a pretty obvious mistake - and fixing it has changed nothing.

The 10uf cap at the top left of IC1 had its bottom positive leg soldered in one hole below where it was supposed to go. Fixed it and its behaving the exact same.

I tried throwing it at a wall to see if that helped. Its also just the same after that. Fed up with this one now... it won.

[steveyraff]

For anyone still listening to my incessant ranting and complaining - I think its working now and it turns out its as I suspected all along, just me being a dumbass. I'm blaming stress and rushing it, and thats the excuse I'm sticking to.

I thought I checked my values, but not thoroughly enough. I had a packet of resistors labelled "2.7", and I stupidly didn't pause to check the colour bands on them, presuming it was correct. It was and it wasn't. It was actually 2.7 ohms, not 2.7K like I needed. To make matters worse, I did the same with a pack of resistors labelled "220". All in all, about 5 incorrect resistors.

What a mess! Shame on me. Its one of the first builds that beat me. Now from all the jigging about my wiring on it is sloppy from being re-soldered to many times - AND I already built the friggin Kraken. BOTHERATION!

Lesson learnt... sorry for wasting everyones time - but many thanks for trying to help out.

Ain't no cure for stupid!

[vigilante397]

sorry for wasting everyones time - but many thanks for trying to help out.

No time has been wasted, helping is precisely why many people are on here in the first place. Glad you got it sorted! 

[Mark Hammer]

Sometimes the cure for "stupid" is simply better lighting and a magnifier.  The misreading of violet as black or red as orange or white as yellow (and vice versa for all of them) has happened on this board more times than anyone would care to remember.

At a certain point, you have to trust your eyes and judgment.  And if it doesn't work, THEN question yourself, but not before.

[bluebunny]

Ain't no cure for stupid!

Join the club, Steve!    We all do a little "stupid" from time to time.  The cure is learning, which we also do around here to distraction. 

[duck_arse]

PLEASE tell us the kraken works!

don't feel bad about wrong resistors. it's when the circuit works better with the wrong value, worse with the right, that things get confusing. even more-so after you check the values.

but how does it sound?

[steveyraff]

PLEASE tell us the kraken works!

don't feel bad about wrong resistors. it's when the circuit works better with the wrong value, worse with the right, that things get confusing. even more-so after you check the values.

but how does it sound?

The Kraken is actually built. I'm just waiting on a CA3080 and its done. Its just a little irritating that by the time I found out what was wrong with the Bassballs, fixed it, and finished it, I'd already built the Kraken circuit lol.

A friend give me a few bucks to make a funky bass pedal for him. When the Bassballs didn't work, I made the Kraken. Then I got the Bassballs working so I'll probably just put the Kraken straight to eBay when its boxed up.

The Bassballs actually sounds pretty cool. I've only built drive pedals from scratch so far, apart from a few PCB delays. It was cool to make something different.

I made a rough, and very sloppy demo on my phone when I got the Bassballs up and running...
http://vid597.photobucket.com/albums/tt52/steveyraff/Funkster.%20_zpseouolbd8.mp4

Again, thanks everyone for all the help. Appreciate your time.