Klon clone double trouble

[Ang3lus]

Hey everyone,

after a hiatus of almost 8 years and due to the corona lockdown i'm back building some leftover pedals from when i was building pedals and amps for fun.

i populated these 2 boards (grindcustoms) and have 2 different problems but somewhat related.

on both units the tone and volume controls work fine, bypass is also fine.

in one board(unpictured) I get no gain and when the gain control is fully up i get a bit of treble loss and some minor minor volume loss.
on the 2nd board (pictured) i get no gain unless i strum really hard and use humbuckers.

voltages all check out fine according to voltages i've seen online with klon units, with all ics, my only suspect are the diodes.

differences i made to the units:

1st one(unpictured) i used non-polarized 1uf caps, other than that everything is the same (gain stage is 1uf electros)
2nd one(pictured) i replaced the non-polarized with what i had on hand (3.3uf only for the charge pump part), for the gain stage i used 1uf electros.

here is the pictured unit, hope to get your sage advice.

[mickeybellinello]

Hi, can you submit some photos?

Anyway.. the pedal works and you have correct voltages right? The problem is that the pedal can't let you have a good distortion right? What about the volume? Do you noticed a volume boost?

I built a clone of the klon and the diodes makes a big differences in this circuit...

[Ang3lus]

I do have a volume boost yes, just no distortion.

[mickeybellinello]

I do have a volume boost yes, just no distortion.

Did you used the 1n400x for the clipping stage?

[Ang3lus]

No, its a protection diode, i used 1n34a diodes for clipping, might be that they are fake ?

[mickeybellinello]

No, its a protection diode, i used 1n34a diodes for clipping, might be that they are fake ?

I'm sorry but I can't see them where are they?

Anyway, do you have any other ge diode at home?

If it is useful I built a klon too and the first try was with some d9e diode and I got the same issue.

Another thing, I see on the back of the pcb some solder dirt and some hole are black, are you sure that the trace isn't burned?

[Ang3lus]

They are parallel to the protection diodes

[mickeybellinello]

They are parallel to the protection diodes

1n34a looks like theese:





I suggest you to socket and try different genuine ge diodes

[Ang3lus]

I did socket the diodes to no avail, tried different chips also, still no gain, only a volume boost

[Ang3lus]

Solved it, there is an error in the build doc, c7 and c8 need to be reversed, now the gain pot is backwards, but i get full gain, will need to fix that, probably also a silkscreen error

[mickeybellinello]

Solved it, there is an error in the build doc, c7 and c8 need to be reversed, now the gain pot is backwards, but i get full gain, will need to fix that, probably also a silkscreen error

Glad to hear that, I got a similar issue with a delay pcb...