Catalinbread Digital / FV-1 products (Csidman)

[Strategy]

I have a running ad on local Craigslist where I'll take (some) people's dead or damaged pedals and restore them, when I'm able. In a particularly interesting recent score I got 3 pedals from a guy, 2 were Catalinbread. Turns out the fellow was a former Catalinbread shop staff member, and these two units were from the office junk box: folks in the 'factory floor' had been trying mods out on them or something. There is a Heliotrope that works  and there's a Csidman which is the glitch delay.

I got the Csidman back up and running and the effect is just fine EXCEPT super quiet. Only audible if I max out my amp. I'll start in with an audio probe and see where things are getting hung up but, does anyone have schematics for this-- or any other Catalinbread FV-1/Spinsemi based product? From the looks of it they had a single PCB that may have been the basis for multiple products.

The fellow I bought these from implied that Catalinbread had let a lot of their product schematics loose onto the internet (intentionally?) before Nicholas Harris' untimely passing. I found some odds and ends but honestly not a lot in the schematics area.

Any help appreciated!

[ElectricDruid]

I don't have a schematic, but we ought to be able to have a good idea of what's on there. All FV-1 based effects tend to be pretty similar, after all.

I see the pedal has five knobs. My guess would be that the top three are the FV-1 parameters. The Mix control will probably be done using the standard circuit (see the Arachnid schematic for that bit).

That only leaves the Time control. My guess there is that they're using an external clock oscillator to run the chip, rather than a 32KHz crystal. Like that, you can modulate the clock if you want to, or you can speed up/slow down the processing - good fun and ideal for this sort of glitchy craziness for this kind of pedal. So my bet is that the "Time" control is actually the clock speed / sample rate. You should be able to tell that from what parts are on the board.

HTH!

[Ice-9]

Post a picture of the board and I can tell you if it is the same common Catalinbread PCB used for many of their FV-1 based pedals. There are common PCB's for Echorec, Bellepoch, Topanga. Although the PCB's are the same there are slight differences between these pedals. ie, components not fitted change the actual circuit to suit whichever pedal they are building.

If the pedal you have follows this common PCB it should not be difficult to fault find. I might be able to help you.

[Strategy]

Super delayed thread bump here, been snowed under an overtime situation at work for weeks, just digging out. Here are photos! Really appreciate your observations, sorry it's hard to see with all the PC mount elements in here.

By the way the PC mount switch at bottom right switches between buffered bypass and true bypass; I don't remember what its symptoms were but it only works on one of the two settings, so I either get the super quiet barely there signal described earlier, or no signal.



and here's the solder side although it's likely less useful.

[Strategy]

Something I rarely do, but still at loose ends on this one...
"Bump!"
thanks
Strategy

[niektb]

I see a gain trim pot there, have you tried twisting that one? 

[Ice-9]

Have, you adjusted the 'gain' trimmer which you can see just above the bypass/trails switch. Second try with a guitar signal going into the pedal and see if you get a good signal at pin 1/2 of the FV-1 chip.

I see quite a few of the solder pads on the underside of the board look like new leaded solder has been applied. Did you do this to reflow the pads or have the parts been removed and re-soldered in place?

[Ice-9]

I have just looked again at your pictures and it looks like you could have a solder bridge on the footswitch top centre and top right pins.

[Ice-9]

Feed and Mix controls are analogue and the cuts, latch and time controls are fv-1 pots.

[Strategy]

Thanks all for the replies!

Have, you adjusted the 'gain' trimmer which you can see just above the bypass/trails switch. Second try with a guitar signal going into the pedal and see if you get a good signal at pin 1/2 of the FV-1 chip.

I see quite a few of the solder pads on the underside of the board look like new leaded solder has been applied. Did you do this to reflow the pads or have the parts been removed and re-soldered in place?

I hadn't yet messed with the trimmer --    what was I thinking
Re: the solder, this board was a mish mash when I got it. Apparently this was from a box of "let's experiment with spares" projects -- I had to solder the pot pads but everything else was in place. Seems like it could use an overall cleanup

[Strategy]

I have just looked again at your pictures and it looks like you could have a solder bridge on the footswitch top centre and top right pins.

Thanks, I'll check continuity and clean up pads where it looks iffy.
Strategy

[Ice-9]

I have just looked again at your pictures and it looks like you could have a solder bridge on the footswitch top centre and top right pins.

Thanks, I'll check continuity and clean up pads where it looks iffy.
Strategy

So, did you get it fixed ?

[Strategy]

I haven't gotten time on the bench with it - finishing a build for a friend at the moment, hoping to take a look in the upcoming week!
Strategy

[Ice-9]

I haven't gotten time on the bench with it - finishing a build for a friend at the moment, hoping to take a look in the upcoming week!
Strategy

Haha, if you can't be bothered with fixing it, sent it to me I'll have it.    Seriously though good luck man.

[Strategy]

I work EXTREMELY slowly haha. (work / family stuff leaves about an hour a week for DIY)

[Strategy]

Troubleshooting update.

1. Simply turning up the gain trim just makes the signal more fuzzy but it stays quiet. I realized when doing this that I had actually tried this in the past, then forgotten that I'd tried it. I'm getting older I guess.

2. Eliminating the messy solder around the footswitch pads did not resolve the issue so a short circuit there does not appear to be the cause of the issue.

3. As I was testing the item with a guitar and amp, I had the guts removed from the enclosure - and while handling the PCB, all of a sudden full signal (dry + effected) was going through. The old, create a short with your hands trick. It was accidental but I noticed that my fingers were touching some pads of the footswitch and some pads of the output jack. The soldering is very messy on this - I'm going to reflow any dodgy looking joints today then clean the pcb with alcohol as I think some flux and scrapes (which is how the item came to me) are making it difficult for me to get a visual read on things. I think there's an open somewhere in the output stage here.

The way the PCB is designed---with a grid of green lines everywhere on the solder side ---makes it additionally hard to follow traces. Is this an intentional design to minimize bootlegging / circuit tracing, or just aesthetic?

I just built one of these nice audio sniffers and think that might help me determine where the signal is going quiet or disappearing: http://www.openmusiclabs.com/projects/audio-sniffer/index.html

[Ice-9]

Troubleshooting update.

The way the PCB is designed---with a grid of green lines everywhere on the solder side ---makes it additionally hard to follow traces. Is this an intentional design to minimize bootlegging / circuit tracing, or just aesthetic?

Yeah the grid makes following the signal path hard to follow but I have fixed about half a dozen or so of these Catlainbread pedals with the same PCB,  it is a super simple circuit but the layout and design is quite messy.

[Jdansti]

I see the message on the board: "I PITY THE FOOL!"  Maybe the problem is Mr. T had a hand at it. 

[DIY Bass]

One of the CAD programs I have used over the years had that grid pattern as the standard pour for a ground plane.  I suspect they haven't done it deliberately to make tracing hard - it's just a default on some software.

[Ice-9]

I see the message on the board: "I PITY THE FOOL!"  Maybe the problem is Mr. T had a hand at it. 

Yeah that message is there, PCB design by Jack Deville / Mr Black.