Gentlemen, don your deerstalkers - the game is afoot!

[moid]

Hello everyone

I have a mystery for those of you who enjoy some Sherlockian indulgence. Whether this is a two pipe problem or not is to be seen, but I shall present the evidence below in as fine a Watsonian fashion as I can muster. If you can imagine us to be seated in the drawing room of 221b Baker Street in the early evening as the gas light begins to illuminate the street below, while Holmes sits in his armchair aimlessly scratching some drone like tune on his violin as my friend and I converse; then I shall recount the events of that evening:

"A good friend called upon me recently with a parcel containing a small metal box of curious design, and a puzzle as to its origins and nature. He had come across the box in a foreign land and noted its ability to change and alter the playing of any electrical instrument that was attached to it, and being enamoured of its sonic qualities had used it for many years in a quartet that he toured with. Recently, with the cessation of these musical perambulations caused by the terrible sickness, he had looked upon the collection of musical boxes he travelled with and decided that the case in which they were contained was too small for him to add any more devices to, even though he was possessed of a mania to acquire more of them. In this moment of excited panic he was struck by the odd thought that one of his contraptions had two functions to it, although he only ever used one half of it, and he wondered if a smaller copy could be made of this box with just the part he used inside it so that his travelling valise could be made to squeeze in yet more of these electrical oddities.

My friend knew I had some amateur skill with such creations, and had brought me the problem to consider. We found very little about this item in the literature of the field; it being made by a small company that had long ceased trading, and so I fell to opening the device with a range of tools to see what secrets its contents might reveal. The interior of the box was largely (and surprisingly) empty, with a tiny circuit of unknown provenance nestled inside, like some rare egg in a nest. As my sounds of confusion and incomprehension filled the air of our lodgings, Holmes' violin grew silent and he appeared over my shoulder and glanced at the device for a few seconds and gave the following assessment of its properties:

"Ahhh it's a Rogue Leader, made by Feisty Little One in America. This model was constructed between 2010 and 2012. It combines a simple distortion circuit with a primitive semi tuneable oscillation effect as can be deduced by the use of a 386D opamp IC and the CD4046BE chip. The perf board of this particular example appears to have been glued to a rectangle of poor quality cardboard which even after its removal, adheres strongly to the reverse of the components and makes tracing the circuit a devil of a job!"

With that assessment complete, Holmes returned to his armchair, and took up his violin in order to play a dirge by Erich Zann, leaving my friend and I stunned at his incredible powers of observation. My good friend then asked me; well, can it be done? Can you separate the distortion circuit from the clutches of the oscillating feedback and put them into a smaller box?" And that, dear reader, is where you come in...

My friend would like the distortion part of the circuit separated out into as small an enclosure as I can so that he can squeeze additional pedals onto his rather well packed pedal board. He never uses the oscillation circuit of the pedal (and having played with it a bit myself, I can see why - it has a novel sound for a while, but is quite irritating and really does not handle chords well). I need to try to trace the circuit out, but as you can see from one of the below photos the rear of the perf board is still covered with cardboard, held on by (I guess) hot glue. If anyone has any tips on how to remove the hot glue without destroying the circuit then that would be wonderful, but even better I am hoping that this circuit is a copy of something else that already exists and then maybe one of you might recognise it? That way I could just build it from a schematic and wouldn't have to risk prying the hot glue off the back of the perf board.




The circuit has a JRC386D opamp, a CD4046BE chip (I guess this is for the oscillation part) a 10uF capacitor, two diodes, two ceramic capacitors marked 104 (100nF), one ceramic marked 103 (10nF) and another marked 683 (68nF). There are three resistors that I have no idea what value they are due to the joy of being colour blind, although I think they are all the same type... probably... my guess is gold, black (maybe blue?), red (maybe orange?) then brown (or green?)... sorry that's probably of no use whatsoever, I do hope that you never have the misery of staring at a component and having no idea what the hell it is even though everyone else can look at it and figure it out! (if anyone ever makes resistors with their values printed on them I will buy bulk loads of them)

There are four pots, only one of which directly affects the distortion effect (volume); the other pots either blend the oscillation into the distortion or control the oscillation.

Vol 250K Log
Blend 100K Lin
Depth 50K Lin
Pitch 100K Lin

I think the Blend pot should be a higher value - even when in full CCW and the signal should be distortion only, some small amount of oscillation creeps through.

What little online info there is about this is on the company website https://feistylittleone.wordpress.com/guitar-pedals/rogue-leader/, but this site hasn't been updated since 2012... so I wonder if making Star Wars themed pedals got them sued out of existence? There is a demo of it:

Does this ring any bells with anyone? I only need to make the distortion part. The oscillation effect makes me think of some of Parasit Studios work. The distortion is maybe a 386 amplifier circuit? Or something Tim Escobedo maybe? Thank you for your help once again!

[idy]

Resistor looks like Brown, Black, Orange (red over orange?), Gold. That would be 10k if orange, 1k if red.

LM386 is "kind of like" an opamp but it is actually a small power amp. Heart of many simple nasty fuzzes.

The hot glue should come off with a little heat, ...heat gun?

High marks for the Conan Doyle style.

[stallik]

If the sole idea is to shrink this pedal, the unwanted pots could be replaced with fixed resistors and what remains crammed into a much smaller box....

As an aside, while searching for Star Wars related noise circuitry, I came across a maker previously unknown to me. One pedal set has given me silly ideas for a total pedalboard rebuild...


As you were

[choklitlove]

The hot glue shouldn't really stick to those materials.  I think most of it could probably be pried/chipped off with an exacto blade (wear safety glasses).
After that, Acetone wiping (not a bath) should do a decent job cleaning the rest.

[duck_arse]

(if anyone ever makes resistors with their values printed on them I will buy bulk loads of them)

Holco, PRP, RN60D spec - they are called audio resistors in many places. you have been warned ....

[moid]

Resistor looks like Brown, Black, Orange (red over orange?), Gold. That would be 10k if orange, 1k if red.

LM386 is "kind of like" an opamp but it is actually a small power amp. Heart of many simple nasty fuzzes.

The hot glue should come off with a little heat, ...heat gun?

High marks for the Conan Doyle style.

Thanks idy! I will try both on a breadboard once I've got a schematic drawn. I didn't realise the LM386 is a power amp -  I assumed that because it Made Stuff Louder (that's a technical term I've learned) it must be an op amp! Thanks for explaining that. Regarding the hot glue; well I don't own a heat gun (and I'm worried about trying that on the PCB), however it occurred to me that maybe this hot glue is the translucent type, and maybe if I scraped the cardboard off carefully I might be able to see through the glue? Well that seems to be working, I've peeled about half the cardboard off with a sharp knife going very slowly and carefully and I can see the traces below the glue, so hopefully I won't have to remove the glue. And thank you for the literary appraisal:)

If the sole idea is to shrink this pedal, the unwanted pots could be replaced with fixed resistors and what remains crammed into a much smaller box....

That's a great idea Stallik, thanks! So remove a 100K pot and replace with a 100K resistor for example? If I can breadboard this thing I will try to do it with the CD4046BE chip removed (unless the circuit runs through that as well)

The hot glue shouldn't really stick to those materials.  I think most of it could probably be pried/chipped off with an exacto blade (wear safety glasses).
After that, Acetone wiping (not a bath) should do a decent job cleaning the rest.

Thanks Choklitlove, however the hot glue appears to have flowed into the holes in the perfboard rather deeply, so it's not a flat surface anymore - I have tried prying it off with a sharp knife like you said but it is quite resistant, and some of the traces on the back are very thin (they look like they are made with thin strand wire and not the legs of components which seems odd to me, but I don't build on perf board so maybe that is normal?) so I'm not sure about trying this unless I have to. I hope to clear the rest of the cardboard off at the weekend and then take a photo in bright sunshine to see how well that goes through the glue.

(if anyone ever makes resistors with their values printed on them I will buy bulk loads of them)

Holco, PRP, RN60D spec - they are called audio resistors in many places. you have been warned ....

Aloha Duck, OK yes, that was a sharp intake of breathe when I saw the Holco prices!!! Glad I was sitting down! The PRP resistors look almost affordable in comparison They come in a really weird range of values... and then I looked around the site I found them on (some hifi builders shop) and whoa those people will pay silly money for their components! OK I guess I might stick with trying to get a DMM around resistors to check them instead, I don't think I can run to that sort of cost! I still think having the resistor value printed on it is a good idea though...

[anotherjim]

There was a time when precision resistors had the value printed and they were seemingly random values. The 4 band coded 1% standard values have pretty much replaced them.

Pots to resistors. Tweak for best sound, switch off and disconnect pots. Measure resistance between lugs 1 & 2 and 2 & 3.
If only 2 lugs are used, only measure that and use 1 resistor. if 3 lugs are used, you need 2 resistors.

[duck_arse]

Aion has numbered resistors in all his projects, he might have a line on a cheap source. it strikes me that an enterprising someone on the interwires could provide a service by collecting up a load of standard value 1/4W resistors w/ value printed on, seeing as colour blindness is a real thing, and selling them as a kit.

but those audio resistors will crispen your sound, really focus it good.

[moid]

There was a time when precision resistors had the value printed and they were seemingly random values. The 4 band coded 1% standard values have pretty much replaced them.

Pots to resistors. Tweak for best sound, switch off and disconnect pots. Measure resistance between lugs 1 & 2 and 2 & 3.
If only 2 lugs are used, only measure that and use 1 resistor. if 3 lugs are used, you need 2 resistors.

Thanks anotherjim, I guess that's similar to some capacitors that have numbers like 104 on them? Hopefully won't have to do the remove pots and replace with resistors thing... maybe...

Aion has numbered resistors in all his projects, he might have a line on a cheap source. it strikes me that an enterprising someone on the interwires could provide a service by collecting up a load of standard value 1/4W resistors w/ value printed on, seeing as colour blindness is a real thing, and selling them as a kit.

but those audio resistors will crispen your sound, really focus it good.

I was hoping they'd really bring out the tone from my fingers, while accentuating punchy higher dynamic structures that were present in the air in the recording studio while the track was overdubbed... on a computer. That sort of mystical sound.

Sadly onto less jovial banter. First I would like everyone to know that it is absolutely bastard hot* in the UK at the moment and my body was never designed to operate in these conditions. My brain doesn't cope with being fried and that might explain some of the following... well a couple of nights ago I was trying to trace the circuit, but some parts were totally obscured by hot glue. So I thought well if I carefully (note the use of the word carefully here) use a sharp knife to (carefully) scrape the hot glue away I'll be able to see the whole circuit properly and tracing it will be a doddle yeah? Cleansing the doors of perception like... anyway, an hour of (careful) scraping with knife and fingernails and the circuit is revealed, so I draw some pretty pictures of it, and feel rather smug then just to make sure everything is OK I plug the pedal into guitar and amp to test everything is OK... and everything is no longer OK It doesn't work without the magic hotglue mojo... which is not a good thing; this being my friend's second favourite distortion pedal that I said I wouldn't harm.

Pressing the switch to turn the pedal on results in the LED not lighting up and the circuit doing nothing (pedal bypasses fine, so I got that going for me I guess). So I'm guessing I scraped away some micro-thin line of metal from one or two parts of the circuit, almost certainly the bits where power gets to the PCB and then goes to the relevant components after that. So power is going to the CD4046BE chip according to my DMM. But nothing goes to pin 6 of the JRC386 or to the 1K resistor that stops the LED from exploding when you turn the pedal on. Neither of these two parts of the circuit attach to the other bits that have power in them, so I'm hoping that adding some jumpers to reconnect them will solve things? This may have to wait to the end of the week, because this weather is supposed to be nuking us until Friday and I do not trust myself with a soldering iron until the air temperature falls to slightly less than Hell on a grumpy Tuesday morning with a hangover. So, yikes.

Second odd thing, I traced the distortion part of the circuit (the feedback part seems completely separate; the distortion output feeds into the feedback part and then they merge back together at the blend pot) and I present the drawing below... but it don't make no sense! I breadboarded it to check and it doesn't work there either... but it's too late for me to audio probe this to find where it doesn't work; it's very late and I have a whole day of miserable meetings tomorrow... anyway, the below is what the circuit looks like, but I can't see how it works - it doesn't seem to use pinouts how any of the other 386 amplifier schematics do???



In the schematic, pins 1 and 8 are connected together (all the schematics for these chips either don't connect or have a capacitor inbetween them to control the maximum amplification) Also I think the audio in should go to pins 2 and 3 and not pins 3 and 4? Pin 2 and 4 are connected together as well. 7 is not connected to anything. Pin 5 is audio out, so that seems normal and pin 6 is power in. Would this work if it wasn't me assembling it and it's just my breadboard / crappy jumpers etc stopping things? It has got me doing a confused. Any advice would be appreciated as ever! Thankee kindly.




*slightly tepid, with a hint of warm in Antipodean / North American parlance.

[moid]

Hello everyone

Some good news - I made the circuit work on breadboard (yay, it's amazing what happens when you connect the right jumpers together!), so I still need to fix the original pedal, but I think that is just a case of connecting power to the IC. On the breadboard the only issues are this - the volume knob needs to be near full to hear much audio (at full it is loud and impressive, I will need to fix the original to see if it has the same issue) - it's a 250 Log pot, and most of the volume seems to be concentrated in the final quarter of the knob. That is what is on the original pedal...

Anyway I was looking through the schematics on the datasheet for a LM386 and it says you can change the volume from 26dB to 46dB just by adding a 10uF cap between pins 1 and 8 (electrolytic cap, with the plus side facing pin one). I've tried that and don't get any change at all? I did try adding a capacitor from pin 7 to ground, which removed some fizz but didn't increase the volume (and both my son and I reckoned it sounded better without the pin 7 cap). Is there something else I'm missing that I should be doing to change this into a 46dB boost? I'd like to have it on a switch to go from 26dB to 46dB if possible.

The schematic for the volume boost is on page 10 of this PDF:
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm386.pdf?ts=1627637462711&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F

If anyone has any bright ideas I'd be glad to hear them! Thanks!

[moid]

Aloha everyone

I just tried a 4.7uF between pins 1 and 8 and that did nothing either (and tried a different 10uF as well, again ze capacitors, zey do nothing!). Then I thought why not run the audio out of the circuit back into itself to see if it makes a feedback loop and gets louder that way, but connecting the output from lug 2 of the volume pot to either the input jack signal or pin 3 or 4 of the IC just results in silence or a weird ticking sound...does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks for your thoughts.

Edit: here's a thought; in the circuit that is on page 10 of the PDF


The volume control goes before the circuit, not after it, as I currently have it (copying the original pedal). Also the power supply is labelled Vs and not V as it is in the version of this circuit without the boost. Are either of these points likely to cause the problem I've got?

[anotherjim]

Vs tends to be used to name power pins of chip amps - this is not an opamp even though the symbol looks like one.
However, when used for distortion, the output pin 5 can be treated just like the output of an opamp except you don't need to connect a feedback circuit around to the -input pin.

That R & C in series to ground on the output is to stabilize the amp against the reactive coil in a speaker - no speaker then you don't need them.

The cap on pin7 is just to add more power supply noise filtering, it won't necessarily do anything audible.

The cap pin1 to 8 should do something. It bypasses the internal negative feedback in the chip to boost the gain. You don't still have the wire between those pins you mentioned earlier?

The volume control on the input is doing something else - making a DC path from the +input to ground. I can't remember if it's essential for a 386 to have this (doesn't have to be a pot, a pull-down resistor will do). Some small amp chips can't bias correctly without.

As to the original circuit, I don't think Escobedo did one with a 4046, but there was a simple PLL tracker around with 386/4046 or it might be a noisy ring mod type thing. Escobedo did do a PWM fuzz with a 386/40106 IIRC.

[moid]

Thanks anotherjim

Vs tends to be used to name power pins of chip amps - this is not an opamp even though the symbol looks like one.
However, when used for distortion, the output pin 5 can be treated just like the output of an opamp except you don't need to connect a feedback circuit around to the -input pin.

OK that was new info to me, so thank you!

That R & C in series to ground on the output is to stabilize the amp against the reactive coil in a speaker - no speaker then you don't need them.

The cap on pin7 is just to add more power supply noise filtering, it won't necessarily do anything audible.

Great - I won't add the RC you mentioned. Interestingly, the cap on pin 7 did affect the sound - it reduced some of the high frequencies, but the overall sound wasn't improved so I've left that out.

The cap pin1 to 8 should do something. It bypasses the internal negative feedback in the chip to boost the gain. You don't still have the wire between those pins you mentioned earlier?

You know I read your words and thought, oh bugger, I bet that's what I did! Went to check, but that was not the actual issue (saved some face there at least!). The real culprit seems to be the breadboard! When I physically pin the capacitor to pins 1 and 8 with my fingers, oh wow does it get loud! If I do that using the horizontal strips of the breadboard nothing happens... so I guess dodgy breadboard? Rather annoying if true; I need to find a decent brand of breadboard! Either way the volume issue is solved. I can put the capacitor on a SPDT switch so the circuit can go from normal gain to massively loud at a flick of a switch.

The volume control on the input is doing something else - making a DC path from the +input to ground. I can't remember if it's essential for a 386 to have this (doesn't have to be a pot, a pull-down resistor will do). Some small amp chips can't bias correctly without.

Well it seems to work okay the way it's set up, so I'll keep it in the same order as the original pedal in case it has any affect on the sound.

As to the original circuit, I don't think Escobedo did one with a 4046, but there was a simple PLL tracker around with 386/4046 or it might be a noisy ring mod type thing. Escobedo did do a PWM fuzz with a 386/40106 IIRC.

Thanks for your ideas there - I went to look through Escobedo's page on http://www.jiggawoo.eclipse.co.uk/guitarhq/Circuitsnippets/snippets.html and just above the PWM you mention is an octave fuzz called The Rambler which uses a 386 chip! Although it's fairly brutal in sound quality, so I'm not sure if it is related? The entire circuit inside this pedal looks like it could be influenced by the PWM, although it uses a different IC, so I'm not sure. Either way I'm going to try to make the boost side of the pedal for my friend, with a switch for the massive volume increase:



I might then build the original pedal on vero but with two output jacks; one for the boost and one for the weird oscillation sound, so I can record them separately... maybe the oscillation sound will be good if it is run through enough reverb to smooth it into a drone?

[moid]

Slight update, but rather important - I discovered that I'd got the value of the resistor completely wrong, and instead of it being a 1K resistor, it is actually a 1M! Which makes quite a difference to the sound... it had been fairly quiet and clean; with a 1M resistor in place it gets loud and slightly over driven! Oh and I got a switch to work so the circuit can switch from 26dB boost to 46dB boost (which is damn loud, and worth it!)

Does anyone know what the resistor (1M) actually does in the circuit apart from makes things loud and slightly distorted? I did try swapping it for a 1M pot to see if I could use that to dial in a slightly less distorted tone, but the pot would travel from silence (one third of a turn) to clean and quiet to loud and over driven in about a 1/6 of a turn, and then have no change from there onwards.... in the stock circuits of the 386 chip they tend to have a volume pot at this point, so I guess there's nothing that can be done to control the amount of distortion from this point?

Updated schematic below, I'm building this on vero at the moment.



If I was to add a stupidly wonderful tone control to the circuit, do I place it after the volume pot, or before the audio enters the circuit? Thanks

Edit: ignore this question, I just looked at the swtc schematic again and realised what to do!

[moid]

Hello everyone, it's update time!

First the good news - I built the above circuit and it works* and sounds just like the original pedal does! So yay!

*well mostly... see below...

and onto the not exactly good news, but certainly weird / odd news. Three things are odd about the pedal.

1. The output audio is inverted! I recorded the same riff through the original pedal and my version of it (to test they sounded the same) and on looking at the waveform discovered that because the circuit produces an asymmetric waveform, my version of it does this too, but flips it upside down. Sonically they sound identical. So my question is does this matter? And also possibly how did I do this? The only difference between my circuit and the original is the original uses a JRC386D IC and I used an LM386. I used the same pinouts as far as I can tell, but there's no odd number of transistors in the circuit, so this is rather confusing.

2. Power socket issues. Because the person I'm making this for wanted top mounted jacks on a portrait orientated enclosure (a small one) I had to use a different power jack to the ones I usually use and found some very small ones



Which I could squeeze between the audio in and out sockets. If I wire this jack up as normal (as it is in the vero layout above) I don't get any volts out of the positive terminal. If I use my DMM to test the second positive terminal on the socket ( the one that gets used for the battery snap if you have a battery - I don't in this pedal) then I get 9V. I tested a spare jack socket I had of the same type and plugged 9V into it and on the normal terminal also had 9V... so something is weird on the pedal... I might just solder both positive terminals to the circuit if that makes it work!

3. Finally, and the worst one, my SPDT switch does nothing... it should force the circuit to become a 46dB raging monster... but it does nothing. The circuit is working at the original designed +26dB boost, but my switch which should put a 10uF capacitor between pins 1 and 8 of the chip does nothing... so I wonder if my vero layout was wrong (a few posts above this) and I've somehow bypassed the capacitor or ut it in the wrong way around? I'd be really glad if someone could look at how I attached pins 1 and 8 to the switch and capacitor to see if there is an obvious glaring error in my layout because my son wants me to build another of these pedals for himself, he really likes it, and I'd prefer to fix any mistakes on the vero before I make another.

Thanks for your help and thoughts

[PRR]

Does it matter? Probably not.

How did you do it? Unlike most audio chips, the '386 has two equal but opposite inputs. I forget the numbers but you will see it. You can drive either one. One follows, one inverts.

[moid]

Thanks PRR, that explains that - so if I swapped the the cables going to the two pins around (3 and 4) that would remove the inverting effect? (I'm not going to; the sound is fine - it's just interesting to know).

My switch for adding a 10uF capacitor between pins 1 and 8 is still problematic though.

I did some measurements of the switch for capacitance to see if that would reveal anything, so using my DMM, with the ground lead attached to the pedal ground, and the red lead attached to the cable that connects the switch to the 10uF capacitor, if the switch is set to avoid the capacitor (go from pins 1 to 8 on the IC) then the cable attached to the capacitor reads 10uF. If the switch is flipped so that the capacitor should be between pins 1 and 8, then I get all sorts of odd readings - sometimes 0nF, other times it can be 4 - 26 nF - the values don't flicker, but if I take the DMM lead off the cable and then replace it, they change everytime time. Sometimes they even show 10uF???
I don't even know how to interpret this... if the capacitor was broken then surely I wouldn't be able to get a reading of 10uF from it; but I only get this reading when the switch is not using the cap - as soon as the capacitor is brought into the circuit it stops working! Is there some reasons why the connection between pins 1 and 8 can only be either nothing (just straight connection)  or 10uF, but nothing else?

If I measure capacitance at pin 8 of the IC I get either 0nF when the capacitor is not in the circuit, or a variety of very low values (0 - 0.32nF) when the 10uF cap is in the circuit. Do I remove the capacitor and try another? I'm very confused.

[moid]

OK I just tried manually holding a 10uF cap in place on pins 1 and 8 of the chip and that achieves nothing (even when I flip the switch to make the circuit run through the 10uF cap that is on the veroboard... this is weird )... I guess try desoldering the cap from the board and try adding it manually by holding it against pins 1 and 8 to see if it makes a difference? I am very confused.

[duck_arse]

pins 1 and 8 open = gain of 20
pins 1 and 8 short for audio = gain of 200 for audio.

you can either short the pins together with the switch, or you can short them together for audio with the switched cap. so it's open and switch short, or open and switch cap, but not switch short and switch cap, cause that's basically the same thing for audio.

and the DC jack - if you aren't using the switched connection with a batter snap, you can link those two pins together, yes. that's what I do on my builds. make sure you have the centre pin correctly identified, cause, y'know, smoke. it is the manufacturors discretion as to which of the pins connects to the internal swinging part, so the normal round ones may be constructed different to that shown. top hole chaps!

[moid]

aah duck you are like a ray of golden sunshine illuminating the somewhat murky and foggy understanding of all things electrical that passes through my head! I read what you wrote about 5 times before (I think) it began to make sense (I'm blaming all the drugs I'm on for asthma at the moment; I sound like a combination of a kettle getting hot and a steam train trying to figure out if it should start or not!). I went back and looked at the datasheet for the LM386 and I discovered (if I read the schematic on page 1 correctly)



that pins 1 and 8 are connected internally (with a 1k35 resistor between them). So there was no need for me to connect them in the first place! So what I really need then (I hope) is to treat my SPDT switch as an SPST switch? So my schematic should look like the below?



And in my vero layout, it should now look like this (presumably I don't need to worry about the cut I put on the strip that connects pins 1 and 8 because they never used it anyway?) I've removed one of the cables from the switch so that it is an SPST only now, with one throw of the switch doing nothing (gain of 20), and the other bringing the 10uF capacitor inbetween pins 1 and 8 and so creating a gain of 200?




Please let me know if this is right because I would love to fix this pedal and move onto the artwork my friend wants on the front of it! Also my son wants a copy of it too; he really likes it - so I'd like to build his version of it without any mistakes if possible!

Regarding the DC jack - thanks very much, I did solder both terminals together and the pedal works happily ( I tested using crocodile clips first to make sure). It never occurred to me that the top terminal would be the battery snap one - every DC jack I've used so far has had the battery snap on the middle terminal... ah well at least that's settled! I don't feel so stupid about that issue!