Thinking of just giving up.

[Benjamin]

I have built 3 or 4 pedals, and no matter how much time I spend debugging, no matter how careful I am in the building none of them work.
I just seem to be wasting money on parts and then having PCBs filled with parts sitting on my desk.
No fun anymore, I am getting nowhere.

[Nasse]

You are in right forum. Just post some descriptions and info about your projects and maybe some measured voltages at critical points and helpful gurus give you advice. Hope so, I´m almost sure that guys here can blow some life in at least one of your projects.

P.S. Thats why I like EASY PROJECTS

[Arn C.]

Don't give up Benjamin!
Here is an example of how easy it really is.  This site is excellent and I also think that there may be another like this around.  Below is an example.  shows you the wiring and all.   I personally do not make my own boards, yet.   So, in this instance.  just connect everything that is connected using the parts and some wire.  Just give it another try with for example the one below.
Peace and Good Luck.  If you have any questions email me and I will walk you all the way through it!
Arn C.

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/v2/diagrams/joesodps.gif

[Peter Snowberg]

Don't give up yet!

They may seem like total mysteries, but there are fairly simple ways to trace the problem down in your pedals. You will learn a great deal in the process.

Pick the simplest of what you have built. What circuit is it and what can you say about the construction?

With the right tools (super simple, cheap, & home-made), you can sometimes find the fault faster than you can open the box and remove the circuit board.

Take care,
-Peter

[Benjamin]

Well, I have been tracing the signal with the audio probe, and it does just fine until it hits the germaniums, and then I lose it. I am building a fuzz facish thing. I am not sure if I have wired the transistors backwards, or if they are dead. I am assuming backwards because they are matched trannys from small bear.

[petemoore59]

Soon as you get one going, you'll be jammin. My first one didn't go at first...had to keep messing with it.
  Rirst thing is to find out what the pinout is on those tranny's...I don't knowoff hand but I'm sure we'll be able to find out...give a description of the transistors...is there anything asymmetrical about them like where one pin comes out of the bottom being offset, or a tab or other marking [are they tin can types...
  If you have a basic neg. ground supply project, what is it, what isn't it doing, what have you tried to work on it etc...
  I recommend LPB 1 or similar project for ease of construction and debugging etc....I use one all the time...They're nice I like it built a few...they're known to be good / easy / useful.
 Using sockets and cheep available transistors allowed me to 'cheat' and find the tranny orientation I liked best by trying both ways [course the one that was in there the way that didn't work so well may have been damaged.. ~22cents]

[nightingale]

ben~
i almost threw in the towel one time! turns out the jacks i had were the wrong type... it took me weeks to figure it out!  

this may sound stupid, but when i finish a project that doesent fire up the first time(most of the time)... i sort of get exited! i have actually gotten to a plac e where it is exiting to debug these things! pretty nerdy!!
hth,
~ryanS

[BillyJ]

Do not give it up. Just pick the easiest one you have (you did try easy ones first I hope  :wink: ) and follow the debugging page link at the top of the page here. Sounds like with the trannies you are close to knowing why they aren't doing there thing so don't get too discouraged.
You can do it. Do not throw the towel in. When you get through it all you will have working toys and more knowledge. Kinda sucks these things don't always work right away but it does get easier.
You do not want to know how many times I have wired a pedal backwards so the input is on the left side. Don't bonk your head too hard and don't get upset. It happens to everyone but trust me if you have gotten as far as you have you can go a little further and get through to the other side.
Stick it out you will not regret it in the long run :!:  :!:

[Brett Clark]

Benjamin: where are you located? Is there some other forumite nearby that could give you some hands-on help? Don't give up!

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I gave up twice (to the extent of givig away all my parts & equipment!) so, it has been third time lucky for me... another encouraging thing might be, to contemplate Mark Hammers "cupboard of doom" that he showed us a while ago..

[Marcos - Munky]

Don't give up! I lost a lot of money in projects that didn't worked too, and I gave up one time. But I gave another chance to the DIY world, and now I'm build all the effects that I need (not all, like the delays and flangers, but almost all), and I knew a lot of cool effects that I never heard about before (the Total Sonic Anihilation is one, now it's on my pedalboard). And I knew a lot of cool people in the forum too. Pick a simple effect, like the Bazz Fuss, and start with him. Then start to grow slowly, with more simple effects (Buzz Box heheh, but sounds very cool).

[Paul Marossy]

The first circuit I built used a cascaded dual opamp. It actually worked the first time I tested it. But I had a heck of a time with the footswitch, it was the wrong kind of DPDT switch, a momentary type. It took a while to figure out why it wouldn't work with the footswitch...

I have built a few that made me want to quit when I couldn't get them to work right. In fact the last thing I built, an envelope circuit, seriously tweaked me. It was doing some weird things that didn't make any sense to me. I eventually got it figured out, but I had to get past being frustrated and angry. This was a perfboard job. I usually have a lot better success using a PCB. It's really easy to screw up something on perfboard, at least for me.

PJM

[aron]

Well, I have been tracing the signal with the audio probe, and it does just fine until it hits the germaniums, and then I lose it. I am building a fuzz facish thing. I am not sure if I have wired the transistors backwards, or if they are dead. I am assuming backwards because they are matched trannys from small bear.

What circuit is this? Can you give us a link?

[Ed G.]

I have built 3 or 4 pedals, and no matter how much time I spend debugging, no matter how careful I am in the building none of them work.
I just seem to be wasting money on parts and then having PCBs filled with parts sitting on my desk.
No fun anymore, I am getting nowhere.

what projects are you working on? What are you using to debug them? You should have at least a multimeter to test voltages and continuity and an audio probe is very helpful also.

[AllyP]

You could try what I do.....


Buy some proto/bread board and make the effects on there first...That way you can see if you like your new fuzz/flange/whateva before finalising by soldering.  You can also swap parts about easily to experiment with different values/opamps/trannies/diodes.

It also reduces the number of variables involved in debugging: ie no bad solder joints, no bad pcbs/traces, no heat damage to parts etc.

Youll know if the circuit works after building it on here...and if it dosent you can mess about with it till it does (just remember to let us know of ne changes to schemes :wink:)

And at the end of the day, if you dont like a circuit, or cant get it to work, chuck all the bits back in your parts bin



Ive only made a couple of effects so far but this seems to work for me....I through in my towel a couple of years ago after my first project (Guess what, I tried to go straight to soldering on my 1st homemade PCB as well )

:roll:

[zachary vex]

i give up all the time.  i have bins filled with half-finished things that never worked right, and probably never will.  giving up is part of moving on.  you'll never be finished giving up.  8^)

first thing... turn those transistors upside down and look at them... arrange the equalateral triangle so that the symmetrical peak is at the top.  most likely, the arrangement is E, B (peak), C.

[sirkut]

It's great to see a forum where people are supportive of each other. Most places would have simply tossed your butt out and said "RTFM!" Each time I read this forum, I am simply amazed at how professional AND friendly everyone is. Benjamin, like everyone has said, don't let a few mishaps bring you down. Everyone has their moments but believe me, when you finally get that one fix/built, you'll never want to stop. In fact my first pedal was a simple distortion pedal, never worked so i canabalized the parts and built something else that did (Noiseswash!) What a great move that was Good luck!

[Mark Hammer]

Once you've been at this for a few years, you will begin to realize in your bones, just like the rest of us, how much *assumptions* about which pin is which are your constant and undying enemy.  Cripes, it's almost like some kids cartoon or live-action series where the hero/es battle the same foe week in week out.

So, since you have a computer and a net connection, get yourself as many datasheets and pinouts as you can and save them for consultation.  Some are available here but lots of similar sites have FAQ-type documents with common pinouts.  You can also search the net using the part number and "pdf" as search terms (datasheets are almost invariably in pdf form).

Case in point.  That "Woody" thing I posted recently.  I built one, consulting with other schematics, liked it and decided to build another in a more compact form for a friend's son.  Drew the schematic by cutting and pasting others and relabelling them.  Built it from the schematic I had drawn and posted and Mr Dumbass here spent a few hours looking back and forth at the schem without ever realizing once that PIN ONE IS THE OUTPUT YOU MORON, NOT PIN 3.  Once those were reversed, everything worked fine.

Which leads to lesson 2.  Find out if the schematic is correct.   People have gotten a lot better about it lately, but there is a long legacy of people posting schems that remained unverified, or else earlier versions were mirrored elsewhere without the corrections.  Never hurts to ask if the version posted at site X is the latest.

In sum, then, your experience is completely normal.  I would venture to say that all of us, including the experienced builders have weeks and sometimes months where absolutely NOTHING works, followed by weeks where we have the golden touch and simply cannot fail.  It happens.

[Doug H]

Once you've been at this for a few years, you will begin to realize in your bones, just like the rest of us, how much *assumptions* about which pin is which are your constant and undying enemy.  Cripes, it's almost like some kids cartoon or live-action series where the hero/es battle the same foe week in week out.

Or it's like having to re-learn something over and over. Like, when is Wile E. Coyote going to learn not to look *down* when he runs off a cliff?

I'm starting to accumulate a little "drawer of doom" myself. Old leftover pcbs with stuff I've improved on or sounded good for about month, before my sense of hearing returned to planet Earth...

Benjamin, if you want some help, people on here will give it. But you will have to cough up some detailed info on what you are working on. It's impossible to help debug without the data.

Doug

[Rob Strand]

In electronics you have to have a never say die attitude - never let silly inanimate things like circuits beat you.  When you get stuck you just need to re-evaluate the situation, don't assume what you think is correct is correct start again, re-trace your steps, find a new angle! Put it this way, someone else has built it so just push ahead.

Just pick one, and work through it.  Post the problem on the forum and eveyone can pitch in I'm sure it will work.  The more you battle through the easier it gets, if you give up you will always hit these brick walls.  If you haven't got one get a multimeter, get a cheap one $10 or less, you don't need a good one and they save you hours of time (and parts).