Just finished my first effect!!!

[Herr Masel]

And it works! I can't believe it! What a great feeling, I was expecting to have to do it all over again, this is a first time for me. It's a vox tonebender. One thing that bothers me is that it has a really really low volume. None of the places I looked in had logarithmic potentionmeters so I had to use a linear one (for the volume), could that be the problem? Also, it is pretty nasally with a fair bit of octave, I didn't know it was supposed to do that, but it's cool. I only discovered this forum two days ago but it (and the faq) have helped me tremendously, so thanks! Next, a TRemOLo.

[bioroids]

Great!

The taper of the pot (log or lineal) cannot be the cause of the low volume. I never built the tonebender but I suppose it should have plenty of output.

Luck!

Miguel

[ninoman123]

If the output is low then you have something connected to ground where it shouldnt be. Either that or a wrong value resistor in somewhere. Many times people will be like "blah blah blah I checked everything" but then they go back and recheck it and find a wrong resistor or a tiny solder bridge that they skipped over somewhere.

[Herr Masel]

Ok something strange I found out is that the volume problem didn't occur when I tried it on a different amp... strange. The only thing connected to the ground which I am not sure about is the sleeve on the output jack (mono). The resistor values aren't exactly as on the schem, one is 22 instead of 25uf, the other is (I think) .0033 instead of .032.Hmm come to think of it that is a rather big difference, but the man who sold it to me swore it would make no difference. What do you think?

[Mark Hammer]

Well, he's right.  It shouldn't make an audible difference.

The pot taper should not make a difference in the volume either.  Pot taper comes up frequently, and beginners often think that the "wrong" taper is a cause of problems.  Taper matters to the user.  It does not matter to the circuit.  If a pot is 100k, then that is all the circuit needs to "know".  From the user's perspective, though, that pot taper might not provide easy adjustment in the range the user is most interested in.  For instance, if the pot used to set the rate on a tremolo has the "wrong" taper, the difference between slow throbs at 1hz and jittery trills at 8hz might be concentrated in the last 10% of the pot's rotation, making it very hard to dial in exactly the speed you want for that song.

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

you would be referring to capacitors, when you're talking uF... but that shouldn't matter.

[Yun]

Ok something strange I found out is that the volume problem didn't occur when I tried it on a different amp... strange. The only thing connected to the ground which I am not sure about is the sleeve on the output jack (mono). The resistor values aren't exactly as on the schem, one is 22 instead of 25uf, the other is (I think) .0033 instead of .032.Hmm come to think of it that is a rather big difference, but the man who sold it to me swore it would make no difference. What do you think?

for louder volume; try replacing the volume pot with a 500K or 1Meg volume pot....