what are your unsuccessful builds?

[Wild Zebra]

  I never got the General Guitar Gadgets layout for the Jen High Frequency Modulator to work.  I was disapointed I really wanted to check it out.  I'll have to check it out again soon.  It was very "blatty" misbiasty sounding.

[Branimir]

Anything with ICs in it will never work for me. Even things like flashing LEDs running on a 555.

heh, opposite than me! Everything with IC's work with me, yet i can't remember a transistor circuit that i've put transistors in the correct pinout (since 99% of the time i use other type than noted on the schem)...

First thing ever i've built - Son of Screamer from Jack Orman - worked, but the Fet Muff - i screwed up the transistor pinout on the last gain stage (i did the PCB by myself back then (heh, those were the times, good old DOS and EasyPC PCB drawing software))

fom that time, everything transistor - gave me faulty working efects, big muff, some booster things, even the millenium bypass , on the other hand, RAT worked first time i fired it up, Sansamp GT2 (two units), also...

heh, i remember the day when i got easyvibe working - that was the most gratifying effect that i built and spent hours tryin' to figure out why the bloody thing won't phase... i guess - it had an IC, it had to work in the end!

It's stupid, but every time i think of building an effects, i look at the schem, and if there are more than 3 transistors, i go: "oh God, no, not 2N5088 again, i don't have those, i'll have to put some BCxxx in there, and 10 different part sources have pinouts, and i still have no bloody clue if that's the top or bottom view on the pinouts graphic!"

If it's not that, then it's bad wire leading to potentiometers or some ridiculous nonsense like that...

[Melanhead]

Hmmm .... so far just a Phase 45 ( Torchy's Layout ) ... I know the layout works just can't get it to phase. Just ordered the correct JFET's so hopefully it'll fire up after I match some!  ... It's funny but after I finally got my Phase 90 to work ( an original script that had died ) I said to myself I'd never build a phaser! ... hmmmm, I guess I'm into torture!

Anyone build a Keeley Java Boost from Torchy's layout Just curious as I'm gonna attempt one but haven't seen any build reports here.

[Garrett]

PT80 That I'm still tryign to fix. It's one of those that you destroy one component and int the process distroy others.  Plus its a tight board. It worked for a short period of time and then i put it altogether and it blew a voltage regulator. I put a new one in and it heats up fast. I'm not throwing in the towel yet though.

Did you heat sink the voltage regulator? That's a fairly important detail... 

its the 78L12 regulator that is rated 100mA. It's a TO-92 , so there is no way to heat sink.  Thank you for your help, let me know if there is anything else you could think of.

              Garrett

[Steben]

Almost nothing works the first time I build it! I could never get the Electra distortion to work. Supposedly a great beginner project...
Anything with ICs in it will never work for me. Even things like flashing LEDs running on a 555.

Maybe because of all those pins that need patient soldering?

[MartyMart]

Anyone build a Keeley Java Boost from Torchy's layout Just curious as I'm gonna attempt one but haven't seen any build reports here.

There was a discussion about it, the first version was a no/no !
Then the schem was picked over and a newer version drawn, I think
that's a "worker" ....   search   search my friend

MM.

[Paul Marossy]

its the 78L12 regulator that is rated 100mA. It's a TO-92 , so there is no way to heat sink.  Thank you for your help, let me know if there is anything else you could think of.

Oh, well it was just a thought.  Maybe your current draw is more than 100mA? I guess not, right? Hmm...

[phaeton]

Boy, what a discouraging thread 

I have a friend outside of this forum that has designed a handful of circuits.  There's a tremolo, a one-transistor fuzz, an NPN Si fuzzface and such.  They all work for him, but never for me.  It could be that they're not so "beginner friendly" in that they're better suited for someone that knows what they're doing, vs. a total n00b like myself.

That said, any fuzzface variation I've ever pulled off the net has never worked for me.  Some of them I can breadboard and they'll sorta work or squeal like mad, but nothing I solder works.  Don't know if it's because my soldering skills were crap when I started or if I've got a pile of bunk 2N2222s or what the deal is.  I socketed my transistors on the last attempt but still no dice.  I think I'll revisit the fuzzface in the near future tho- but I'm very tempted to use a transistor other than a metal can 2N2222.

I had a hard time with R.G. Keene's Quick N Dirty Oscillator, and part of it was misinterpreting the schematic, and the other part of it was... i dunno... it just started working where the night before it didn't.

I built a dissapointing LM383 amp, but it could be that I powered it with 9V instead of the 12V recommended by Greg Anderson.

My first "working" circuit was a breadboarded LBP-2 that I added some LEDs to for clipping, but it wasn't powerful enough to forward-bias the LEDs, so it was still just a boost, heh.

Last night I was designing a circuit on paper (which I'll share soon) but in a true stroke of incompetence I was having a really hard time dividing by ordes of magnitude and I was coming up with a gain of 1000 and saying "WTF?!?".   I was thinking "One million ohms" but on paper I was writing "1,000,000,000".  It's embarassing as hell but I still feel compelled to tell everyone. 

Just one more thing for me to stop and think about before I go designing any tube-fired amplifiers. 

[Joecool85]

Bazz Fuzz - Wasn't so much unsuccessful, I just didn't care for the sound.

[Garrett]

its the 78L12 regulator that is rated 100mA. It's a TO-92 , so there is no way to heat sink.  Thank you for your help, let me know if there is anything else you could think of.

Oh, well it was just a thought.  Maybe your current draw is more than 100mA? I guess not, right? Hmm...

I think Ill try and hook the circuit up to a varible powersupply (bench type) . Maybe it's the supply i'm using.


Thanks Paul, Garrett

[WildMountain]

Cool thread. Makes me feel not so "alone" in my failures.
Out of ten pedal builds only my '69 fuzz won't work, even after two days of debugging. So I just put it aside.

[A.S.P.]

unsuccessful builds?
our last snowman - lasted for 6 hours, until the rain came in...
(Kyoto )
[that emoticon was supposed to be 3 questionmarks ? ? ?]

[lovric]

snowman was grounded... 

[nosamiam]

I've had pretty good success so far.  I've built maybe a dozen or so pedals successfully with decent variety: IC's, trannies, modulation based, amplitude based, etc.

The ones that haven't worked for me are a 4MS Duo Distortor, ROG Supreaux and Charlie Barth's Bass Paralooper.  4MS was my 2nd project and it never passed signal. I could probably get it to work today if I hadn't cannibalized it. 

The Supreaux was haunted.  It would work fine for about 20 seconds of playing and then crackle and die.  Take the battery out and put it back in and it would be good for another 20 seconds.

I don't know what the deal was with the Paralooper.  It would clip really bad whenever I dug into the strings.  Never figured it out.

I haven't had trouble with one in a while and I just KNOW I'm gonna get owned on one of these upcoming builds:  Neutron, Duo Distortor, 6-8 legged power supply, String Ringer, Neovibe.

[petemoore]

  Anything to do with mosfets except Mosfet Boost.
  That's probably because I have a pile of 2N7000's [and recieved more instead of the Jfets ]. I just can't seem to get around the 'glass shield tonk' all that linearness puts on a guitar signal, ouch...ot, I put a HG/LN Si right into the New Matchbox, I think it sounds great, really nice build, dunno if I'll ever even get the BS170 to try out there.
  I put Tonebender on the backburner again, they oscillate for me from 'best fuzz/od/dist sound I ever heard' to 'dont' sound right' to 'NoisEY' to 'gatey'...getting Ge's to 'hold still' while I hammer them in this circuit has been a long, squirreley, unresolved task for me. I've relegated that job to FF's with outside help, much easier for me to sustain biased.
 

[Craig V]

The Neovibe!  (Univibe clone)

[nelson]

Its good to see even the best of us have a few elusive circuits that just wont work right.

I was making a daisy chain today, about 10 jacks long. I plugged it into the box I use to regulate and filter my cheap unregulated unfiltered PSU's and the 9v regulator started to smoke. Turns out when screwing one of the 2.1mm tips in its plastic sleeve the tip and sleeve had shorted.
Luckily I have a tonne of 9v regulators, or a bit of my main power supply would have been out of action for a while, and I dont have any batteries.

Took me a while to find the short though, damnit. But now I can power an even larger pedal board. 

[barret77]

There was a discussion about it, the first version was a no/no !
Then the schem was picked over and a newer version drawn, I think
that's a "worker" ....   search   search my friend

MM.

Can anyone tell if the one at indyguitarrist is the right one?
http://www.indyguitarist.com/torchy/Boosters/Keeley%20Java%20Boost/

[MartyMart]

That is the updated version, but as yet I have not built it ...

MM.

[Processaurus]

Having a scope helps a lot with debugging, so usually the stuff I can't get to work is stuff that is kind of experimental ayway and over my head with how it works: RGs Variable stuttering pedal (ticks), RG's sequencer (sometimes the logic gets glitchy and goes 12345678,4567,4567,...)  RG's MOS doubler,  RG's JFET Doubler (had the right octave, but output was real low), the noise generator in RG's Low Fidelity Pedal, Tims octup Blender (I think it needs caps before each diode to work right, but the board is gone).  Out of curiosity, has anyone else gotten any of these to work?  Its too bad, because they look really cool.