rangemaster problems

[johnny5]

I just finished my first pedal from scratch, a rangemaster clone built from a Tone-pad board with, I believe, is a millennium bypass 1. I am having problems.

When I first assembled it the pedal sounded as it should but the LED did not light up at all. So the next day I fooled around with different LED's and some different values of resistors in the Milli-bypass. I moved around the 4k7 and 2k2 to try to get the LED to shine brighter. After doing all that, the LED worked but the pedal does not. (I ended up with the same resistors)

All that comes out of it now is a very loud, ugly, staticy noise. There is a hint of guitar in there but hardly at all. When bypassed that noise is still there but very low, just audible.

I looked over all my solder joints and poked around and I cannot figure it out.

The only thing I think maybe happened is that I over heated the FET (5484) while soldering around with the resistors.

Anyone have anything I can try? Any ideas?

Does it matter what kind of FET is in the Milli-bypass? Diode?

Thanks,
John

[d95err]

Just a guess: You may have overheated and damaged the germanium transistor. Germanium components are very sensitive to heat.

Lesson for next build: Always, always, ALWAYS use sockets for transistors.

[johnny5]

ok, i figured it out. i had the power hooked up wrong and the whole circuit was at 9V.

got that fixed and played it for a while. i little raspy. so i check the bias on the tranny. i have 2.5V on the collector and reading GEO says it should be more like 7.0V. i bought the tranny from small bear and he sends a sheet telling what resistance to use. i have those in there and the voltage is still really low.

could it be thats a bad tranny?