Boss DD-5 / intermittently working

[greenmanmusic]

Hey guys:

About a month or so ago I picked up a Boss DD-5 from a kid at a garage sale for $25. (Score!) Quickly line tested it onsite and it seemed to work fine. I have other pedals so it sat unused for a while.

Just tried it again Friday night and noticed the LED was dim. Checked the battery and it was still strong. Plugged back into it and played for about 5 minutes and that's when I realized there was a problem. The delay effect stopped working, but the dry signal was still present. (Denied!)

I figured maybe a wire had come loose so opened it up and noticed that there had ibeen some tinkering done. The pedal had a .1uf cap soldered to the Effect Level pot (lugs 4 & 6 if looking left to right from the back at the two rows of three solder points) and a resistor between the green wire and where it attaches to the mini circuit board. (Checked it with my multimeter and it's a functioning 1k resistor) I noticed that the LED was new too as it was a 5mm instead of a 3mm, and that the original teenie-tiny LED resistor was still in place and also functioning. So I removed all of the non-stock components -- did not add an LED, just put electrical tape on the mini circuit board -- checked all of the wires, re-assembled the pedal and tried again. No luck. It was late and I decided to crash for the night.

Saturday I figured I'd try it again just for laughs and it worked -- but not for long. Same thing as before; after about 5 minutes it simply stopped delaying the signal. Dry signal, but no delay.

I opened the pedal up again and tried adding a 3mm LED. It would not light up. Tried pressing the leads up against the green & orange wires to bypass the mini circuit board and still no light. Tested the LED against the terminals of an old 9v battery and it lit up. Tested the 5mm LED that I had previously taken out in the same fashion and it lit up too.

I have since tried the pedal a couple more times and always the same thing. It works for about 5 minutes or so (sometimes more, sometimes less) if you unplug it and let it sit, but then it craps out. And never could I get an LED working.

So I'm thinking that some chip or cap was damaged or is somehow storing power, but where and how to find it? It's almost as if there's a circuit breaker kicking in. And obviously if there is power being stored somewhere it is able to dissipate since the pedal functions again after sitting for a while. (Haven't timed it, but maybe a half hour to an hour.)

I can't even remember where the house was that I bought this damned thing from otherwise I'd go get a refund. (That little bastard!) Anyway, it would be a great score if I could get it working.

Your ideas and experiences would be greatly appreciated. I love this forum and have been reading it for a while now. Everyone seems so supportive and helpful. Sorry that my first post is a question and not trying to help someone else. :-)

Best,
Ken

[greenmanmusic]

Hey everyone:

Thought I'd post an update here in case anyone in the future experiences anything similar -- this has since been resolved.

Thanks to Analog Mike who helped push me in the right direction by simply reminding me to check the operation of the pedal with an adaptor instead of the battery. Did so and noticed all things that weren't previously working were up and running. That fact told me to go backwards towards the battery.

Just a matter of replacing the battery terminals and wires all the way to the input jack and board and voila! Now I have a working Boss DD5 for $25.00. Boooyeah~~!

Sometimes we can't see the forest for the batteries...


Best,
Ken