Old Memory Man clips very hard

[gutsofgold]

I have an old memory man that is clipping really hard when the volume on my guitar is at 10 (full) or near that level. It isn't a subtle clip by any means and it's very precise. For example, if the guitar volume is at 8 it won't clip at all, even with a hard strum but as soon as you increase the volume by the smallest amount and strum equally hard, it clips really bad.

I know the pedal has some "repairs" done to it before me but looking at it it has the original part values. I've never dealt with an issue like this before. Any ideas?

[boyersdad]

IIRC there is a trim pot on the board that adjusts the input buffer gain.

There are schematics around for the MM. Even if you can't find one, the traces on the board are big and well spaced, so it's not too hard to follow the signal from the input to the buffer, where you will find the trim pot.
Just make sure you are adjusting the right one. There are trimmers on there that affect the SAD chips and you DEFINITELY DO NOT want to mess those up.

I have a MM at home that I just CANNOT get working again, due to the trimmers getting all out of whack, and not really understanding how the hell to calibrate the SAD's.

[Mark Hammer]

I have an old memory man that is clipping really hard when the volume on my guitar is at 10 (full) or near that level. It isn't a subtle clip by any means and it's very precise. For example, if the guitar volume is at 8 it won't clip at all, even with a hard strum but as soon as you increase the volume by the smallest amount and strum equally hard, it clips really bad.

I know the pedal has some "repairs" done to it before me but looking at it it has the original part values. I've never dealt with an issue like this before. Any ideas?

I'm guessing it has no compander chip in it, right?  People may complain about companded pedals, but this is one sort of problem they deal with very nicely.

[gutsofgold]

Any source on the schematic? I noticed there are three trimpots but neither are very close to the input. Two I can directly trace to the BBD (MN3005) and I want to assume the third then is the one I want to adjust. I'm just being careful because I reallllly do not want to screw up the delay chips.

[Dimitree]

there's no trimmer for adjustment of the input buffer! you can find a correct schematic of this pedal searching this forum..  can't remember what topic, I'll help you if you can't find it..

[gutsofgold]

So there are still three trimmers on this board and I can onyl find the schematic to the DELUXE Memory man which has 5 trimmers on its board. I'd imagine one sets the bias of the delay chip, the other is there to set so there is no clock noise, and the third has something to do with just the max and min delay time?

[trjones1]

I have a MM at home that I just CANNOT get working again, due to the trimmers getting all out of whack, and not really understanding how the hell to calibrate the SAD's.

It's probably not the best possible way to fix this, but I used an audio probe to set the trimmers on my DMM.  You just have to find the output pin on the SAD1024, put the audio probe on that and adjust the trimmer til you hear signal coming through.  Start on the first SAD in the signal path and work on through til they're all passing signal.

[gutsofgold]

Well I can not find a schem of this thing for the life of me. The Deluxe version one floats around but nothing for this old guy.

I'm beat as the effect itself works just fine, it just happens to clip with a hard (yet reasonable) strum.