Bad Day for Builds

[jafo]

Yeesh. Maybe it's just my beginner's luck running out, but now I can't seem to build anything working. My first two builds (an SHO+Tillman preamp and a Trotsky Overdrive) worked just fine, taking minimal "oops, wrong sized resistor" tweaking. Today I tried a jfet Vulcan -- well, just one stage of it, really. No fuzz, no signal, no nothing, no worries. Then I tried a mosfet-bjt fuzz face (as per the famed "Many Faces of Fuzz" article, which is awfully similar to the equally famed "Solid State Tube"), and had the same lack of result. Well, ok, I'd managed to create a rather effective if scruffy AM receiver to the local family station (especially when the trimpot had a screwdriver in it). Yeesh. Swapped batteries, rechecked wiring, yadda yadda. Just one of those days!

[jbgron]

If I have days like that I just pack it up for the day.  Come back with a fresh head on a different day and you'll be surprised how easily you can spot your own mistakes.  Works for me anyway...

[amptramp]

According to the ephemeris at:

http://www.astro.com/swisseph/ae/2000/ae_2011.pdf

the sun is in scorpio, the moon is in aries, mercury is in sagittarius in conjunction with venus, mars is in leo, jupiter is in taurus, saturn is in libra, uranus is in aries, neptune is in aquarius and pluto is in capricorn.

What did you think was going to happen?

[Earthscum]

According to the ephemeris at:

http://www.astro.com/swisseph/ae/2000/ae_2011.pdf

the sun is in scorpio, the moon is in aries, mercury is in sagittarius in conjunction with venus, mars is in leo, jupiter is in taurus, saturn is in libra, uranus is in aries, neptune is in aquarius and pluto is in capricorn.

What did you think was going to happen?

LMAO!!! +1

I've definitely had those days. Octave down worked the night before, but when I fire it up the next night to tinker, no go. 4 hours, several smokes and hairs less than before, and I finally gave up. Next night I fire it up, and it works just fine. Frustration all the way, lol.

[senko]

I forgot the source of the circuit, but the Audio Probe ( a 0.1uF capacitor in series with the tip connection of a standard mono jack) has really been a lifesaver when troubleshooting. 

Honestly, I feel that as long as you are making progress (albeit slow, rocky, and frustrating at times) towards building a guitar pedal, it makes the completed project and earned-in-the-trenches experience feel so much better than buying a commercial pedal.  After a while, you see the same problems reoccurring and have the know-how to g

I'm no electronics genius and I remember the frustration and subsequent joy after getting my first 555 astable oscillator circuit to work.  Now I throw those together in 2 minutes. 

DIY is like a sine wave:  with the ups come the downs.  Just up the frequency and you'll get to the peaks quicker.

[jafo]

Head up Uranus... yah, one of those days indeed!

Fortunately, the cure was simple -- I sacrificed a 12V Zener to Les Paul, and inspiration came. Well, not so much the first part. Anyhoo, I'd forgotten to follow all the rules of debugging: check your connections (over and over), check your components (oops, those resistors are green-black-brown, not brown-black-green), and check their orientation (oops, a Zener oriented wrongly can really make life hard for a MosFET). Still not sure why the Vulcan is cutting rather than boosting, but I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Thanks for the encouragement.

[digi2t]

Still not sure why the Vulcan is cutting rather than boosting, but I'll figure it out tomorrow.

That's right. Let it go, come back with fresh eyes. Always works for me. I've found that the more I try to fight with something, the more I feel like I'm trying to make honey out of dogshit.

Go easy. You'll find it.

[Mark Hammer]

If I had a dollar for every one of those days, I wouldn't have to build stuff, I could just buy it.

Over time, you acquire a "toolbelt" of good practices that you start doing automatically, and those end up reducing the ratio of "off" to "on" days.  For example, I started making it a default practice that I slip a piece of heat shrink over the joint between a pot/switch lug and a piece of wire.  Not only does it provide strain relief so the wire doesn't bend too much and fracture, but it stops pot lugs from shorting out against things (the chassis, nearby pots, other lugs on the same pot) when they twist around during boxing.  I made it a default practice to completely tin my boards once they are etched and drilled so that I can avail cold joints from oxidation of the traces/pads, post-etch.  I now know NOT to overheat the lugs of stompswitches, by making sure the lugs and wire are pre-tinned, and by giving the switch time to cool off between successive solder joints.

Little things like that can make a world of difference in your "hit rate".

[jafo]

Lesson of the day -- use a friggin' bias pot with your jfets. Or at least swap resistors until you get a sound... sheesh.

[PRR]

> just pack it up for the day.  Come back with a fresh head on a different day

Indeed.

The heater in the old plow-truck only ran on High and then it squealed like a stuck pig. It is hard to concentrate with the fan SCREAMing, but also hard to concentrate when the windows are frosted and toes freezing.

Three times this year (mostly in winter) I tried to get my head under the dash, got nowhere except beat-up frost-bit fingers and head-lumps. Several hours getting nothing done. I was REALLY frustrated.

Today I went out, the trim popped off, I found the bolt that holds the end of the dash, I pried the dash to get a 2x4 in. I found a flex-wrench to take the motor out and oiled it. I got the glovebox out, found the blower resistor and fixed its break. And got 90% of it all back together. Off, Low, Med, High, and only air-hiss not WHHHAAAARRRRR!! of sour bearings.

If at first you don't succeed, take a quick break and then focus. Still bad? Come at it from the other end, different tack. Still not getting anywhere? Let it be, go fishing, come back another day when Uranus may line-up better.