destroyed a pedal....

[the swede]

I think i messed up and destroyed a pedal
It began with changing a cap to a different value (low cut), worked fine, then i decided to change to a different value again. Pedal is dead.
Signal passes through the pedal when off, but doesnt when i hit the switch. Dead silent (but also not.... se below.)
I think the switch is fine, and all connections to the circuit seems fine, power is fine. I must have shorted something... is what i think. Is that even possible?
Taking everyhting out of the enclosure doesnt matter, it hums a little more like that. The level knob cleary creates a hum, from nothing to loud hum at 50% to no hum at 100%. Im not an expert.... i can beep beep stuff... i may be able to meassure, but this stuff is so tiny....

I think this may be not worth digging more into, or is there a general "thing" i can do like "its def that thing there, do this"?

No biggie... fuck it if its a hastle, i like the pedal.... but there are lots of other pedals

 

[JasonE]

I see two capacitors with melted spots on them. Looks like you may have bumped them with your iron. I am not sure either is melted bad enough to damage them but that is one thing I saw pretty fast.

Without being able to see the back side of the board it is hard to tell but that capacitor in the lower left of the picture doesn't look like the pads are filled with solder. It may not be making good connection. I see some surface mount components. It is hard to tell if any of those have any solder joint issues with the shadows they are in.

 

[HomespunEffects]

I’ve fixed a number of pedals for friends after they “modified” them. 90% of the time it was a solder bridge.

 

[the swede]

I see two capacitors with melted spots on them. Looks like you may have bumped them with your iron. I am not sure either is melted bad enough to damage them but that is one thing I saw pretty fast.

Without being able to see the back side of the board it is hard to tell but that capacitor in the lower left of the picture doesn't look like the pads are filled with solder. It may not be making good connection. I see some surface mount components. It is hard to tell if any of those have any solder joint issues with the shadows they are in.

The image is actually taken before i did anything to it. I "only" messed around in the bottom left corner, the red cap there. And that looks clean. I tried to change it again and the pedal was still dead. So your probably right that i may have bumped into something with the iron in that area. Maybe one of thoose tiiiiiny caps is fucked.....

 

[JasonE]

I’ve fixed a number of pedals for friends after they “modified” them. 90% of the time it was a solder bridge.

This was my first thought.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

The image is actually taken before i did anything to it. I "only" messed around in the bottom left corner, the red cap there. And that looks clean. I tried to change it again and the pedal was still dead. So your probably right that i may have bumped into something with the iron in that area. Maybe one of thoose tiiiiiny caps is fucked.....

Can you give us a new image after you changed the parts and it stopped working?

 

[mercifulfuzziness]

I think i messed up and destroyed a pedal
It began with changing a cap to a different value (low cut), worked fine, then i decided to change to a different value again. Pedal is dead.
Signal passes through the pedal when off, but doesnt when i hit the switch. Dead silent (but also not.... se below.)
I think the switch is fine, and all connections to the circuit seems fine, power is fine. I must have shorted something... is what i think. Is that even possible?
Taking everyhting out of the enclosure doesnt matter, it hums a little more like that. The level knob cleary creates a hum, from nothing to loud hum at 50% to no hum at 100%. Im not an expert.... i can beep beep stuff... i may be able to meassure, but this stuff is so tiny....

I think this may be not worth digging more into, or is there a general "thing" i can do like "its def that thing there, do this"?

No biggie... fuck it if its a hastle, i like the pedal.... but there are lots of other pedals
View attachment 36434

So how did they respond in the store where you were testing this thing out?

 

[the swede]

So how did they respond in the store where you were testing this thing out?

Didn’t buy it from a store. Bought it used.

 

[the swede]

Can you give us a new image after you changed the parts and it stopped working?

Heres images. It’s the orange cap in the corner that i have changed. As i said, it worked the first time (changed the low cut) then I tried another value, and pedal died, changed back to the first cap I tried and it’s still dead.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

There's quite a lot of iffy soldering on that pedal tbh. I'd want to reflow a load of that. Your best bet would be to use an audio probe and see where the signal dies to make sure it's definitely at that cap and not somewhere else. If there are any dry/cold joints, you moving it about and heating the board could have caused one to crack or fail. There's a lot of scorching where you were heating the board up too.
If you can't get anyone local to look at it I can take a look for you if you're stuck.

 

[JasonE]

I am seeing a lot of areas that have been touched. You are definitely not the first person to modify this pedal. I can see where at least one of the melted caps is more than likely where someone touched it with an iron while doing something with that blue wire. I don't know what is going on with that duct tape under the pots.

 

[the swede]

There's quite a lot of iffy soldering on that pedal tbh. I'd want to reflow a load of that.

It’s not a well known pedalmaker so there’s that

Your best bet would be to use an audio probe and see where the signal dies to make sure it's definitely at that cap and not somewhere else. If there are any dry/cold joints, you moving it about and heating the board could have caused one to crack or fail. There's a lot of scorching where you were heating the board up too.
If you can't get anyone local to look at it I can take a look for you if you're stuck.

Thanks for the advice. Guess its really hard to solve this by just looking. Don’t really want to spend to much time (buy audio probe) on this and there’s not alot of money in this pedal anyway. But I’ll check if there’s someone around my area who can look at it. Thanks!

 

[HomespunEffects]

… I don't know what is going on with that duct tape under the pots.

The leads for the red caps on the other side of the board were probably shorting against the pot.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

It’s not a well known pedalmaker so there’s that

Thanks for the advice. Guess its really hard to solve this by just looking. Don’t really want to spend to much time (buy audio probe) on this and there’s not alot of money in this pedal anyway. But I’ll check if there’s someone around my area who can look at it. Thanks!

Audio probes are really easy to make you don't need to buy one. A guitar lead, a capacitor and a couple of crocodile clips

Let us know how you get on when you find someone to look at it.

 

[the swede]

The leads for the red caps on the other side of the board were probably shorting against the pot.

The pots (6 pots) does seem to be soldered on one side… then they are just hold in place with some leg things through the board. Maybe i should try and bend them up?
Is that why there’s ductape under two of them???

 

[JasonE]

The leads for the red caps on the other side of the board were probably shorting against the pot.

I think I would have handled the solution for that in a different manner. I would have cut the leads as short as possible then mounted the pots a slight bit higher to clear the leads. The duct tape just looks bad and leaves the impression that the person that put it together is a hack.

 

[the swede]

I think I would have handled the solution for that in a different manner. I would have cut the leads as short as possible then mounted the pots a slight bit higher to clear the leads. The duct tape just looks bad and leaves the impression that the person that put it together is a hack.

It’s a heavy metall doom music type of person.

 

[the swede]

I think I would have handled the solution for that in a different manner. I would have cut the leads as short as possible then mounted the pots a slight bit higher to clear the leads. The duct tape just looks bad and leaves the impression that the person that put it together is a hack.

its def worth a look though, i will look into to thoose pots when i get back home. It might be that i have pressed down the board into the enclosure several times that may be the fault.

 

[HomespunEffects]

It’s a heavy metall doom music type of person.

If the pot leads were shifted during reassembly the capacitor leads could have poked through the duct tape.

 

[the swede]

If the pot leads were shifted during reassembly the capacitor leads could have poked through the duct tape.

i hope its that simple!!!!