Harmonic Jerculator - Debugging and issues

[ZacSakrewski]

Hello all,

First time vero buider here (and overall, new pedal builder I guess).

I have been having issues with my harmonic jerculator build which I cannot figure out.

https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2013/04/escobedo-harmonic-jerculator.html

The pedal works in both Bypass and Effect modes, but the effect mode isn't distorted at all, no matter which setup of instrument and amps I use. The pots all work and it seems to be passing through the board without any stoppages (otherwise I'm assuming the balance pot wouldn't work). The weird thing is, this happens with AND without 9v power so I am thinking it may be a power issue.

 I will post pics in the next post so that we can see what's going on as I have made 4 boards of this, two were just bad and the last one had the same issue!

[ZacSakrewski]

Alright after some work, I think I’ve sourced the problem. No idea how to fix it, but I think I know where to start asking for constructive advice.

I went in with my multimeter and checked for voltage throughout the circuit from the power input and backtracked it to see if we were getting power. And I saw that on Q1, we see voltage coming from 22k through C, through to B (and the leg of 47nf on that same row), but no voltage makes it to the emitter.

It’s probably my shit soldering but here’s some pictures of the front and back of my vero

https://imgur.com/gallery/HyRA6LB

[mug]

Hi ZacSakrewski,

with a growing pile of non-working boards under my bench I'm no debugging expert for sure, but if signal passes unaffected when the effect is engaged I'd first think of an error in offboard wiring. From your pic it's not really visible, but the middle row of the 3PDT seems not wired at all?

[ZacSakrewski]

Hey mate, cheers for the reply!

the middle row looked to be soldered in but it may be a cold joint. Would the unaffected signal pass through while the effect is on in this situation?

Alternatively I will give the offboard guide on here a go as well to see if that helps!