Help troubleshooting a circuit

[toddvirgil]

Hey guys,

I'm hoping this is the right place to post this, if not let me know where.

I just finished my third build, a Catalinbread Naga Viper. I plugged it in and am not getting great results. I've done all the troubleshooting under the faults section, and my guess is that something is wrong with a component or something. Here's what I'm getting:

Volume never goes above 25% of what my clean signal is.
1. The "Range" pot makes it go really bassy and loud (this is as loud as it goes, 25%) on 0, but at 100% It's trebly, but only about 5% of the volume.
2. Boost goes 0% volume on 0, and up to 25% vol on 100.
3. Heat seems to add a hint of sparkle when I crank it up, but its barely noticable.

I've checked all my pot wiring and it seems to be good. Reflowed all my solder joints are nice and shiny. I'm wondering if I overheated a component. I can try building another board, but I thought I'd throw this out there to you who are really experienced to see if you can tell me if it sounds like a bad cap or transistor or something.

Thanks in advance!

[toddvirgil]

Ok, glad nobody wasted their time with an answer, because as it turns out, I was a moron and had a couple of my caps swapped. This pedal is sweeeeet.

One question: I added a battery clip -- which I probably won't do again-- but it seems to work regardless of whether there is a jack in the input. I've got the positive attached to the middle lug on the 9v and the negative attached to the ring lug on the input... I think! is that all I need?

[GoranP]

OK, check this out (disregard switch pinouts):



When you have your dc power plugged in, the middle (battery+) and the lower (circuit 9v) are not connected, your circuit gets power from the top and lower lug and the positive battery pole is disconnected.
Once you disconnect the jack, plug internally shortcircuits the middle and lower lug, effectively connecting your board positive potential with the positive battery pole.

Is this how you have it connected?

[toddvirgil]

Thanks GoranP,

Yeah, I think that's how I've got it. And that makes sense -- But what I was expecting it to do was to require an instrument plug in the input or output jack for the battery to work when the DC is not plugged in. So I soldered the negative of the battery to the ring of the stereo input plug. The DC Jack is grounded to the sleeve of the mono output plug...

I know I'm missing something, but I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around this wiring :)

[GoranP]

Does this help? Nothing inserted into input jack, nothing grounded, no power.

[toddvirgil]

That's awesome, thank you! This helped me confirm the wiring was right, and made it easy to track down the problem. My input jack was twisted with the ringlug  toward the bottom, and was bent enough for it to be making ground with the box! twisted the jack around a bit, and now its working like a charm.

THank you for all the help!