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Hi. I just finished building the analog chorus pedal, and it is not working. When I plug it in, the LED light blinks with the speed of the rate knob. Then after about 5 seconds the LED light turns off. The bypass works, but when I engage the pedal, the only effect I get is a slight difference in tone. I have re-soldered all the connections that looked possibly marginal. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Don't see anything obviously out of place. I'd suggest you work through this process first, then post back if it doesn't help: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52188

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Thanks for your quick reply. I will try re-soldering all the connections tomorrow.

I re-soldered all of the connections and it still doesn’t work.

Always worth a try, because it often solves such issues. But not always, obviously!

I'll ask one of our BBD experts to look in on this thread.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Thank you, I appreciate it.

I figured the next step would be these measurements. I did not realize the trim pot was at 10:00 the first time. So I measured again with the trim pot at 12:00.

How are you powering the pedal? I'm not seeing voltages up around 9.0V like I'd expect to.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

I am using a 9volt power supply.

The 4558 voltages are definitely off. You should be seeing ~9V on pin 8, 0V on pin 4 (ground), and ~4.5V on all of the other six pins. I would double-check to be sure all of the pins are properly inserted into the socket and then recheck.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

At the risk of a stupid question, on my multi-meter shouldn’t the black be common (ground) with the red as power. If I connect my meter like that, but use the black lead on pin 8, I get a reading of -8.22.

No stupid questions here except for the ones not asked.

Black probe to ground, red probe to the test point. Here is my standard instructions for measuring IC pin voltages; you'll see it cut'n'pasted into many threads here:

To measure the DC voltage level on the IC pins, set your multimeter to the DC voltage mode, indicated by a solid line above a dotted one. Use the 20VDC range setting if it's not an auto-ranging meter. Your power source needs to be connected and there needs to be a cable in the input jack. If the pedal is assembled into the metal enclosure, put the black probe into one of the corner screw bosses of the enclosure--this is your ground connection. If the "guts" are out of the enclosure, use the sleeve tab of the input jack for the ground connection. Then touch the red probe to each point that you want to measure. See left side of the image below for the numbering of the pins.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Thanks again for a quick response. I will try again.

Just to be clear, the black lead on the meter connects to common?

Yes, black to common.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Funny, after putting the chip back in on the 4558, on a whim I thought I would give it a try and it worked. Except when I disengaged the pedal, the LED stayed on but the bypass worked. Then the pedal quit working but still had bypass.

You have some sort of intermittent issue, due to a faulty physical connection, most likely in your wiring or foot switch.

When you say, "the LED stayed on, but bypass worked", do you mean that the LED continued to blink in time with the rate or did the LED stop blinking and just stay lit.

When you say, "Then the pedal quit working but still had bypass", do you mean that when the pedal was "on" (or not in bypass), you could still hear clean guitar signal but no chorus? Or did the sound go completely dead altogether?

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com

The LED blinked with the rate knob adjust. And the chorus worked. Then in bypass the LED stayed on, but did not blink. And I was getting a clean guitar tone. Then with the pedal engaged again it worked for about 30 seconds. Then the LED light turned off and no chorus, but the guitar sound still came through. When using the footswitch, the tone changed slightly.

1. Disconnect the "LED" wire from the footswitch and connect it to the sleeve of the input jack. Does the LED stay on and blink all the time now regardless of what state the footswitch is in?

2. Disconnect the "IN" and "OUT" wires from the PCB. Disconnect the tip wires of each jack from the footswitch. Reconnect the tip wire from the input jack to the "IN" eyelet on the PCB. Reconnect the tip wire from the output jack to the "OUT" eyelet on the PCB. This will hard wire your pedal to always be on.

Shake it around. Touch things on the inside. If the pedal stays on without cutting out, we can probably assume your problem is either with your footswitch wiring or the footswitch itself. Otherwise, we can assume your problem is your soldering on your jacks or somewhere on the PCB.

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com

Well, that was an easy fix. Some strands from the LED wire were touching the #1 terminal on the footswitch. Took the wire out and shortened it and re-soldered, and success. Thanks to all of you for your help and patience!
Mike

Good job fixing it! It's usually something simple, but not always obvious.

_________________
*patience is a virtue*

Please do not PM me. email is prefered. keith@buildyourownclone.com