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Hello,

Long time BYOC pedal builder, but first time forum user. I have built half a dozen pedals, all but one work fine, and 3 are on my board. All said, I'm more than happy with what I get from BYOC pedals.

Last week, my all time favorite pedal, a triboost I built three years ago, which has been on regular rotation on my board since, started having some issues. Hence my first-time out-of-hiding entry to BYOC forums. Were it not a seminal part of my sound, I would (and will in the absence of any help) gladly spend several weekends tinkering with the wiring on this thing (something I'm not a pro at yet), but I've got 2 jams a week, and playing without the triboost is like playing without my right arm. Seeking any help or advice from any experts with a better grasp of signal path than I.

The pedal:
Pictures will be included below. I built it a few years ago, and it worked pretty much out of the gate, except for the fact that 2 of the 3 LEDs don't seem to work. Those modes all work, but the lights just don't light up. Only lights up for germanium. Not a big deal, but I'm giving all the background here. It's been working perfectly for 3 years, and a year now of pretty regular use. I typically have run it off of a 9v battery, but recently upgraded to a voodoo iso5 source. I power it off of the standard 9v outlet of the voodoo. Other than a large boost in treble hiss while the pedal is on (a topic for another post maybe), the voodoo setup has been just fine for 2 months now.

The problem:
During my jam last week, the pedal started to short out of pedal mode back to bypass. In other words, I had the pedal activated, and during play it would spontaneously drop back to un-boosted. A quick toggle off and back on will fix it, but this happens frequently, and will drop out in the middle of a song or solo, it's essentially unusable in this state.

The shorting:
- does not cause full volume loss, just back to bypass levels
- happens without any physical disruption of the pedal
- can be fixed by a 3pdt toggle off and on
- interestingly can also be fixed by switching the SPDT switch back and forth (I largely use the pedal in germanium mode)
- doesn't short an 'off' pedal back 'on' into boost mode as far as I can tell

I'm ready to resolder every joint in the box, but given the SPDT thing I'm worried it's a component issue. Am I off base here? Where can I start my troubleshooting?

The pictures:
This is one of my earlier builds, and it is ugly, but it worked for 3 years just fine.
I assume the pictures attach somewhere below. Apologies for the quality. If I get replies/requests, and know where to focus, I can take better.

The thanks:
Thanks so much for any help!
-e

Does the pedal display this same "dropout to bypass" behavior in all three boost modes?

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

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

What you’ve described sounds typical of poor soldering. The circuit will work at first and then quit for no apparent reason. Try re-soldering the V3 eyelet just above the output jack. On a good quality solder joint you shouldn’t still be able to see the solder pad. The soldering of the input jack could stand some touching up. Clumpy solder like that is an indication of poor heat transfer while soldering.

_________________
"It’s your soldering."

Yes the pedal does drop out in all three modes, so something in the switch or input maybe.

I went ahead took the thing apart and did a full touch-up and re-solder of most of the connections with stephen's advice in mind, and replaced some wires that looked like they could have been done better. Like I said, this was one of the first pedals I had built, and it looked pretty rough in there.

I didn't touch any of the components, as those connections mostly looked decent, and I'm hoping this is really just input connections rather than something on the board.

I get to give it a full run tomorrow night, so hopefully that does the trick.

A shot of the solder side of the PCB might be helpful.

The soldering of lug 4 of the stomp switch looks cold. With good heat transfer and proper solder flow you should never need that much solder.

_________________
"It’s your soldering."

If you still have the problem after your re-wiring & solder touch-up, I would replace the footswitch. Since the issue occurs in all three boost modes, a faulty switch is the only way I can think of that such a problem could occur. All it would take is a mechanical fault of some sort in the 7-8-9 lug switch. The switch is wired such that lug 9 has incoming signal on it in either switch mode. If any contact is made between lugs 8 & 9, that signal will go directly to the output (i.e. bypass!) rather than through the effect circuit.

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

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