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Officer Bukowski wrote:Sorry for the whining.. I'm just frustrated about this. It really sucks. I'm sure you know how it is.

You should hear the sounds I make putting up shelves ... being Scottish I could probably teach you a swear word or two.

Good luck with it

I know what you feel like! i too have some builds that just doesn't work......let it on the shelf a couple of time and take it again when you are more relax......anyway, are your board touching the pot? It may be shorting. Are your diodes in the right way ?? If your positive leg of your led is solder on the dc jack (with a resistor in serie) and the negative led is solder to the upper middle lug of the switch and the middle lug is grounded, then your led have no choice to work. another thing.... your output jack sleeve lug seems to be linked with the input jack but not at the sleeve lug. it's seems empty. perhaps its not solder to the good lug. (input tip to the in on the board, ring lug empty (or if you have a battery snap) and sleeve lug to ground (or empty if both of your jacks are linked by the bare enclosure). hope it helps.

Yeah dev I'm pretty much just like "fuck this" nothin too creative just regular anger.

It just occured to me that I have a regular Zvex SHO.. Maybe I should open that up and copy how it's wired.

Fuzzmax it's a board mounted pot and I bent the legs a little so the pots not touching anything. I was gonna wire in a snap but decided to go green so that extra sleeve lug on the stereo input jack is empty.

is your input jack mono?? from the pic, the middle left lug of the switch seems to be connected to the input jack and the ground from the output jack seems to be connected to the same lug. do you have a better pic of that input jack??

The input jack is a stereo jack. Hopefully you can kinda see better in this pic

I'm pretty sure at least the bypassed signal should be working but it's not.

My only camera is my iPhone and it's the old version that you can't manually focus so I can't get pics to come out in focus.

btw I looked in my SHO and it didn't help.

I'm not sure but it kind of looks like you wired your 9v jack wrong?
It looks like neither wire is going to negative/ground?
Also, a multimeter is almost as important as a soldering iron when it comes to building pedals.
Here is one you can buy for $5 that will pay for itself in no time.
http://www.harborfreight.com/7-function-digital-multimeter-90899.html

the tip of your input jack is not wired to anything. if you look at the side of the jack, you can see metal rings in between fiberglass rings. just follow it with your eye so you can see what contact goes to what lug of the jack. once you get the tip of your input jack wired to the switch correctly, go and put your battery - (or + in positive ground pedals) on the ring of the input. all things that need negative power get it from the ground (sleeve) of the input jack. the ring of the input is the ring of a stereo cable. on a mono cable the power runs through the sleeve of the cable. simple mistakes.

dont give up. failure is part of the learning process. I fail all the time but thats how I learn.

The + lug of the dc jack is wired to the power thing on the board.

The negative lug is wired to the sleeve of the output jack, where it meets a wire from the ground spot on the board, which is then wired to the sleeve of the input jack, which is then wired to the center lug of the footswitch.

Edit: I just read your post eatyourguitar. Thanks I don't know how I missed that! I'll fix it tommorow and we'll see how it turns out.

^Eatyourguitar is right. You wired the wrong lug of the input jack. Since you're not using a battery, apparently, you don't need a stereo jack.

Also, the DC jack is wired wrong. The lug that's connected on the outside (the one you don't have wired to anything) is the tip of the power supply. In a stompbox, it should go to ground. The lug you have +9V connected to is correct, I believe.

Also also, it looks like the LED is wired directly to the board and the DC jack... which would mean the LED is on all the time. The negative side of the LED needs to go to the switch.

So it looks like you got some connections mixed up. Not a huge deal, but it -is- pretty frustrating. Just the other day I wired a DC jack backwards and it fucked with me for a while before I noticed it... and I use the kind that only have two lugs. >.>

Here's a $15 (plus shipping) dollar meter:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9141

I'd pick that one because it has the audible "beep" to check connections.

90% of the time when I'm debugging, I stick one lead into the screw hole of an enclosure, and poke around at things that are supposed to be grounded first. The check power by putting one lead on the +9V and touch things I know are supposed to be connected there. Then it's just a matter of following the schematic... "Oh, these should be connected! ... *poke* *BEEP* Yay! What about these? *poke* *silence* THAT'S IT!"

^McSpunckle's Guide to Debugging.

But, yeah, if you're about to toss a $60 kit because you can't debug it, the meter is a pretty decent investment, doncha think? And you can save quite a bit building kits instead of buying pedals... (compared to boutique clones).

BTW, if you're just going to give up on that kit, you can send it to me and I'll get it working for you and let you know what was wrong with it.

Thanks McSpunckle

What's the difference if I wire the dc jack that way? Just curious because I wired the DC jack on my other pedal the same way and it works and isn't noisy or anything, although the LED still doesn't work.

I kinda knew I wired the LED wrong in the SHO, I was just trying something different to see if it would work. I don't really know why, I just do illogical things a lot.

For some reason I thought a dmm cost like $60. I'll have to pick up one of those beeping ones.

My brother is coming over tommorow and bringing his dmm for some troubleshooting. If we can't figure it out that would be awesome if you could help. I appreciate it!

I'm gonna get busy fixin things up first thing tommorow. I'm feelin good about it haha

my meter was like $43 on mouser and it does everything. it also doesnt die when I connect the Ohm meter to DC9v. radioshack and harbor freight sell the cheap ones and they work for basic troubleshooting. you can spend $10 on a DMM and it will still work fine. I'm like 25 maybe 35 pedals deep and I rarely make many mistakes anymore. the pedals work right the first time. I started with AB switches and loop switchers so I could really understand things without power. I think its good to look at a 3PDT and ask your self how does it work. it also helps that I have been playing with the breadboard and looking at schematics. I have spent (wasted?) many many hours with DIY and I cant really say if it is worth it. but where I am now, I'm soooo happy I didn't give up. its all down hill from here.

McSpunckle wrote:^Eatyourguitar is right. You wired the wrong lug of the input jack. Since you're not using a battery, apparently, you don't need a stereo jack.

Also, the DC jack is wired wrong. The lug that's connected on the outside (the one you don't have wired to anything) is the tip of the power supply. In a stompbox, it should go to ground. The lug you have +9V connected to is correct, I believe.

Also also, it looks like the LED is wired directly to the board and the DC jack... which would mean the LED is on all the time. The negative side of the LED needs to go to the switch.

So it looks like you got some connections mixed up. Not a huge deal, but it -is- pretty frustrating. Just the other day I wired a DC jack backwards and it fucked with me for a while before I noticed it... and I use the kind that only have two lugs. >.>

This is what I gathered as well.

Good luck, I hope you get these working. I know it's frustrating as hell when you sit there for an hour, or more, and then nothing works. God I know. There was a while there were 2 of 3 things I was putting together were not working right the first time, so keep that chin up.

Officer Bukowski wrote:Thanks McSpunckle

What's the difference if I wire the dc jack that way? Just curious because I wired the DC jack on my other pedal the same way and it works and isn't noisy or anything, although the LED still doesn't work.

I kinda knew I wired the LED wrong in the SHO, I was just trying something different to see if it would work. I don't really know why, I just do illogical things a lot.

For some reason I thought a dmm cost like $60. I'll have to pick up one of those beeping ones.

My brother is coming over tommorow and bringing his dmm for some troubleshooting. If we can't figure it out that would be awesome if you could help. I appreciate it!

I'm gonna get busy fixin things up first thing tommorow. I'm feelin good about it haha

DC jacks with 3 lugs have whats called an N.C. (no connection, I think) switch. Basically, when the jack isn't plugged in, the "ring" lug connects to the N.C. switch. This is usually to connect a battery to ground when you unplug a power supply, but stompboxes are backwards-- so it connects the batteries positive instead.

You had the ground connected to the NC switch, and nothing connected to the tip, so the ground wasn't connected to anything. A pedal could still work that way if it was in a chain-- since it'd get ground through the jacks. But if it's on its own, it's not going to work.

Meters cost anywhere from $5 to... well, thousands. Mine was $260, I think, but it's wayyy overkill for pedals. Any decent meter with a continuity buzzer (beeeep) is plenty for a pedal. Otherwise, you just need to make basic DC and resistance measurements, for the most part.

See if you can beat your brother up and take his meter. : D

capacitance I use rarely but it can help in identifying a cap without removing it or looking at it. you can test new caps to see how far off they are from what value they should be. my tayda 1n caps range from 2n to 0.8n thats +/-%100 tolerance batman! you can test cables and complete pedalboards for capacitance and it lets you know if you should get better cables or put a buffer half way down the chain. but its really not needed to build or troubleshoot one pedal.

Thanks again for all the help guys. I rewired it the way McSpunckle suggested and it works perfectly now! Led and everything! It fuckin rocks too. It's louder than my real SHO because my real SHO only runs on batteries and the battery is usually kinda dead since it lasts forever. This thing is dc jack only and loud as hell. Plus the enclosure is sparkley, the led is pink, and the knob is sweet so it looks pretty cool haha. I'll post some pics.

But yeah I'm happy now. Apparently my mood is entirely dependent on the success of my DIY endeavors.