Can anyone repair my atoner?

[coldbrightsunlight]

I got a 4ms atoner in a trade a while back, and plugged a wrong polarity power supply in before I even used the pedal.. There was smoke, but it worked fine for a couple of days, then stopped working again. I've emailed 4ms, but they haven't replied in a long time and I'm starting to think I'll have to sort this out myself. Before I emailed them I had a poke around, and the power input still works, what I think is the voltage regulator is fine (shouldn't it be ok if there's a regulator?), no obviously burned/broken components, but there is one cap which isn't connected to anything. It's an old one built on perf so it was a nightmare trying to figure out where it should go and I gave up.

I'm not sure if I'll ever figure this out myself, so does anyone think they can repair it for money?

Also I'm not sure if this is the right forum, should it be in B/S/T?

[eatyourguitar]

your in the right forum. I stopped selling new repair jobs for a while until I can get my workshop organized and projects completed. what kind of power does the atoner take and what did you plug in? I had a pedal that someone blew up by plugging in an AC adapter. I just replaced all the electrolytic caps and it was fine. most of the 4ms stuff runs on 9v DC even though they have some synth modules that take bipolar 12V. worst case scenario is that you would need new IC's and electrolytic caps. probably less than $20 in parts. just the caps is like $2

use your nose and your eyes to find parts that have damage. sometimes its very hard to tell and you need to rely on smell alone to pick the broken part out of the lot. after you have done that you can follow up with a multimeter testing resistance and capacitance of your electrolytic caps.

[coldbrightsunlight]

It runs on 9V centre positive and I plugged in 9V centre negative. My main problem with repairing it that it's built on perfboard in a pretty small box with loads of pots so it's hard to figure out where stuff is, if it was PCB like the new ones it'd probably be ok. I figure my options are lots of time spent figuring it out or pay someone else to figure it out, especially since during uni term times I don't have the time or equipment to do it myself.

I have thought about just buying a PCB and completely remaking the thing, since 4ms PCBs are a reasonable price. Might just come down to doing that in the end.

[eatyourguitar]

big ass pic of the atoner PCB

its only $18

[D-Rainger]

Can't 4ms fix your atoner?

[coldbrightsunlight]

Can't 4ms fix your atoner?

I've emailed them twice in about a month and a half or so, no reply yet. That would be my preferred option but I'm not sure what's going on with that.

^Yeah, the more I look at it the more tempting just buying a PCB is... BUT I'M LAZY.

[McSpunckle]

It's only $18 + you have to buy the parts + you have to build it. Which sucks. The complete Atoner kit is $130.

-edit-

Ok, so here's a schematic: http://www.commonsound.com/atoner/pcb1. ... tic1.7.pdf

It does look like all the power goes through a regulator. I've wired up smaller regulators backwards before and they survived for a long time... however, it did allow voltage through-- but it was pretty low.

Best thing I can say is take a voltage measurement after the regulator and see if you still get 9 volts.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Yeah, I did, there was still a reading of 9V, as far as I remember (I did all my limited diagnosis like a month ago and don't even have a multimeter to hand right now). If the regulator is fine would that not mean that nothing else should be damaged because of the power thing and the problem is something else? I tried figuring out where that broken off cap should connect to from the schem, but working out how the perf layout matched the schem was just to much for me...

From pics on their site with the enclosure and pcb from the kit, the pcb wouldn't fit in this enclosure... So basically this is all that money down the drain (at least until I get clever enough to fix it, assuming that ever happens). I might buy a kit because it is a great pedal and I want one, and I suppose if I ever did fix this I could sell one of them/have 2.

[Schlatte]

you're in the uk right? sooo... in about three to five weeks when I have my workshop all set up again I could take a look at it if you want.... and it would probably be cheaper to ship to austria than to the us

[coldbrightsunlight]

you're in the uk right? sooo... in about three to five weeks when I have my workshop all set up again I could take a look at it if you want.... and it would probably be cheaper to ship to austria than to the us

I'll definitely take you up on that if nobody else offers by then. Shipping in europe is so much easier than to the us, and cheaper too.