What the fuck am i doing.

[orllybrahhehbrah]

So i thought i'd try building a pedal for the first time and bought a fuzz face kit.

I followed the germanium one on the right. http://www.pigeonfx.com/layoutff.html

But it didn't exactly work. And i have no idea what's wrong. Help please!

Pics of my shitty mess: http://imgur.com/a/bP6q9 (colour coding is not my strength)

I can provide more pics but maybe it would be better to unsolder all the wire and start again?

i should stick to buying from real pedal makers

[kevinhifi]

The first thing I'd check is the polarity of your power. If you did indeed do the germanium one (which is on the left, not the right), then your power needs to be negative as shown in the diagram. The hot of the battery is connected as the ground, and the negative of the battery is the power. You'll have to read power between the pink line (in the diagram) going into the board and the black line. With a volt-meter's black probe on the pink line input spot and the red probe on the black one, you should read -9V when your power is connected.

[eatyourguitar]

Kev has the right idea but the way he said might need clarification

your power needs to be negative

power is two wires, one of them is always negative. the way this is worded does not indicate that you are talking about the polarity of the supply or the ground. I'm pretty sure you mean the supply is negative with reference to ground.

The hot of the battery is connected as the ground

both wires are hot. hot means it has a power potential to something else. both battery terminals have a potential to each other.

, and the negative of the battery is the power

"power" ----> "is one of the power connections" you may have noticed that it does not include any useful information before or after being corrected.

anyway, thanks for the effort in helping. I'll go away now.

[Schlatte]

As you can state from the first post, the creator of this thread is not a pro- it's his first build and he needs help. Kevinhifi stepped up to help him out with helping words. Put in a way a first time builder can understand the meaning. It's not very professional of you to correct him in such a way. So I'm going to be "unprofessional" now too... on you.
Because if we're going to be dick-ish here- my two cents:

power is two wires

power isn't two wires, it's the SI unit [Watt].

one of them is always negative.

AC Current is alternating, for example. So none of the wires is "always negative"

the way this is worded does not indicate that you are talking about the polarity of the supply or the ground. I'm pretty sure you mean the supply is negative with reference to ground.

I'm pretty sure it's clear what he's trying to say. Don't the that guy.

The hot of the battery is connected as the ground

both wires are hot. hot means it has a power potential to something else. both battery terminals have a potential to each other.

The hot wire is the one that has the bigger differential to the respective ground. That means if you would measure the battery for which one is the hot wire, you wouldn't measure to the enclosure ground, or circuit board ground... but between the two pins. The one with the higher voltage respective to the other is the hot lead. Once again, I think it's clear what he means (the "+" wire). Don't be that guy.

, and the negative of the battery is the power

"power" ----> "is one of the power connections" you may have noticed that it does not include any useful information before or after being corrected.

Power, once again, is measured in the SI unit [Watt]. And yet again I think it is clear what he is trying to state here. I think this does indeed include useful information that the (first time) builder (with little experience) could use.

anyway, thanks for the effort in helping. I'll go away now.

Yes, I have to thank kevinhifi too, he was the only one kind enough to respond to this thread yet and delivered a few ideas (other than you) on what could be wrong- and they were easy to understand.

I'll go away now too. But I'll come back. Expecting your response. I hope I'm not seen as 'that' that guy here. Have a splendid day.

P.S.: I'm not trying to be rude or start a shitstorm here. I just think this had to be said.

[Mike]

i should stick to buying from real pedal makers

Nah, you'll get it going. Hang in there.

It is hard to know where to look because you didn't describe the problem very well. You are going to need to be a bit more descriptive than "it didn't exactly work."

I only looked at your board for a minute, but a couple of things stuck out to me right away. In the first image, there is a white wire connected to a huge pad down at the bottom right corner of the board. That wire is currently connected to nothing. It looks like there are supposed to be two wires running to that huge pad.

I also have some concerns about your soldering, and think a bit of practice might be in order. It looks like you are not getting good flow between the component and the pad. For example, there is a solder joint that is directly to the right of the transistor's collector that needs to be reflowed. It looks like a little crater of solder, with the wire sticking out through the hole. The wire might not be connected at all, or it might be intermittent. The wire wasn't hot enough when you soldered it, and so no solder flowed onto it.

Another suspect joint is on the left side of the board, to the left of where it says AE1030. That pad looks similar, and it looks like half the pad has no solder on it. This would also indicate poor flow, either caused by a cold iron or bad technique.

Grab yourself an old broken piece of electronics, and practice on it. Desolder some components, and resolder them. Or, grab a piece of perfboard and practice soldering on it. You can bend leftover pieces of resistor leads into jumpers to solder. I bet your soldering would improve quickly if you soldered a whole board of jumpers!

Anyway, please describe what the circuit is doing, and please take a picture of the top of the board, and of the whole setup in one image so we can track what wire connects to where.

Mike

[kevinhifi]

Mission accomplished as far as getting some attention for the OP's issue. Thank you for the support, Schlatte. I've been in the science world long enough to know that those who seem to be most interested in impressing with their deep "knowledge" tend to be 1) usually wrong, 2) oblivious to the comprehension of their audience, and 3) uninterested in communicating in a way that actually helps.

To a hobbyist putting a pedal together, "power" is the name of the tab on the board where you connect the "power." The number written on the schematic that describes the "power" usually has either a plus sign or a minus sign in front of it - positive or negative.

[eatyourguitar]

one of them is always negative.

AC Current is alternating, for example. So none of the wires is "always negative"

we are talking about DC here. no one is talking about AC. anyway, I was thinking about my post the next day and how I probably sound like a complete dick while I'm just digging myself a deeper hole now. I will try to stick to being more helpful with less trolling on semantics from now on. I get a little weird sometimes but I really wish I wasn't that way.

[Schlatte]

one of them is always negative.

AC Current is alternating, for example. So none of the wires is "always negative"

we are talking about DC here. no one is talking about AC.

I know, I was just trying to be as much of a dick as possible and find a counter argument to everything you wrote... and "always" seemed like a good starting point... sorry

anyway, I was thinking about my post the next day and how I probably sound like a complete dick while I'm just digging myself a deeper hole now. I will try to stick to being more helpful with less trolling on semantics from now on. I get a little weird sometimes but I really wish I wasn't that way.

I didn't want to attack you personally. Please don't take it that way! I was just trying to make a point. All is well

[orllybrahhehbrah]

Seems like a war began and ended while i was absent from the thread O_O

Thanks for the help guys! I've had a lot work recently so it'll be a week or two till i can actually try to fix it!

[orllybrahhehbrah]

i should stick to buying from real pedal makers

It is hard to know where to look because you didn't describe the problem very well. You are going to need to be a bit more descriptive than "it didn't exactly work."

Mike

To be exact, it made a loud noise then....didn't work. No signal from the guitar was getting through either when it was disengaged. And i think there was still interference when disengaged. No fire however.

[kevinhifi]

Yeah, it's sometimes too easy to be a dick on the web...never appropriate though. So sorry for my dickish contributions. Let's hope you figure it out. Loud noise followed by silence can be bad. Do you have replacements for the transistors that you can swap in once you know the power is right and the connections are clean?

[crazynoises]

On that third picture, the blue wire coming from your 3pdt switch-- it could just be the wire is kinked or weird camera angle, but it looks to me like the insulation might have melted away from the wire due to contact with the soldering iron, leaving an exposed, frayed wire. If so, if that part of the wire touches the box or any other exposed bit of wire it will short the circuit. So even if its not the cause of your current problems you should fix it because it will cause an issue sooner or later.