Ludicrous speed first DIY (solved)

[Anonymous]

Dear friends,

Welcome, I am Pascal from Holland and it is my first post and build here.

I finished a newly built Ludicrous Speed kit, which is based off a Greer Lightspeed. Not a very advanced kit and it was doable for me.

As far as I can tell all components are populated well and the pedal is working good with a nice overdrive sound. All is working well, but…

There is a bug present and that is hiss and noise through the audio signal. When pauzing playing and beying silent the output is silent too, no background noise anymore. It is only there in the background when I play and more audible when I let ring out the tone.

Anyone have a clue or suggestion to where start troubleshooting?

 

Pics are here:

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Thanks in advance,

Pascal

[Chuck]

Pascal, I’ve looked at this post a few times hoping someone smarter has provided a response.  Your soldering looks great and components all look to be correct so I can’t point at any one thing and say there is the problem – your build looks very neat and clean.  Does the “hiss and noise” you are hearing change when you when you turn the gain or tone knobs up or down?  Do you have any other pedals before or after the Ludicrous Speed?  If yes, does the “hiss and noise” change when they are on or off or removed from the pedal chain?

My build will give some hiss when the gain is all the way up that drops down as the gain is reduced.  The hiss changes character a bit when the tone pot is turned up or down as well.

Chuck

[Anonymous]

Dear Chuck,

 

thanks for your reply. I finally found out what was the issue and have solved it. I traced all the solderings snd components and all were well. The distortion and hiss were consistent and independent from the gain or vol pots. I replaced the standard TL072 (think it was a TL-072C) with a higher quality one TL072IP and that was much better. It was perfect from then on. I then also tried the expensive burr brown OPA2130 like the original circuit and that was good too, although I cannot perceive more improvement over the TL-072IP. Both work fine. Happy with the result and the circuit. Thanks for your help. Cheers, Pascal.

[Author]

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