Photon Phuzz issue (answered)

[Anonymous]

I just put together a Photon Phuzz circuit I had sitting around for awhile. At the time I purchased it it came with the BC109, 5p and 470n caps, and the 1n4739.

I was testing the circuit before boxing and get no sound.  Before getting too far into diagnosing the board I wanted to make sure of something.  Does the PCB look normal?  It seems there are no traces coming off the 9v or going to D2?

 

Maybe I’m missing something obvious but want to be sure.  Thanks!

[Barry]

These are multi-layer PCBs so you are not going to see all traces. That said the boards are 100% verified before being put up for sale. You can easily check the continuity of traces though with your DMM in “Beep” mode.

UPDATE: Check that you connected I and O if using a 3PDT wiring board or lugs 2 and 8 of a standard 3PDT switch to the actual TIP of both jacks. Use the GUIDE below to verify.

I hope that helps.

 

[Billy]

Just to verify my photon phuzz does have continuity between D2 cathode and +9v and D2 anode and ground

Zooming in on your pcb it does look like you have heat damage to some of your solder pads particularly the in , out, 9v and ground pads I also note you have your transistor soldered directly to the pcb hopefully it’s not been damaged

These are double sided  pcbs so you can solder to either side of the pcb if any of the solder pads have been pulled off with too much heat from your soldering iron

Post a picture of your 3PDT switch wiring so we can trace your wires from the pcb to 3PDT and from the jacks to 3PDT

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys, I think I mostly wanted confirmation that there are more traces than I can see before really digging into the issue.

I use a tester box I made to test out circuits before boxing that has a bypass and alligator clamps so it’s not wired to a 3pdt yet. I do get a signal when bypassed.

I’ll take a look at the connections again.  My crappy soldering iron even on low gets too hot.  I was impatient with the bc109 as I ran out of pins and installed against better judgment so hopefully I didn’t damage as you thought I might have.

Thanks again, I’ll see what I come up with.  It’s funny when complicated circuits put together work right off the bat and then I screw up something so straightforward.

[Billy]

That narrows it down a bit Shane are you getting 9v on the pcb when connected up to your test box

Hopefully from what you’ve said you don’t have any faults in the circuit and it’s either not getting power or your in or out wires have bad connections on the pcb T pads

Funnily enough your colours of choice are the exact opposite of mine I use green for in and yellow for out

[Barry]

Could you respond to my comment above from the word Update down.

I believe this to be the problem but I have no picture to confirm.

[Anonymous]

Hi Barry

its kind of a bad pic but the green and yellow alligator clips are connected to the respective tip of the in and out jacks inside the enclosure. These are connected to the “t” locations on the PCB in and out wires.  Yellow to yellow and green to green  in the pic.

I added a crude messy pic of my voltages and there must be a bad solder somewhere I think?

Thanks again guys.

 

[Billy]

From your voltages all being high it looks like a grounding issue

[Anonymous]

hey,

your voltages are definitely funky, i agree with billy, check your grounds.

the voltage at c should swing as you adjust the voicing pot, there’s not too much to go wrong with this circuit.

looking

at the voltages you posted, there’s no way a directly grounded emitter <which for all intents this is> is gonna be floating at 8volts. should be under one.  hope ya get it sorted.

PJP

[Anonymous]

Thanks again everyone for your help.

I audio traced the circuit and it seemed to be possible issue by the 470nf cap. I tried swapping that out but probably now created more issues with solder pads coming off. Think at this point it’d take less time to build a new one than spend more time trying to figure this out any more. Thanks again.

[Author]

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