The Kicker drive control doesn’t add gain/drive?

[Stitch]

Greetings,

I have built many pedals from Guitar PCB products and I’ve always been very happy with my results. However, I just built The Kicker pedal and it works great as a volume boost, but I cannot get any Drive effect out of the drive control knob? Any clues at where to look for an issue? I have checked my solder joints, diode orientations and properly seated IC chips. I’m sure it’s something simple, but I’ve noticed on several builds that the Germanium diodes are oriented differently on different builds?
I plan to do some more troubleshooting tonight, but any ideas would be of help.

Thank you in advance,

Stitch

[Barry]

There’s nothing wrong with the circuit or layout — it’s been verified multiple times, both by me and many others.

The first thing I’d suggest is checking all resistor values by color band, since they can’t be reliably tested in-circuit. Here’s a chart from the Guides page if you need a reference. Download the full-color Resistor chart.

Next, reflow the solder joints, especially around everything related to the Gain control, including the potentiometer.

This only takes 5–10 minutes, and in my experience, cold solder joints or a mixed up resistor value are by far the most common issues.

One last check is to make sure there are no cracks in the glass diodes.

[Stitch]

Thank you Barry for your quick response!
I have full confidence in your boards and design, I know this is something of my own making.

I will go back and check my resistance values, in addition to reflowing solder joints. hopefully I can find something and report back.

Thanks for all your help and support.

Best regards,

Stitch

 

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