Tonefiend Forum

I'm glad to hear it. The circuit was simple enough that even without putting a scope on it (my favorite approach), I was pretty sure the problem was "somewhere else". Your diligence in writing down voltages was much appreciated.

It's like the story of the guy who's looking for his keys under the street lamp. "Did you drop them here"? "no" "so why are you looking here?" "the light's better"

Hey Joe, I just wanted to thank you for posting all of this. I just recently began messing with electronics and discovered this site a few weeks ago, to my great delight. I completed Project 1 today after a fair bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Amazingly, I didn't make too many noob mistakes on the breadboarding, and I got the perfboarded circuit right on the first try. But when I tried to box it, I kept getting a working LED but no sound at all. After MUCH troubleshooting, muti-metering, re-soldering, cleaning up, etc. over a few days, I finally realized that I had the dang pedal/switch oriented the wrong way (90 degrees off axis). I unsoldered everything going to it, turned it 90 degrees, hooked it back up, and everything worked! (I also realized it's a lot easier to connect the wires to the switch when it's oriented correctly). It was a great learning experience (and an exercise in staying patient)--nice to know that there were no cold joints and not many wiring errors, just a rookie mistake. Anyway,I hooked it right up (Tele into a Hot Rod Deville) and it sounds hotter than a urinary infection! Makes the trebly Tele sound wicked crunchy; it also creates a really sweet tone when using the E-bow, and adds a lot of nice sustain without having to jiggle the ebow very much (a nice benefit that I sometimes find lacking when e-bowing on those single coils). I'm very psyched about all of this and plan to start working on the Fiendmaster tomorrow--updates to follow. Thanks again!