Very weak effect from my Rangemaster (again) -- HELP

[pbrommer]

Hey-
Having a tough time with this pedal. It's been giving me fits. 2 weeks ago, it worked just fine, without any problems. I closed the box to use it as a stompbox, but it didn't want to work. Well, bad wiring was the culprit (one popped off). But now, after remelting and rechecking things, still nothing comes out. Use this schematic



To help you figure things out. The top three nodes have very very little voltage through the wires, though the pots are fine. Seems the wires into the capacitors are bad or something.... urgh. Shoot me your ideas.

Patrick

[vseriesamps]

Hey good luck with this one. I built two Rangemaster and loved them but could never get them to work reliably and finally gave up.

A lot of problems seem to come from that gain pot since it has DC on it. I finally just replaced it with a little trimmer and that seemed to help. Why mine finally died I can't say.

Jack Orman has a cool silicon Rangemater-inspired boost on his site. Would be worth checking out if the Range'r never cooperates.

Good luck
K

[STOMPmole]

I assume the '2' and '3' are for where you have a pot connected, right?  Is '1' connected to neg?  Also, I noticed you said pot(s) as in plural...do you have two pots attached, and if so where's the other one hooked up??

Other than that, it looks OK to me.

[pbrommer]

yup. should've been clearer. 1,2,3 go to the respective solder lugs. Only one pot -- boost. I can't figure out why there's no voltage through those 3 connections (at the top). Positive to ring of in jack. Neg to lug 1 of the pot. There's voltage to the lugs of the pot. It's weird.... and frustrating. The fact that it HAD worked is what pisses me off to no end... Urgh. Any suggestions are helpful. And yes, I did turn the pot up to maximum, and still really weak. Bypass is fine though.. bleh.


*edit* I will get some digital photos and post these this weekend so you can look at what's wrong. Thanks.

patrick

[cd]

The part marked "NEG" should be connected to lug 1 of your pot AND the black lead of your battery, and "POS" should be connected to ground (on input or output jack is OK).  Is this the case?  If so, you probably have a short somewhere, or you could have fried the transistor.