orange squeezer help needed

Started by rockthebass, April 09, 2005, 01:12:45 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

rockthebass

Im a newbie here so i dont want to make anyone mad over asking this question, but ive over the past 2 days ive breadboarded this circuit 3 times and i havent gotten any sound out of it except the first time and then it wasnt affected.  the next 2 times there was no sound and after 10 or so seconds the battery got hot.  my dad--who was an industrial electrician back in the day--says that its getting hot because the circuit is trying to feed positive into the negative battery terminal.. or something like that.  and if its doing that then i dont want to leave the battery hooked up long enough to measure voltages because im afraid it will damage the 3 tantalum caps and the diode (which i dont have any more of the caps).  like i said, its on the breadboard so i dont think a picture would help, but ive checked, rechecked, and checked the circuit again and again and i cant figure out where ive gone wrong

all of the tantalum caps are reading various resistance and the diode is reading 1.5k ohms---if that helps any.  i also looked at the "checking for a dead transistor" article at geofex but theyre JFETs and im not sure how they work compared to an NPN.

i think thats all.  thanks in advance

bwanasonic

Yes if your battery is getting hot, you are essentially "shorting it out", just as if you were connecting a bare wire between the terminals. When I first built my Orange Squeezer clone, I managed to achieve this same result!  After several tries, checking continuity with a DMM helped deduce the problem (wiring error). Using a meter/continuity checker, and without a battery connected, you should be able to figure out where the problem is.

Kerry M

Mark Hammer

I would strongly recommend making or buying a PCB for this rather than breadboarding it.  All the connections are made for you and unless you've made a truly awful board, or use solder for plumbing pipes and leave huge blobs bridging traces, OR haven't properly identified the pins of things (and the FET will be the one to watch, primarily), it should work.

Is there a stripboard layout available?  I'm curious.

PeterJ

Our very own Monsieur Torchy has a stripboard layout in his "Dan Armstrong Effects" section.  Looks to be even simple enough for me to do!

Peter
Duct tape and particle board!

rockthebass

thanks for the help, ill get to checking continuity sometime today.

i have perfboarded 2 others that work (idiot wah and bronx cheer) because perfboard only costs me $1.79 at radioshack (thats probably expensive for perfboard, right?) and thats about all i can afford.  i just happened to get this breadboard from one of my dad's old friends, and just thought i would put it to good use.  anyway, i dont have the cash right now to buy anything else so might as well have some fun with the breadboard, right?

Mark Hammer

Nothing wrong with perfboard or breadboard.  When you get tired of building and rebuilding the same thing, though, and you would rather be playing than building or troubleshooting, that's when it's time to consider switching building method.

If you are in a position to order stuff from Small Bear Electronics, I highly recommend the "pad-per-hole" perfboard sold there.  Steve has this stuff made for him specially, and it is several notches above what Radio Shack sells in quality and ease of use, often for less money.

Incidentally, one of the nice things about many smaller pad-per-hole boards is the alphanumeric system they use.  All pads can be located by means of a letter/number coordinate.  Personally, I find one of the biggest sources of difficulty in building perfed projects is being interrupted and forgetting what was and wasn't done when you get back to it.  The pad-location system lets you keep a record of all connections made and unmade.  You can write down beside every junction on the schematic the pad where things went.  If several components are tied to the same point but not all are installed at the moment, you can write down the number where the component NEEDS to go, but only cross out the connections already made.

There are loads of little tricks to make perfing less of a shot in the dark and more of a sure thing.