Humorous results of building while tired.

[smashinator]

Last night I sat down to finish wiring up my brother's christmas present.  It was fairly late, and I was tired, and I got a few things backwards.  First off, I got my signal and negative battery wires reversed on the input jack.  It took me maybe 10 minutes to figure out what the heck I did.  So after I got that fixed, I noticed that the pot was wired backwards. 

I always wire pots backwards.  Even when I'm careful about it.  Frankly, I think they switch themselves just to tick me off.

Anways, I fired up the soldering iron again and went to switch them.  Soldered it all back up, and realized I did the SAME THING AGAIN.  ARGGH!

I went to bed after that.     I'll finish it up tonight.

[seanm]

I was working as a labourer on a construction site. There where only 3 of the largest model home made. Two used a custom layout and the third used the stock layout. When the carpenters framed the third house, they used the custom layout by mistake. Down it comes and they frame it again. Yes, they used the wrong layout *a second time*. Down it comes and they frame it again.

The carpenters are paid by the house, so they only get paid for the final framing. And the contracter for the framers had to pay for the lumber wasted on the first two framings. A very expensive mistake.

So when I solder a pot in backwards, yes it *always* happens to me too, I just remember the carpenters and I don't feel so bad 

[aron]

That backwards pot always gets me. I was wiring up another pedal this weekend and I was amazed when the pots did work correctly!

My favorite mistake is forgetting to wire up ground to an IC. Happens all the time!

[nelson]

heh, so  I am not the only one with the pots.

[JimRayden]

Yup. And sometimes I have gotten frustrated enough to just leave them be. You can always rename "Volume" and "Tone" to "Cut" and "Cream".  At least that's what I've done for the tone pot of my Whisker Biscuit.

But that was a long time ago. Now I take extra time to logically think through the travel of the pot wiper.

----------
Jimbo

[Ge_Whiz]

heh, so  I am not the only one with the pots.

No, you're not. There are times when the gods are just shouting, "Don't build stompboxes today!".

Last Saturday morning - built a passive ring modulator, it worked great.
Saturday afternoon - wrecked a perfectly good voice synthesiser toy trying to circuit-bend it. Pop, dead.
Sunday morning. More careful. Wrecked another gadget trying to circuit-bend it. No pop this time.
Sunday afternoon - started a simple job boxing up a musical gadget. Marked out and drilled all the holes. Found that the screws were about 5mm too short. Couldn't finish.

Yes, I should have stuck to getting the Christmas lights down from the loft - or maybe it's just as well that I didn't.

[gez]

 

[ibanezts808]

those are nice ventilation holes 

[ibanezts808]

heh, so  I am not the only one with the pots.

No, you're not. There are times when the gods are just shouting, "Don't build stompboxes today!".

Last Saturday morning - built a passive ring modulator, it worked great.
Saturday afternoon - wrecked a perfectly good voice synthesiser toy trying to circuit-bend it. Pop, dead.
Sunday morning. More careful. Wrecked another gadget trying to circuit-bend it. No pop this time.
Sunday afternoon - started a simple job boxing up a musical gadget. Marked out and drilled all the holes. Found that the screws were about 5mm too short. Couldn't finish.

Yes, I should have stuck to getting the Christmas lights down from the loft - or maybe it's just as well that I didn't.

what's a circuit-bend?

[Burton]

hahah nice! It actually doesn't look terrible because of the symmetry... Maybe you could put jacks in those holes too, then it would look like a more complex box and people would be more impressed, or confused... Then who'd look like the stupid one? Not you! 

[smashinator]

what's a circuit-bend?

check it: http://www.anti-theory.com/soundart/circuitbend/

[seanm]

hahah nice! It actually doesn't look terrible because of the symmetry... Maybe you could put jacks in those holes too, then it would look like a more complex box and people would be more impressed, or confused... Then who'd look like the stupid one? Not you! 

Until you plugged into one of the "dummy" jacks by mistake and spent an hour trying to work out what was wrong with the pedal 

[petemoore]

  Yupp, I had it all figured out, backwards.
  Amp frame-age...whoops, this goes the other way...dohh...oh no it doesn't [in this case]...I got lucky
  I studied hard and took notes on how a gain knob goes in backwards and forewards on a DIST+, learned exactly how that works, then had to figure to relearn the whole affair and that there are different types of gain pot wirings, that messed me up for a long time, I didn't want to learn because of the 'unreliability of it...and would just go for the 50/50 odds and rewire when necessary.
  Now I have it down. To only having to rewire pots when necessary...lol.
  I actually had a discussion involving input vs output today with a GC person, a brand new Echo Park doesn't work with the source plugged to output  ...I KNOW what the directions say about that, I always skip steps 1 and 2...

[seanm]

 
  I actually had a discussion involving input vs output today with a GC person, a brand new Echo Park doesn't work with the source plugged to output  ...I KNOW what the directions say about that, I always skip steps 1 and 2...

That's what we *really* need, a circuit that detects when you have plugged the input and output wrong and autmagically switches it for you! I know I'd buy one 

[gez]

Maybe you could put jacks in those holes too, then it would look like a more complex box and people would be more impressed, or confused... Then who'd look like the stupid one? Not you! 

You can't really see from the photo but there's a large slab of circuit board (plus the pots) just behind the holes, so no room for jacks.  Had the box the wrong way round when I was marking it out...

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Even the 'pros' do it... i went ot the factory to get the steel boxes for my sequencer (fairly involved metalwork, has 16 sliders plus a dozen buttons, display etc) and.... they punched all the metal right, then folded it...INSIDE OUT!!!  :icon_mad:no way to recover from that. I met the guy who does the programming for the computerised punch machine, he was obviously stoned. i'm very happy with my NEW box maker