No guitar sound, buzzy and farty, but with volume increase? Help please.

[somasix]

All right, newbie question.  Built this today using Radio Shack parts.  Used a 2n222 transistor in a Dip8 socket.  It's facing the right direction.  I know it's kinda working cuz when I put it in the signal chain, my amp volume kicks up quite a bit, hums and buzzes, but no guitar sound.  Followed the schematics and pics exactly.  The only time I got a guitar signal is when my girlfriend played and I closed the circuit by holding the stereo in jack and the mono out jack tightly in the web of my hands.  Even then it was really farty and buzzy. I could use a little debugging help.

Thanks sincerely,


Jason

[tomwarrior]

try removing the transistor and ground the terminals from C and B(1 and 2) on the socket. does this get you a good signal from the guitar? if not, its your wiring. check it against the pictures in arons build pictorial.
recheck the polarity of the caps.
just for sh*ts and giggles, put the transistor in backwards. any sound?
the thing that got me first was i wasnt sure if the 100k, 10k, 47k and 22uf were connected where the lines intersect on the schematic. they do.
post a follow up.---tom

[somasix]

Thanks for your reply Tom.  My follow up reply is no doubt typically newbie.  As far as mounting C and B of the transistor onto the socket, I can only dumbfoundedly ask, "what socket?"  Bear with me. 

A engineer friend of mine advised me to check my grounds, that all ground wires must be soldered to the same place.  This is something that I had to redo, as one of the ground wires soldered to the point where the 47K resistor and the 100K resistor are soldered together (is there a succint term for a solder point?). 

Reset the ground wires and was met with no gain, but a guitar signal.  This got me excited until I realized I had plug the guitar into the output and amp into the input, therefore reversing the whole circuit.  Genius!  Why I go a signal that time is beyond me.

Finally, after experimenting with the ground wires in about three different positions, my poor little perfboard was starting to look like Bahgdad.  I was get a bit of guitar just peeking through the buzz when I whacked the strings HARD.  I've decided to chalk this one up to learning and redo the circuit later this week.  Here are a few specific questions that I can ask now from my experience.

1.  My Dip 8 IC was a bit wobbly on the board after I pushed the 2n2222 into it.  Could this have been my problem?  Did I break it?

2.  Do my resistors need to be 1 watt or 1/2 watt?

3.  Do all of the grounded wires touch the entry solder point of the 47K resistor (not where it crosses with the 22uF capacitor, but the other entry point?

4.  The colors of my resistors do not match those in the pictoral.  Do the resistors need to face a specific direction according to color?

5.  What part of the stereo (and likewise the mono) jack is the tip, sleeve, and ring exactly?  I realize that this is illustrated, but it was hard for me to make out from the images.

I realize this is a lot of information.  I'm sure I'll become less verbal with more experience.  Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,

Jason

[Joecool85]

1.)  I doubt you broke it, but you might have broken a solder...it shouldn't be wobbly.

2)  1/4 or 1/2 watt resistors are fine.  Sounds to me like you should grab a new board and socket basically everything.  I had to do this with my first couple pedals before I figured out proper wiring etc.

3)  all ground points just need to connect to each other, thats it. 

4.)  Direction of resistors doesn't matter, capacitors it does matter (most of the time.)  But if the colors are different, they may be the wrong values.  (I haven't looked at this schematic btw, so I don't know exactly what colors are in there and what values are suppose to be used.)

5.)  On the stereo jack its normally that the highest pin is for the ring, the next down is sleeve prong, then comes the tip.  If you look you can see where each pin goes to what.

Hope that all helps.

[Joecool85]

Also, do you have your 9volt hook up properly?  It should go positive into the circuit and negative into ground afaik.

[somasix]

Joecool85,

Sorry I haven't replied to this sooner.  Between the flu and work, I haven't had a chance to reattempt this pedal, hopefully this weekend I'll be able to give it another shot.

What is the ground afaik?

Thanks

[aron]

afaik = "as far as I know"

[somasix]

Allright, so, I put the Gus Smalley boost together today with positive mixed results.  When I plugged it in and struck a single note, my amp (already somewhat overdrive) was suddenly singing with high gain, bluesy sounding tone.  With the pot at 10, it was a distortion fest with synthy sounding overtones.  When I brought the pot down to about 5 or so, the sound began to oscillate (very choppy, like a vox repeat percussion), but the level of boost was also affected (in the correct manner).

I'm glad I got it to work, even improperly.  Unfortunately, the oscillating sound is unusable, but I'm intrigued as to why it would do it at lower volumes and not when it's louder.  Anybody got any ideas. 

Thanks for your help on my first go around.  I appreciate it. All of your suggestions were things I kept in mind and referenced over this build and it helped a lot.  Although imperfect, it's definitely better than buzzy and farty with no sound. 

Jason

[somasix]

Update:  I went back and messed with it again.  To my suprise, the gain on my amp was all the way up.  Then I remembered my girlfriend had been recording yesterday while I was at work.  I rolled off all the gain on my amp, tested it, then plugged the Booster in.  Viola, it worked perfectly, no oscillations, no synthy sounding distortion.  It was just what I expected it to be, a clean booster.  Thanks again everybody.

[Gus]

happy to hear you got it working.  With a 9V supply you can only get about a gain of 3 clean boost because of headroom issues caused by the 9v limit.
The npn has about a gain of 2 at min setting at about 1/2 rotation into a lower gain fender type amp you start to hear some distorion from the booster clipping.  I tried to make this fun hopefully usefull learning circuit.   

[somasix]

I didn't even think I needed a booster.  Now I don't plug in without it.  It definitely makes my solid state Sunn 112pr sound much more full.  I can't wait to finish my enclosure so my booster is a protected and functioning stompbox.  Thanks to Gus, Aron, JoeCool, TomWarrior, and everyone here at the forum.