Madbean Aquaboy clock noise and wet bleeding in bypass

Started by Atodovax, November 08, 2019, 04:58:20 PM

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Atodovax

Hello everyone i just finished and Aquaboy and the effects sounds perfect but i have a problem. When the pedal is bypassed i hear clock noise and also if i max the feedback pot i can hear oscillation bleeding through

GibsonGM

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Atodovax

Quote from: GibsonGM on November 08, 2019, 06:47:17 PM
Check your bypass wiring?
Thank you for replying. Cables are as short as possible. Im using their pcb board and layout, . Used shielded cables from jacks no pcb and to the 3pdt directly to see if that helped (it was recommended on another thread) but that didnt solve it. Also the wires from the pcb OUT IN GND are 2cm short... I have no idea... With the clcok trimmpot i can only stop the whine when the delay time is slapback.. Do you think de Mn3005 may be adding whine? Its a Cool audio reissue of the chip. The vcompander is also a Coolaudio sa571..
The thing that is giving me headaches is that when the pedal is bypassed the whine is there but when i turn on the pedal, the whine disappears completely... Its only audible when bypass . And also when the pedal is bypassed i can hear oscilattion if i turn the feedback pot to max and change the level of the delay... Any ideas where to check? Is this something to be expected or that happened with the boss DM2?

ElectricDruid

Show us a photo. Perhaps someone here can spot something you've missed. It does sound like some wiring problem form your description, although it may not be that simple.

It's very hard to debug stuff you've been staring at for ages. That's why taking the dog for a walk (or whatever) helps - when you come back, you see it with "outside eyes" and see what you'd missed before, even though it might be quite obvious. Take a break, then take another look.

I use this as the excuse for having three dozen projects "back burnered" on my work bench ;)

Tom

GibsonGM

Yup, Tom's right.  You have to 'forget' what you think you know about how you wired it etc!   One part of the problem may be a need for decoupling the clock circuit from the rest - can you post a schematic too?    Another thought is shielded wiring, among other things. Depends on how it was built (pics).

At least it works - you're on the right track!  :)
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Atodovax

Thank both for the replies! Im going to take a picture now and post it. Is it normal to have whine when the pedal is bypassed but not when its ON?

bluebunny

Quote from: Atodovax on November 08, 2019, 09:07:26 PM
Is it normal to have whine when the pedal is bypassed but not when its ON?

Perhaps if the input isn't grounded when bypassed?
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j_flanders

#7
Quote from: Atodovax on November 08, 2019, 09:07:26 PM
Is it normal to have whine when the pedal is bypassed but not when its ON?
My EHX XO Deluxe Memory Man behaves like this.

When I added an extra cap for longer delay times I had two wires running accross the pcb so I could test different caps (to prevent soldering and unsoldering from the pcb and eventually damaging traces). This added huge amounts of clock whine bleed through.
When I settled on a specific cap and soldered it straight to the pcb it was mostly gone.

There's still a tiny bit there, but it goes away when I have another pedal or a buffer before the DMM.

Recently I have noticed the 3PDT switch is wonky and acting up, so input grounding or bypass wiring in general as stated above may have something to do with it.

Atodovax

thanks all for replying! Ok so i manage to get away the whine. The wiring was ok but i forgot to cut the wires from the PCB to the 3pdt ... Sorry about that. Now the pedal is Whine free in both Bypass and ON but i still get delay signal bleeding through when bypassed (only with the feedback pot maxed and the delay level high). I think it has to do with the location of the input jack... any suggestions to make ? Im using the MAdbean PCB and their drilling hole layout in a 125B enclosure

thetragichero

does this help or is it just an uninteresting anecdote: was repairing a small solid state combo with what turned out to be a wonky speaker jack. as i was audio probing i kept getting quiet, distorted version of the loop i was playing into the input from the ground plane. apparently the jack was sorta shorting to the chassis but not enough to be totally silent... since in bypass mode ground should be the only thing common between the bypassed circuit and the output, check yer grounding?

GibsonGM

Absolutely check the grounding! Even a cold solder joint somewhere could contribute to problems.   The other thing to try maybe, is to replace the input wire with a shielded wire, grounded at 1 end only. 
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Atodovax

Quote from: GibsonGM on November 09, 2019, 01:24:36 PM
Absolutely check the grounding! Even a cold solder joint somewhere could contribute to problems.   The other thing to try maybe, is to replace the input wire with a shielded wire, grounded at 1 end only.
All the grounds are pretry solid. And the input wire is only 2cm long to the 3pdt.. i do t think a shielded wire there will have any effect do you? I noticed when i removed the input jack that if i put it close to the capacitor jack next to the MIX pot Pads the whine increases considerably... Also, when i turn the bias trimpot of the bbd to the left, almost before it stops working, the bleeding and the whine disapear. But the delay is not as nice an clean as before. I enden up reducing the feedback by increasing R30 to 37k... But now the pedal has not so much powerfull self oscilation as the real DM2. Im really wondering if is this a proboem qith the layout or is it something in missing. I read a lot of complaints about wet sigbal bleeding when fdbk pot was maxed on the aquaboy project. Has anyone managed to build it without this problem? Does the real DM2 bleeds self oscilation when bypassed?

j_flanders

Quote from: Atodovax on November 09, 2019, 05:04:24 PMI noticed when i removed the input jack that if i put it close to the capacitor jack next to the MIX pot Pads the whine increases considerably...
Does this still happen if you have another pedal (on, or off but with a buffer) in front of the aqua boy? This would change the bypassed signal from high impedance to low impedance.
This reminds me of a similar issue I had with an older Big Box Pulsar (see this thread on the ehx forum for my solution):
https://www.ehx.com/forums/viewthread/9710/

Atodovax

The oscilattion is there even if i put the jacks far away from their position... I rewired everything with shielded wires and the bleeding dereased but its still there. Do know of any sugestion replacing resistors or caps around the mn3101? I dont mind sacrifying the sound a little bit but the bleeding is unactapable. Please help