My phase 90 clone isn't working

[Kevin Mitchell]

"First there is a mountain,
Then there is no mountain, then there is."

"Oh, the snow will be a blinding sight to see as it lies on yonder hillside"

One of a few Donavan songs I know.

[snow123]

somehow there arent any shorts (according to my multimeter)

[snow123]

is there supposed to be continuity in between these areas? (the 1m resistor at the input of the circuit)

[Kevin Mitchell]

is there supposed to be continuity in between these areas? (the 1m resistor at the input of the circuit)

No. That's the input resistor and helps prevent pops when you engage the pedal. If those tracks were shorted that would also mean your input is shorted to ground. Which means no input. Which means no guitar signal.

You are doing a continuity test, right? The meter beeps when you touch the two probes together?

[snow123]

is there supposed to be continuity in between these areas? (the 1m resistor at the input of the circuit)

No. That's the input resistor and helps prevent pops when you engage the pedal. If those tracks were shorted that would also mean your input is shorted to ground. Which means no input. Which means no guitar signal.

You are doing a continuity test, right? The meter beeps when you touch the two probes together?

yes

[Kevin Mitchell]

yes

The only place where it should show continuity is where you had to solder a jumper. You have many solder joints that are very close together on adjacent tracks. Make sure they don't have continuity unless they are on the same uncut track or intentionally shorted together by a jumper.

Once you find it (from the last photos, I can promise they exist, or did), use your soldering iron to wick/break the shorted connection while trying to not make it worse. Glide the tip between the tracks as you did with the screwdriver.

[snow123]

yes

The only place where it should show continuity is where you had to solder a jumper. You have many solder joints that are very close together on adjacent tracks. Make sure they don't have continuity unless they are on the same uncut track or intentionally shorted together by a jumper.

Once you find it (from the last photos, I can promise they exist, or did), use your soldering iron to wick/break the shorted connection while trying to not make it worse. Glide the tip between the tracks as you did with the screwdriver.

well my multimeter just broke

[snow123]

yes

The only place where it should show continuity is where you had to solder a jumper. You have many solder joints that are very close together on adjacent tracks. Make sure they don't have continuity unless they are on the same uncut track or intentionally shorted together by a jumper.

Once you find it (from the last photos, I can promise they exist, or did), use your soldering iron to wick/break the shorted connection while trying to not make it worse. Glide the tip between the tracks as you did with the screwdriver.

well my multimeter just broke

well it only works like half the time, but here are the shorted areas that i dont know how to fix lol.

[antonis]

Here is (or should be  ) 1M pull-down resistor..!!

[bluebunny]

well it only works like half the time, but here are the shorted areas that i dont know how to fix lol.

Where you've drawn two red dots and a line at the bottom, the rightmost dot is supposed to be connected to the line.  (I'm assuming your red marks are showing things that are connected.)  Since the row below where the input comes in has solder on it - and there's no connection supposed to be there - this looks like where it might be shorted.  Take your soldering iron and swipe between the tracks as Kevin has told you to make sure there's no solder bridge there.

I've not had enough coffee to look at your apparent shorts further up the board.

well my multimeter just broke

Not through overwork...      

[Kevin Mitchell]

How the hell could you have been audio probing a grounded signal this whole time? Maybe it's a broken hairline trace that is now touching again?

The other red marks are obviously suppose to be shorted - they're on the same track! I said adjacent tracks, not the same track. Get rid of that bottom short by scraping out that hairline copper trace on the upper part of the hole.

Again, we can see these shorts and your meter's continuity setting can find them as well.
Sorry to break the bad news, but if you're not trolling you really need glasses my dude.

[Phend]

^ What, it is a thing of beauty. Very popular post, read 4,840 + times with 251 replies,
(A great puzzle yet to be solved !) Fun for all.

[duck_arse]

yes

The only place where it should show continuity is where you had to solder a jumper. You have many solder joints that are very close together on adjacent tracks. Make sure they don't have continuity unless they are on the same uncut track or intentionally shorted together by a jumper.

Once you find it (from the last photos, I can promise they exist, or did), use your soldering iron to wick/break the shorted connection while trying to not make it worse. Glide the tip between the tracks as you did with the screwdriver.

well my multimeter just broke

were you fixing it?

[Phend]

Try de-soldering.

[ElectricDruid]

You *still* haven't successfully cleaned out the muck from between the tracks. They're still covered in black stuff and little tiny shiny blobs of solder spatter. All that needs to go.

I know you're down to only a couple of actual shorts now, and that's *massive* progress from where we started, so things have really moved forward, but ultimately it's your technique that's letting you down. And that includes your cleaning up technique as much as your soldering technique.

More scraping!! Lots more scraping!!

[antonis]

Am I the only person who realized we deal with possibly shorted input right after 13 pages..??

Should we save valuable time by just going grazy right now..??

[PRR]

> Should we save valuable time by just going grazy right now..??

Way ahead of you. I've been grazed since the start.

[snow123]

[ElectricDruid]

There's still a lot of areas on here that show black muck, solder spatter, and possible shorts (red circles). There's also areas where you obviously have scraped between the tracks (green circles).

There's something wrong with your soldering set-up or technique. I can't identify what exactly from only a photo of the results, but there's no way you should be getting black muck and spatter everywhere. Are you using a modern cored solder? What make? what mixture? (tin/lead, lead-free, something else?) What sort of iron? how hot?

I have boards I made when I was learning to solder and they look terrible to me now. It *is* a part of the process, we learn by making mistakes, and skills are only developed by practice. So don't be disheartened about it, but *do* try and do a few experiments to see if other combinations work better for you.

By the way, on the photo Antonis posted with the resistor position marked, there's what looks like a short one hole down and two holes right of the right-hand-side leg of the resistor. Sort that out and you might have good input signal again.

[snow123]

I'm using leaded rosin core solde, and Here's some better pics: