This past week I auditioned for a dance band. I had serious reservations about playing the ten disco songs they have in their repertoire but, I really liked the rest of their set list. I, of course, sabotaged my audition by not learning as many of the songs as I could have but, I knew that going somewhere else would force me to make my pedal board road worthy. It did work for the audition but, on bringing it back all hell broke loose; of my four vintage pedals, the only one with a light is the tube screamer and it wasn’t going on and I had no idea whether the other positive center pedals were working or not. Between the 17 signal cords and 12 dc power cords something or another wasn’t working and worse yet, working intermittently. It turns out that a little screw on the power supply that was held in place by a little metal plate had fallen out god knows when. In jostling the pedal board around the screw holding plate had fallen into a place on the inside of the power supply that created a short; an intermittent short. It’s an easy repair but, a bitch to find. This is especially true when one or more of the dc and/or signal cords decides it’s time to stop conducting. I still have to secure a few pedals to the board but, what’s bothering me the most now is the compressor; it’s not working. It might have been working fine before the power supply fiasco but, I replaced the ic and on putting it back together I found a little brown wire that had lost it’s connection to the back of the foot switch. I probably guessed wrong when I connected it to one of the six solder points it might have been attached to. I might also have messed up a path on the printed circuit board. I might have gotten a gob of solder where it shouldn’t be and shorted something out thus, destroying yet another ic. So, for now I’ll just have to be happy that I have the
Wah – Flange – Tube Screamer – Delay/Echo – ( Compressor) – EQ – Octave Doubler – Phaser – Tuner – Looper – Gate/Direct working.
