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Rant: Spent 4 hours building a fuzz pedal only to find out my solder joint was cold the whole time
I was putting together a Fuzz Face clone from a kit I got last month and kept getting this awful crackling noise when I turned it on. After checking every resistor and capacitor with my multimeter for like an hour, I noticed one joint on the output jack looked dull and grainy. How do you guys spot a cold solder joint before you've wasted half your Saturday troubleshooting?
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the_emery8d ago
Wait, four hours on a fuzz pedal and you didn't check the solder joints first?
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lunashah8d ago
Right? Four hours is insane for missing that. Did the same thing last year with a delay pedal. Spent a whole evening swapping caps and transistors. Nothing worked. Took it to a buddy who looked at it for two seconds and goes "your solder's cracked at the jack." Felt like such a fool. Checking joints should be step one always. It's the most obvious thing and somehow we all skip it. Now I check everything with a magnifier before touching parts.
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