Any techie types willing to carry out a pedal repair...

dindude

...my beloved Skreddy Swirl is unwell. Started off intermittent (about 50/50 working / not working) a week or so ago (although passed the bypass signal ok), and now not working most of the time it's switched on. LED sometimes lights, sometimes doesn't. Pretty sure it's the switch but I'm not great at this sort of thing. A bit of switch cleaner had it behaving for about a minute!

Usually a borked pedal is a great excuse to try something else but I love this thing. 

Anyone here fancy doing a fix for me? - I'll obviously pay going rate and I'm happy to post.

It's built the old-fashioned way with switch, jacks, and power socket off-board (see pic) so hopefully should be straightforward.

Cheers

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n505/dindude/IMG_1557_zpsbzmzqru3.jpg
http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n505/dindude/IMG_1559_zpsra0imbn2.jpg

rico

Whereabouts are you? Adam from GuitarAid in Putney is a genius.

dindude

Just an update on this, I went with Martin Owen from Owen Electronics based on a recommendation I saw in another thread. Highly recommended, clear concise and quick comms, turned around in about a week (including postage each end) and a very fair price too. Great stuff.

Roland

What was the problem? Broken switch?

dindude

Roland said:

What was the problem? Broken switch?

Yes indeed, the switch was in a mini circuit board so he replaced and direct wired one.

ElectroDan

Unfortunately, It probably was nothing to do with the PCB. That type of switch is known for being unreliable. I've changed quite a few of them for people.
I used to build them into my pedals when i started, But now i tend to use other methods of switching so I can use click-less Carling type pedals or 2 pole switches (don't seem so prone to break).

juansolo

The 3PDT. I've even swapped out the original and allegedly more robust Fulltone ones.

dindude

ElectroDan said:

Unfortunately, It probably was nothing to do with the PCB. That type of switch is known for being unreliable. I've changed quite a few of them for people.
I used to build them into my pedals when i started, But now i tend to use other methods of switching so I can use click-less Carling type pedals or 2 pole switches (don't seem so prone to break).

Yeah, it was the switch rather than PCB, he just did away with pcb when wiring the new one.

ICBM

dindude said:

Yeah, it was the switch rather than PCB, he just did away with pcb when wiring the new one.

Easier and better.

The reason they use the PCB is because *initial* assembly - when the PCB holes are empty - is marginally quicker and easier. But it's a pain in the backside to change the switch without damaging the PCB - usually the best way is to carefully destroy the switch leaving just the pins, which can then be desoldered one at a time. So if you're going to have to faff about that much, it's better just to ditch the PCB.

Gagaryn

juansolo said:

The 3PDT. I've even swapped out the original and allegedly more robust Fulltone ones.

I've got two Fulltone pedals here to fix that both have knackered switches. I hate these bloody switches!

Misty

Another recommendation for Martin Owen at Owen Electronics. He's changed switches for me several times now, and fixed other issues as he found them. Very thorough, quick turnaround, and nice to deal with.

ICBM

Gagaryn said:

I've got two Fulltone pedals here to fix that both have knackered switches. I hate these bloody switches!

I've owned four Fulltone pedals containing a total of eight switches. Three of the switches failed. Worse, on one of them the wires were covered in resin on the switch, making them impossible to de-solder - and they couldn't be cut short to avoid that because they were already the minimum length to reach the PCB. So the only options were to replace all the wiring back to the PCB, or to open up the broken switch (without disconnecting it) and another working one, and make one functioning switch from the two. Luckily that worked… and then I sold the pedal immediately!

I'll never buy another Fulltone, or any other pedal with a 3PDT. I know that sounds odd given that most pedals now seem to use them, but I'm just sick of changing them - and I dislike the mechanical feel of them anyway. Boss/Ibanez/DOD etc with soft switching only from now on...

Gagaryn

ICBM said:

Gagaryn said:

I've got two Fulltone pedals here to fix that both have knackered switches. I hate these bloody switches!

I've owned four Fulltone pedals containing a total of eight switches. Three of the switches failed. Worse, on one of them the wires were covered in resin on the switch, making them impossible to de-solder - and they couldn't be cut short to avoid that because they were already the minimum length to reach the PCB. So the only options were to replace all the wiring back to the PCB, or to open up the broken switch (without disconnecting it) and another working one, and make one functioning switch from the two. Luckily that worked… and then I sold the pedal immediately!

I'll never buy another Fulltone, or any other pedal with a 3PDT. I know that sounds odd given that most pedals now seem to use them, but I'm just sick of changing them - and I dislike the mechanical feel of them anyway. Boss/Ibanez/DOD etc with soft switching only from now on...

Turned out one (Actually a keeled modded RAT) had a dodgy jack - switch was fine. Other is a two knob compressor, cables were pretty short but manageable.
Before 
After

ICBM

Two of my pet hates in that pic…

No shakeproof washers on the jacks.

Bypass switching wired in the least reliable way possible.

Octafish

ICBM said:

Two of my pet hates in that pic…

No shakeproof washers on the jacks.

Bypass switching wired in the least reliable way possible.

Hi ICBM, I know you're not the biggest fan of 3PDTs, but what is a reliable way of wiring them up? I've been using the Tagboard method . Cheers

ICBM

Octafish said:

Hi ICBM, I know you're not the biggest fan of 3PDTs, but what is a reliable way of wiring them up? I've been using the Tagboard method . Cheers

There is no really reliable method - simply because they're a fairly low-quality mechanical switch - but that standard wiring scheme in the pic uses the worst possible way of wiring the bypass. Arguably you want the bypass really reliable, so that if anything else goes wrong (circuit fault, dead battery, bad power supply etc) you can be sure of bypassing the pedal.

What the standard scheme does is to run the bypass signal through both switch poles in series - via that little link wire at the lower left. This is twice as unreliable as using only one because a fault in either one will break the signal path. It would be more reliable to use only one pole, ie to connect the wire at a diagonal between the middle terminal on one side and the lower one on the other. But… it would be even more - drastically more - reliable to connect *both* diagonals, with two wires in a 'x'. Then the two switch poles are in parallel and it would take a fault in both *at the same time* to break the signal path. You can see that this is very unlikely by comparison.

Mathematically, it's the square of the probability - so if for example the probability of failure of either switch pole is 1 in 1000, the standard bypass scheme has a failure probability of 1 in 500, but the parallel-wiring scheme has a failure probability of 1 in 1,000,000. This should show why the standard scheme is so stupid.

The 'tagboard method' is better (but still only 1 in 1000 in that example) and also has the advantage of grounding the circuit input in bypass, so it can stop self-oscillation which can be a problem with some fuzzes.

Gagaryn

ICBM said:

Two of my pet hates in that pic…

No shakeproof washers on the jacks.

Bypass switching wired in the least reliable way possible.

Missed the lack of star washers - now sorted! :-)