Perfboard Purgatory

english_bob

Guh.

Trying to build one of these:

http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/heartthrob-tremolo.html

Have made and populated the perfboard and wired up temporary input/output and 9v connections (and grounds). 

Signal is passing through with little or no loss of volume compared to going direct (haven't bothered wiring up the switch and LED yet) but the all important tremolo effect is not present. Dwell knob acts as a volume control, speed knob and switch have no effect at all.

I've checked and double-checked my board against the diagram and everything appears to be in the right place. I've run a craft knife between the rows to cut any solder bridges. I've re-flowed all the solder joints that looked like they might be suspect. 

No dice. More importantly, no tremolo. There's a guy in the comments thread on tagboardeffects who has the same problem, which makes me feel slightly less useless.

What next, electronics boffs?

english_bob

Found it. Had a resistor linking the wrong rows. One fiddly desoldering job later I've got me a working tremolo pedal. Yay me.

Sporky

Excellent.

I hate perfboard. Really, really hate it. I'm consistently amazed that people manage to build things on it that work.

english_bob

Sporky said:

Excellent.

I hate perfboard. Really, really hate it. I'm consistently amazed that people manage to build things on it that work.

I can see why. I'm still an electronics ignoramus so I'm far safer with pre-fabbed PCBs but I fancied a crack at a fairly simple circuit for not a lot of money so I bought a kit from Bitsbox. Now wondering whether the extra ball-ache is worth the extra tenner in my pocket compared to getting a PCB kit from Fuzzdog.