ShortScale.org

So I bought this spring king off ebay. Awesome fucking pedal. I came across a spring king mod where one wires up pots for delay time and feedback. Now, I'm pretty handy with the soldering pen, but fuck surface mount shit. I suppose I'm a tad bit frustrated. I soldered in a 25K pot to the delay time with ease, but I had a bit of trouble with the feedback portion in which I'm wiring a 100k pot to. Now the pedal oscillates as soon as I turn it on, or the guitar signal drops tremendously.
Well here are my questions really...

1. I can't get the solder to stick to the tiny parts in which the original surface mount things were soldered to. Is it possible to fuck up the contact?
2. Is it possible to fuck up the PCB from over soldering?
3. Did I fuck up my pedal?

I think tomorrow I'm going to try to solder in a smaller value pot just to see it fixes anything? If anyone is familiar with the spring king, could I solder to the resistor next to it on the feedback?
Ahh... fuck load of questions huh.

1. Try it again tomorrow after some sleep and a meal and see if you can make it work. The contact itself should be pretty difficult to damage. It's probably just yr soldering skills going to shit cause yr frustrated.
2. Yes. Usually what happens is the copper trace lifts off the plastic and then flakes off because it's really thin. Look to see if the trace is still there - it probably is in this case, as lifting traces are usually more associated with through-hole PCBs.
3. Possibly. It sounds like the feedback connection is intermittent: Oscillation = too little resistance in the feedback line, possibly a closed short; signal drop = no feedback.

Use a multimeter to check that the pot and wires to the pot are all OK. Solder everything in place as best you can. If there's still a problem, then you can start using the probes on the meter to test traces for continuity. Follow the trace back from where yr connecting each leg of the pot back to the previous part and test that there is continuity through the trace, pad, wire, and pot. A lower value pot wouldn't make much of a difference, since turning the 100k down would have the same effect.

Some quality pics of your project would be more helpful, but to answer your questions.

Yes
Yes
I don't know

To fix a contact, or a solder point as I call them, is hard work. What I usually do is get a solder lead or some wire and wire it to what it would be going to if I hadn't messed it up.

But, yea, pics please.

Ok... so before you guys scoff at my horrendous soldering job, I know it's bad.

I just got more and more frustrated. It wasn't taking the solder. I couldn't get at the lead. I think I broke a resistor. Ugh. yea bad.

Well do you guys think it can be rescued?
I was thinking maybe I could solder together some of those resistors and caps on an external breadboard and attach it back into the circuit. I just have to figure out how the lead runs. Is that possible?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v146/ ... 3120-1.jpg[/img]

tmotomm wrote:I was thinking maybe I could solder together some of those resistors and caps on an external breadboard and attach it back into the circuit. I just have to figure out how the lead runs. Is that possible?

Sure it's possible - try it. At this point, the pedal is broken. This is good, because now you can tinker without fear of breaking it

It should be fixable. Maybe try a little flux on the contacts?

well we all make mistakes...

your idea of breaking out of the pcb sounds like a good way to go if you are careful and it's worth the extra work to you... i don't know what is happening in the middle there - did you burn through the pcb? is there anything to connect to in the middle?

i am not an expert but it looks like the easiest thing to do is utilize the solder on there and replace those four components. i don't know what you'll do about the middle section.

So, figure out of you soldered through some of the traces, which it looks like you did. And, to replace the resistors you may have killed, I'd just figure the value and replace it. I'd probly do all the fixing to that board, instead of adding one, but that's just me.

What solder are you using? I've found that silver tends to be harder to attach to some things, but easier to attach to others. And lead solder is usually the opposite, like, it'll attach to the things that silver won't. All of this may be dependent on the flux, how ever.

From now on, when you get frustrated, put the pen down, take a breath and do some push ups or some shit... I get frustrated, too, and forget about the damage I'm doing. How powerful is the iron you're using? I've found that a 12 or 13 watt iron can be a pain in the ass at times, but it can also slow the rate at which you do damage. Also, how are you removing solder? I don't know of many ways, I just know that coper thread is the shiznit.

tmotomm wrote:Ok... so before you guys scoff at my horrendous soldering job, I know it's bad.

I just got more and more frustrated. It wasn't taking the solder. I couldn't get at the lead. I think I broke a resistor. Ugh. yea bad.

Well do you guys think it can be rescued?
I was thinking maybe I could solder together some of those resistors and caps on an external breadboard and attach it back into the circuit. I just have to figure out how the lead runs. Is that possible?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v146/ ... 3120-1.jpg[/img]

Jesus Christ you held the iron on there for about 30 minutes too long.

What wattage iron are you using? Were you using tweezers to hold/move components?

I can't tell what was supposed to be connected to what now because of the burn. Looks like a real mess.

haha. yea. quite embarrassing.
I use a soldering iron at the shop, which is a 40 watt iron. I think we just changed the tip on the iron. I took solder off with a solder sucker.
This was a total slap on the head on my part.

Well, I just have to figure out how the traces run. Is there an easy way of know how they run? I mean, I see the line on some points, but there are parts where I can't see anything. Can I assume that it's running to the part next to it?

It's suppose to look like thiss.....

looks like there are diagonal traces so this could be a lot harder than it seems.

pick up a 25 watt iron for next time. don't use 40w on things like this - those are for lightswitches.

wow dude. you totally hosed that thing.

i have a spring king and did the same od. to get the smd's off, the best way is to use a hot air gun.