Digitech PDS 1000 & 2000 Repairs

I am fond of the Dod/Digitech PDS series delays. On paper there's nothing too amazing - mid 1980s 8-bit delays with 1, 2 or 8 (if you can afford the PDS 8000) second maximum delay times. There are two features that win me over.

The first is the "Infinite Repeat" footswitch that locks the delay into a repeating loop. The loop can be pitch-shifted by changing the delay time, and when Infinite Repeats is turned off the delayed signal trails out like normal again. This is like playing with the shittiest looper and is a lot of fun, and surprisingly a lot of modern delays & loopers don't (or can't) do this. Some will repeat indefinitely without oscillating if the feedback is maxed (Boss DD series) but it's nice to have it on a dedicated switch, with feedback control available and ready for switching back to "normal" use. A surprising amount of 90s and early 00s delays can't smoothly pitch-shift recorded audio when playing with the delay times, and glitch or "jump" somewhere through the pot travel.

The second win is the internal design. The expected parts for a simple delay are all there - an ADC, a DAC, some memory and some logic gluing things together - but there are no custom ASICs, microcontrollers or programmable devices at all. Everything is done with standard CMOS logic. These delays could be built from scratch with new parts today, and they are very repairable. This is a little bit of a backwards approach for a 1985 era product - at this point Boss had already released the DD2 & DD3a delay pedals and they used the same ASIC from the Roland rackmount digital delays. This could have been a cultural difference, as Japanese manufacturers seemed to prefer going for custom ICs and offsetting the cost against using them in lots of products (Yamaha have also done this). Digitech (or DOD at the time) may have to bring the series to market quickly, which could have forced them to use off-the-shelf parts. Whatever the reason, nearly ever part can be sourced pretty easily, unlike finding a replacement Boss controller IC from 1985 (good luck).

I repaired 4 of these delays recently. Here is a braindump:

PDS 2000 #1

All of the pedals in this series came with snap-in plastic battery doors that are not held captive by the enclosure (i.e. they are removable). This means they get lost, and I have never actually seen one.

This PDS 2000 (mine) was fairly easy to deal with. It's a 2 second delay that adds sampling modes that can trigger the delay sample by a footswitch or an external trigger signal. It had some broken wires in the harness between the PCB and jacks/switches. I think this is due to using the pedal with a battery but without a battery door - the weight of the battery pulls on the wiring if it's free to swing around on the end of the battery clip. This just needed some soldering to bring it back.

The footswitches were also unreliable, so I replaced the microswitches. More on that below.

In an unusual move, DOD actually sprang for a silkscreen print on this PCB. Schematics are available online but can be hard to match them with a PCB when there is no silkscreen and no part designators.

PDS 1000 #1

 

 

This one was partially working when I got it. The output jack wouldn't hold a cable in, the footswitches rarely worked and the delay length maxed out about 75% of the way through the pot's travel - but it did work as a delay. I replaced the footswitches and bent the retaining lug on the output jack (I may go back and replace this) so that it was a usable effect.

I have never seen a PDS 1000 schematic, but the PDS 1002 2 second version looks like it's very similar. The delay time control circuit is shared across the earlier series. Delay time is varied by changing the frequency of the main clock signal that shifts digital samples into and out of DRAM memory. Faster clock frequencies shift data faster and give shorter delays. Delay time is adjusted by 3(!) potentiometers, the delay time pot on the front of the enclosure, a trimpot that adjusts range of the of the main delay time pot, and a final trimpot that globally adjusts clock frequency by small amounts. You don't really get a very wide range of adjustment so trying to get longer delays by tweaking pots might not work too well.

Tweaking these delay pots brought the delay back to 1 second and adjustable through the full range of the delay pot.

PDS 2000 #2

This is the only pedal of the 4 that didn 't power up at all. None of the logic chips had any sensible voltage at the VCC pins, but the opamps were getting 9V. There is a 78L05 to drop the 9-10V input down to power all the logic chips, and this has a JFET soft-start circuit that ramps up the 5V power supply, presumably to protect the digital chips from a loose or intermittent power cable. I replaced the timing cap with no luck, then swapped the FET for a new J201 and it powered up.

This a soft-start for the 9V supply on the PDS1002. The 2000 has something similar.

Everything seemed to work, except that I couldn't change delay ranges, it was stuck on the longest range (2 seconds). The sampling modes also weren't quite right, trying to trigger samples would switch the pedal into bypass mode or sometimes do nothing at all. I traced signals back from the delay range switch to a 74HC04 hex inverter, which looked dead. I swapped this chip over from the other 2000 and it worked. I ordered a new 74HC04 and got two working pedals.

This one also was not quite a 2 second delay so I did some pot tweaking. Unfortunately I managed to slip with an oscilloscope probe and shorted two pins on the DRAM chip, and killed an input pin. I replaced with a TMS4256 DRAM from eBay - works fine. With the new chip the delay rates could be carefully dialled in to 2 seconds pretty quickly.

PDS 1000 #2

 

This was in the worst condition. I got this in a box of failed repairs from a music store in the US some years ago and never did a lot with it until now. Someone had already taken a crack at fixing it, it was missing knobs and a back panel. Two of the pots were broken, the bodies would wobble freely against the legs as if they had detached internally. The 1Meg trimmer for clock frequency was also broken off.

I replaced the trimmer and set it to the middle of the it's range, based on how the other 1000 was set. The PCB mount pots were a little harder, DOD use Alpha pots marked "W" which I don't think are actually W taper (W taper is logarithmic for half the travel, then reverse log for the other half). I replaced with long-leg alpha pots. The replacements are a little taller than the originals, so I cut the legs a little shorter and soldered some bus bar to them, then soldered the bus wire into the PCB. This actually worked pretty well, but replacing these pots and running wires to the PCB is probably a better long-term solution.

After replacing pots I found that delay time wasn't working because of broken trace, I ran some Kynar wire to restore it. The mix knob didn't work and it was stuck at 100% wet - this turned out to be another bad JFET.

At this point things appeared to work again, except the delay was very distorted and noisy. I messed around with compounder trimpot as I thought that may be distorting - no improvement. Eventually I realised that bad memory chips would give corrupted repeats which would probably sound like distortion, so I swapped the DRAM from the other PDS 1000 and it worked. I ordered some replacement DRAM (I used MK4564) and they worked just fine.

Adjusting delay time

There may be an "official" method for adjusting maximum delay length using a testpoint on the PCB but without a service manual I've come up with my own.

The capacity of DRAM can be looked up from the P/N and the nominal maximum delay in seconds is known. My reasoning is that DRAM should be completely filled in this time, so I probe the DRAM with an oscilloscope and adjust delay length until the frequency of data in and out matches the DRAM size divided by nominal delay length in seconds.

For the 2000 the DRAM is 262144 memory locations and max delay is 2 seconds, so I want data to be going in and out of memory at around 262144/2 times per second or 131072 Hz when the delay pot is all the way up. This can be measured from the DRAM Write Enable pin, and probably from the Data in and Data out pins as well. Most of the tweaking is done on the lower global clock frequency trim, usually after making sure the delay pot is working throughout it's whole range. Sometimes I had to iterate and go back and forth between the two sets of pots. Adjustment on trimpots is fairly coarse, so this can't be dialled with really great precision but I find it much easier than trying to listen to the delay and sync to a stopwatch or something similar.

Modding for more delay time

There are online discussions about modifying these pedals for longer delay times that usually involve tweaking the delay pots away from nominal positions to get longer delays. I think this will only work well for very lo-fi sounds, as the sample rate will get much lower and aliasing effects will get worse.

The delay loop in the PDS series is basically some 4040 ripple counters counting through memory addresses and resetting when the end of memory is reached. A better approach to extending delay time is replacing DRAM with a larger IC (or multiple ICs) and adjusting the counter reset logic to address the larger memory. I have some spare DRAM for both of these pedals so I would like to try this.

I haven't seen a schematic for the PDS 8000 (8 second delay). I would like to see how this was implemented, as it should have 4x the memory of the PDS 2000. Extending the 2000 to 8 seconds may be possible depending on how extensive the differences are.

The best picture I can find online shows a single 18 pin (not 16 pin) IC, but the label isn't legible. Presumably it's a 1Mbit x 1 DRAM.

Please let me know if you have a PDS 8000 schematic or high-resolution board shots.

There is a PDS 20/20 delay schematic available (http://www.experimentalistsanonymous.com/diy/Schematics/Delay%20Echo%20and%20Samplers/Digitech%20PDS2020.pdf) which uses 2 4464 DRAMs, which is twice the memory of the PDS 2000 but still only does a 2 second delay. America's Pedal has a catalog for the PDS series which explains why - the 20/20 has a delay signal bandwidth of 16 kHz, the rest of the series only has 7 kHz except for the PDS 1700. I am guessing the higher sample rate is for the chorus/flanger modes where really short delays are needed.

Footswitches

Dod used a fairly cheap mechanical design for actuating footswitch buttons on a small PCB. The plastic foot panels are cantilevered and are returned to their neutral position by a spring at the "fixed" end, not the free end which would make more sense. There is also no real end-stop to limit the force on the footswitch - if you stomp hard you will crush the button. This is problematic as most players will stomp harder if the switch doesn't work, so once they start to fail they deteriorate quickly.

There is advice online on adjusting spring tension to get a pedal to switch more reliably. Don't bother. If a DOD pedal does not switch every time, just replace the 10mm button on the PCB. They are very cheap and should last another decade of use. Play with the mounting hardware only if the levers aren't rotating correctly.

Empress ParaEQ Repair

This is another case of getting to look at something  nicer than I would normally get to play with. When it comes to guitar gear I am pretty cheap, and it's hard to justify spending a lot on "simple" pedals (this is a dumb distinction to make). Empress' ParaEq seems like it's probably worth it, it's a good idea executed really well.

This is basically a 3 band EQ (low, mid & high) with adjustable centre frequencies and independent Q settings. There is an input pad and a clean boost as well. The build quality is very high - the toggle switches are positioned behind a row of knobs to protect them from stomping feet, and the pots all have nice metal knobs. Empress seem to do pedal graphics with enough personality to not be completely boring to the eye.

Revision 7, Jan 6 2014. Copyright date is 2013...

Inside we have:
- OPA4134 & 2274A quad opamps, buffering, amplifying & filtering.
- an ADG442 analogue switch for the buffered bypass
- TC7760HE charge pump controller for a negative voltage rail.
- 16F630 Pic microcontroller, monitoring footswitches to change between relay and buffered bypass.
- a SOT223 package, marked "4576". I'm certain this is an LDO and I think I had the part number and looked over a datasheet but I have lost it again.

Plugged in, the pedal was completely dead. My little test amp was humming, which usually means a power supply is shorted out somewhere and some filter caps can't do their job. Measuring inside the pedal, the DC jack read at ~2.5V (using a 200mA Boss power supply).

Flush mounted DC jack

No through-hole anchors for the jack.

Something is pulling power to ground, usually this is a bad power filtering capacitor, bad IC or a shorted protection diode. Empress are using a surface mount DC jack which must be desoldered to remove the PCB from the enclosure. I guess they really wanted the power jack to sit flush with the edge of the case. I took it off to see if there are more parts or any damage on the backside.

There is nothing on the backside. I took pictures of pots while I was here.

Gain pots are B5K.

Frequency pots are marked "B1 P1416C"

As there are not too many ICs on the board I tried to order them in likelihood of failure and then removing them to see if the short cleared. Pulling these chips off is pretty fast with hot air.
The 7660 was first, as I have seen these fail before. No change. Then I removed U1, the sot-223 LDO and the short was gone - but as this chip is powering all the opamps I couldn't say of this was the problem or not. U101, a 2274A quad opamp had a mark on the casing which may have indicated some kind of failure, so I removed it and replaced U1. Short was gone, I now measured +8V at the opamp positive rail and -6V at the negative. It passed a signal, the LEDs now lit up when the footswitches were pressed, and the boost worked. The EQ controls did nothing, so obviously this opamp was handling some of the filtering.

U1 & U25(?) removed.

U101 removed, short cleared.

After soldering in a new opamp everything worked as expected. Re-soldering the power jack is easy with some kapton tape holding it flush to outside face of the enclosure.

This is a more useful design than I had expected, parametric EQ solves a different problem than a graphic EQ. It's much easier to sweep the frequency control with a high Q and identify exactly what will be boosted or cut, it always allows adjustment of frequencies "between" the bands available on a graphic EQ.

The only downside for longevity is the PIC - again, this is a programmed part. If it was bad I would not have been able to replace it and would have had to re-wire for true bypass.

Line 6 DL4 final fix

A short update on my DL4 that had come back from the dead but wouldn't run as a DL4.

I went through 3 replacement DRAM chips and none of them worked. With all of them I got distorted noise instead of a delay signal. Yesterday I sat down with a schematic and beeped out every pin of the DRAM to the DSP. The RAS line (pin 45) of the DSP wasn't quite soldered down, so the RAS pin at the memory was open. Some flux and a quick touch of the soldering iron and now it works with external memory and runs the DL4 firmware correctly.

New RAM chip. The flux mess was cleaned off afterwards.

The DRAM that I know worked was a Toshiba TC51V17805CFTS-60. I think any 16 Mbit DRAM with the same standard pinout will probably work here.

Line 6 DL4 rebuild

This is the first DL4 I ever got, bought broken almost 5 years ago. Despite working on DL4s for other people and my own MM4 repair I have never been able to fix this one. It has always been something I had lying around and would take out for an hour here and there whenever I had an idea.

Board as I had been storing it. The taped on diode was a part I had replaced.

In retrospect this was a bad example to try to start with. Most of these 4x4 pedals have power supply issues or have a bad IC somewhere and can be debugged without too much hassle. With this one, I replaced the some parts in the power supply back in 2012 and got the right voltages, but it would never start up. Very occasionally the LEDs would flash on and then it would freeze or die again. Looking at the test points didn't help, it would show a master clock but no other clock signals. The MCU would usually reset correctly on power up, but would then assert the reset line of the DSP and never release it. The only good model for what was going on was that multiple ICs had some kind of damage, maybe from a severe power supply failure.

Somewhere in halfway through the process of replacing all ICs.

I had tried swapping some parts with the spares PCB I had (which is now almost completely depopulated) without any luck. I'm not clear on the exact timeline of work as things were quite spread out, but I know that after replacing an MCU on one of the other DL4s I bought a box of new ICs and replaced the one on this pedal, which didn't help. At some point I decided to order all new ICs, and I replaced everything except the DSP (DSPB56364AF100) and the Cirrus audio codec (both end-of-life and hard to find new) - no change. After swapping a DSP56k part in the Whammy pedal I built up some confidence and decided to see if I could get a replacement part for the DL4.

DSP56364

I got one from a Chinese vendor on eBay, knowing that it could be a fake part. It turned up a month or so later and I put it aside. I dug out this pedal recently and tried swapping it out. The old part came off easily but I had some trouble aligning the replacement QFP, in the end I just cheated by drowning the pins in tacky flux and reflowing the board with hot air and it soldered perfectly.

It was still dead, and now the 3.3V supply was being pulled low. It looked like I had a solder bridge somewhere on the DSP, or it was a remarked/fake/dead part with a short from 3.3V to ground. My method for finding shorts to ground on a board has always been to guess where the short might be and remove parts until it's gone. I had read about a technique for finding shorts where a constant current is fed into the power rails and a DMM on millivolt range is used to measure the voltage drop across parts that connect to power and ground. The part with the lowest voltage drop is the short - this is basically a way to make low resistance measurements with a higher sensitivity than most ohmmeters can manage. I fed in 400mA to the 3.3V rail and measured all the 3.3V coupling caps. Voltage drop was lowest near the DSP (shit) but of the 4 power decoupling caps around the DSP, C39 had the lowest drop. I removed C39 and the pedal powered up, current consumption was back to normal. I don't know if C39 was bad (it didn't measure as a short outside of the circuit) or if it had a small solder bridge I couldn't see, but I was pretty pleased with this and will use this method in future.

Coolaudio parts: V1000 & V4220M. Later removed the adapter boards.

At this point the 4 LEDs would just flash on and off, but this isn't too surprising as I had removed the audio codec and the DRAM chips. I used the modulation EEPROM that came with my MM4, as I knew that program doesn't need DRAM. The Cirrus CS4223 codec is harder to source, but I happened to have some Coolaudio V4220M chips that I bought to try with their V1000 reverb chip. This looks like a second source/clone of the Cirrus chip, so I installed one. This gave me a working pedal! I tried the DL4 EEPROM that came with this pedal and it was completely dead. I moved it to my MM4 (which has been converted to a DL4) and it didn't work there either. I reinstalled the original DRAM IC and tried the MM4's known-good delay EEPROM and only got heavily distorted noise. This seems to confirm that all of the ICs that came with this DL4 are damaged.

I now have an MM4 that acts as a DL4, and a DL4 that only works as an MM4. With Behringer/Coolaudio parts in it.

I have ordered some DRAM chips that I think will work, so hopefully this can also be used as a DL4 again.

Alive.

The parts were not too expensive (€20-30) but I sunk a lot of time into this. It's satisfying as a personal victory after having this thing around for so long but if I got one in this state as a repair job I would probably turn it down.

Lessons learned:
- a complete digital rebuild is totally possible
- it's probably not worth the cost of parts and time
- all program information is stored in the EEPROM, no ICs need to be programmed or configured
- DSPB56364AF100 are available from eBay seller "e-best_trade". Unfortunately, none are listed right now
- Coolaudio V4220M works as a replacement for Cirrus CS4223
- short finding with a constant current source and sensitive voltmeter can work really well

Electro-Harmonix Doctor Q

I have realised that since I started this blog I have managed to post every month, except for December. I want to keep going at this, so here's a quick cheater before the finish line.

I got this vintage EHX Doctor Q for fairly cheap, missing a battery door and "not working". The seller described some torn wiring inside. I thought this would be simple.

Graphics are actually quite clean for a pedal of this age.

I tried it out with a 1/8" power adapter in the DC jack and it worked just fine. It sounds pretty good too, and worked with weak single coils and humbuckers without having a sensitivity control. Range controls the width of the filer sweep, it has a fairly sensible & usable amount of variation.

Single sided PCB.

Opening it up, and the battery snap has broken off the power jack. Quick soldering job to restore it, and it works with a battery as well. It looks like EHX were not using the extra contact on the jack to switch the battery. The pot code is a CTS with a 1978 year of manufacture, so the pedal is probably that old as well.

Unfortunately it's hard to get the board out to take pictures as I don't have tools that can easily remove the round knurled nuts that EHX were using in this period. In the interest of not scratching things up I've left them along. The circuit is fairly simple, schematic is below.

It's pretty clear what happened to this one. With a missing battery door the 9V battery can just dangle out the hole in the chassis. The battery snap probably broke off when moving the pedal around. Sometimes I'm lucky.

I have a fairly complicated envelope filter build (maybe more on that in the future) so this one is surplus to requirements. Get in touch if you are interested in buying.

Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Electric Mistress

I really like these big box EHX pedals. I understand why trends have moved away from huge pedals but I love the look of them even if they are unpractical.

This is a 90s Deluxe Electric Mistress reissue (EC 1000 Rev B) that I was asked to look at. It passed a clean signal, but no effect. You could sort of hear something happening when power was cut to the pedal but it was very weak. This seemed like a positive, it meant the BBD was still able to do something.

Going through this pedal was pretty easy thanks to Ralf Metzger's fantastic Electric Mistress site (presumably inspired by Kit Rae's Big Muff shrine). Ralf has info on identifying different versions & reissues, theory of operation, full schematic and repair & aligning instructions. This version (V4) has a Reticon RD5106A BBD and 24V DC input. Oddly enough there is no bypass indicator LED, this is usually a good way to tell old EH pedals from the reissues.

Walking through the alignment procedure for the V4 I found that I couldn't adjust the clock signal to get as low as the specified 40 kHz. I had some clock signals at the BBD but I couldn't see any modulation on them in any switch or knob settings (the modulation of BBD delay time produces the flanging effect). After buzzing out the circuit it turned out that there was no continuity across any of the terminals of the Filter Matrix switch. As far as I can tell the switch wafer was removed or disappeared somewhere, sliding the switch didn't bring anything in contact with the terminals. I wired in a spare DPDT switch in parallel and had a working flanger.

Temporary eplacement switch added across the original.

I did a quick alignment following Ralf's guide to correct any adjustments I made when it was working incorrectly. The only diversion was setting feedback, I always feel that any pedal with a feedback control should be just about oscillating at the extreme end. It will get a replacement slide switch, they are easy to source but I didn't have one at hand. The switch doesn't effect calibration so it can be swapped out later.

This is the first through-hole pedal I've written up here. I suppose not having any SMD parts makes it the least false.

Cheers to Ralf.

Ibanez ES2 Echo Shifter

1 second analog delay with modulation, an oscillation switch and tap-temp from Ibanez. I really like this delay. Opinion tends to be split on these, they sound great and and have a very nice feature set but are very prone to dying. Online reviews are split between gushing praise and reports of the things crapping out:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/ibanez-echo-shifter-analog-delay-with-modulation-guitar-effects-pedal#reviews

https://www.amazon.com/Ibanez-ES2-Shifter-Analog-Guitar/dp/B00BFWIZGI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473597444&sr=8-1&keywords=ibanez+es2#customerReviews

I wanted to look at these to figure out why, I ended up with two with different faults. These seem to match the most common complaints.

Broken Sliders

This first unit was sent to me already repaired and modded. The previous owner had had someone swap out the footswitches for nicer soft-touch switches. The originals are actuators that press microswitches on the PCB. The new switches worked, but tap-tempo and bypass had been swapped functions. The slider for delay time had also been sheared off and the battery snap had been cut off.

 

The backside has some opamps (TL072) and some 74HC4040 ripple counters. I don't know what the counters are doing. The toggle switches are wired to the PCB and mounted through the PCB in rectangular cut-outs - I like this, it prevents form turning when the nut is tightened and they are strain-relieved from the rest of the board. J6 has two pins soldered together. The trimpot on the right hand side looks like a mod but may be done at the factory, it looks pretty clean.

 

The other side has two Coolaudio V3205 4096 stage BBDs, and 2 BL3102 clock drivers. The clock frequencies for the BBDs goes as low as ~3.5 kHz, which is ~500 ms for a 4096 stage delay, so if both BBDs are cascaded then a 1 second analog delay is achieved with a bandwidth in the region of 1-1.5 kHz. This is dark but still sounds very nice for long delays for guitar.

U9 is an Analog Devices ADAU1701 DSP. This device has 2 ADCs and 4 DACs but very little memory, so it seems very unlikely that it is providing any digital delay. I am guessing that this is only handling tap-tempo, bypass, generating the modulation signal and maybe doing filtering and/or compression of the delay signal before and after it hits the BBDs. U13 is 24AA128 EEPROM for the program code.Analog Devices make a visual drag-and-drop programming environment for these DSPs (SigmaStudio) but unfortunately it will not load binary ROM dumps so I can't see what exactly what this chip is doing. I can probably dump this if anyone needs it.

 

These sliders are a standard 45mm footprint.

 The delay slider is a 10K linear 45mm potentiometer, I used a Bourns part (PTA4543-2015DPB103) as a replacement.

Added a connector to footswitch wiring so I could take the board in and out of the case.

I also re-did some wiring to swap the footswitches back.

Power Failures

This seems to be the most common problem. I came across a second unit that refused to power up at all. This one had a piece of foam between the battery bracket and the back of the board, and had the original switch PCB and actuators. There was no trimpot with hot-glue this time, but otherwise identical.

L1 looking worse for wear.

 I started measuring for power at the 9V jack. No current was drawn, and L1 looked a bit dodgy. This looks like a common-mode choke on the power input, filtering noise along with C7 and C70. The top of the ceramic broke off when touched with a tweezers. I guess this part wasn't rated for the current draw of the pedal, or doesn't handle vibration or shock well.

L1 bridged.

 As this is just a choke, we can jumper straight across it and restore power to the rest of the pedal. I lifted it off with hot-air and used some bus bar to bridge the pads.

Working again, and sounds just like the other one.

Current draw is less than 60 mA on these, which is surprisingly low.

I haven't seen any problems with noise or interference since removing this choke, so I will probably go back to the first pedal and do the same as a preventative measure. It is likely that this filter is need for EMC compliance to stop power cabling radiating the ADAU clock signal. This is a simple enough repair, and only needs the back casing taken off, the board can stay in place inside the pedal.

2 More DL4s

Big Green Delays, again.

I had a couple of these Line 6 DL4s handed over for repairs and each had a different problem from what I have seen before, so I'm holding out that this will be interesting to someone.

Silver-Taped Green Delay

By now I have something of a checklist of problems for these pedals. This one had all power supplies present, and none had any strange ripple or noise superimposed. Next step is to look at the test pads - there was no clock signal anywhere. Since the MCU generates the clock, and the MCU is responsible for resetting and waking the DSP (which produces the sampling clocks) nothing will work without this master clock.

U7. Oscillator and caps swapped at this point.

I know the problem is likely to be in the area of the MCU (U7). I replaced the oscillator crystal and capacitors with parts from the scrap board to see if I got a clock signal, as that's an easy place to start. No luck. I took off the MCU with hot air and replaced it with the one from the scrapper and everything worked again. Fantastic.

After removal and wicking of U7.

Alignment of the replacement is not great, but solder joints look good and function perfectly.

These MCU are a cheap 8051 core in a "ROMless" configuration, meaning that they have no ability to be programmed and only load code from external memory. This is a Good Thing for repairs, as it means that a scrap unit isn't really necessary, any new IC of this model should work, and all the code is in the one socketed EEPROM. In practice, I have found that "ROMless" is sometimes a misnomer. MCUs often have fuses or configuration bits that need to be programmed, or even have a small area of programmable memory for a bootloader, so a straight swap isn't always possible. More on this to come.

Normally I use a Kester flux pen for surface mount work, but this was the first time I used a syringe of tacky flux paste. It is really amazing stuff and I am completely won over. It made this job much faster and cleaner (I used it again for the Whammy repair, but unfortunately I'm getting to write about these out-of-order).

The owner had cover this pedal in silver gaffer tape. I think it looks cool.

A New Power Issue

This unit didn't get as far along before something look wrong. It had a working 3.3V supply, but all other power supplies voltages were low.

Another Rev 6 board.

The 6.6V voltage doubler (MAX660, U20) follows the 3.3V supply, so I started there and removed the output cap (C48) and IC. Measuring resistance across the output cap pads (6.6V to ground) gave 29 ohms, so there is still a problem.

U20 & C48 pulled.

The 5V regulator is next (U21, LM3480) so that was pulled, and the 29 ohm to ground was gone. I pulled U21 from the scrap board and replaced it, then repopulated U20 and C48. All power supplies returned and relays clicked, worked again.

Poor focus, but U21 has been replaced.

LEDs and relays are working after C48 and U20 are back.

At this point the scrap board I have is looking pretty bare. Between the 3 pedals I have written about and another personal unit that hasn't been fixed yet I've removed pretty much every IC. This is fine though, as I found out that very little (if anything) on these pedals is pre-programmed. In nearly every case new parts will work perfectly, having a donor just means avoiding waiting a day for replacements to be delivered. This shouldn't really be surprising as these are consumer goods made in large quantities, it makes sense to keep any custom, selected or programmed parts to a minimum to keep costs down.