Help

By Hooligan, 3 March, 2013
Forums
The Stella Amp!

Hello
I am a definite novice and my soldering skills are pretty weak .maybe someone can see what i did wrong http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/hardluckpickup/Stella/ABA1E8A1…. http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/hardluckpickup/Stella/83FCBBBD…. http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/hardluckpickup/Stella/4C270D9B…. The sound is barely audible unless i turn the gain all the way up and then its heavily distorted any help would be appreciated
Sean

Member for

11 years 9 months

j.edward.neal

11 years 9 months ago

I'm having the same problem. I plugged into an 8 ohm 12" speaker and got next to nothing. I have 2 resistors left over as well. Followed the assembly instructions verbatim. Please help. Thanks!

Member for

11 years 9 months

j.edward.neal

11 years 9 months ago

...but still no sound. Might've fried my chips. Anyway, R14 should be brown, black, yellow. The other resistor goes directly below. These are for the hacks output. I wonder if hooking them up kills the sound? I had no sound after hooking mine up, but I also had used a 9v to test te circuit (doh!). Didn't realize I couldn't wire one directly to the board until after the fact....

Hope this helps!

John, do I just wire a AA connector/holder to the board? Why does that work but a 9v doesn't?

Anonymous (not verified)

11 years 9 months ago

Well, the 9V will work. It just needs to be a fresh one and it won't last very long compared to AAs. Also, the big problem with a 9V is that if you accidentally hook it up "backwards" while you are trying to put it on right (sounds dumb but I've done it a few times) then you will reverse voltage the whole circuit.

Hold the board up to your nose and take a light sniff. Do you smell burned electronics? If so then you probably burned your chips. Send me an email (crazybutable at gmail dot com) if you did.

Those extra resistors are for the hacks output. Hooking them up should be harmless.

If you didn't get very much output, try cranking the LEVEL and TRIM pots, and turn the GAIN pot all the way down. With the volume all the way up on your guitar, hit a chord and see what it sounds like. Then slowly bring the gain pot up.

Hooligan: Take a look at this picture: http://s295.beta.photobucket.com/user/hardluckpickup/media/Stella/83FCB…

On the back side of the board, in the upper left part of the picture, it looks like there might be a little solder near the input pins. Make sure that's not a solder bridge there or a little leftover bit of stranded wire.

There are quite a few tiny small solder blobs on the back side of the board. Those are fine, as long as they don't detatch themselves from the board and make troubles later. You should be able to just flick those off with your fingernail.

Member for

13 years 6 months

John

11 years 9 months ago

I replied as anonymous on my own forum! How embarassing. Anyway, give those things a shot and let me know if any of that fixes things for you.