After struggling with my past few builds, I took great care in building this pedal. I used flux everywhere, cleaned it several times with alcohol, and was certain it would work. However, it continues to give me multiple issues that I can likely attribute to poor craftsmanship.
This is the PedalPCB SOFTii Drive, which is a Catlinbread SFT clone. I usually use an I/O/DC board, but I’ve tried my hand at wiring straight from the jacks to the board/3PDT PCB the past two builds with poor results.
(I know the board is dirty, but that’s from me tinkering, reflowing, etc., trying to troubleshoot).
The issues with this one are:
• High-pitched squeal when in “Stoner” mode (toggle up)
• Tremolo-like oscillation when one or several of the knobs are dimed
• LED stays on, slightly dimmed, when in bypass
Also of note, this was mostly working at one point, but when I came back later (pedal unmoved, had been plugged in) it gave barely any signal. I’ve taken it apart and reconnected the footswitch and DC jack with new (tinned) wires, but it didn’t make any difference.
FWIW, I am using 28g wire. Could that be an issue? Could there be a solder bridge under the toggle switch or the footswitch? I’m at a loss here.