Caution when buying DC jacks for DIY Pedals...

[Ch0jin]

Well I just had a major /headesk moment that I'll share in the hope it saves someone the hassle of doing it themselves...

I always HATED those plastic DC jacks you get with FX kits, (I've melted a couple, which is mostly why I hate them) so when I found some solid looking Metal ones at my local, I was all excited. Solid construction - tick, nut on the OUTSIDE - tick.

Fast forward a few months (i got sidetracked) and I'm troubleshooting intermittent power to the finished pedal when using external DC.

The clearance from the DC jack to one of the pots is tight so I tape off the pot, file the socket hole a little and remount the socket another 2mm away figuring I have a short (wiggle the plug and the power cuts in and out). Reassemble and test and now NO power when external DC is plugged in.

Hands up if you have figured it out yet?

Yup. A BOSS 9V brick is tip negative and shield positive, and when you plug that into a metal socket mounted in a painted aluminium enclosure, it's only the paint preventing a direct short, hence why the wiggling caused it to be intermittent, and when I took to it with a file, removing the insulating paint, it was a dead short.

It's humiliating to admit that after doing everything from building the circuit on vero to painting and drilling the enclosure myself, that'd I'd make that mistake. Although to be fair to myself, my last non-kit builds were vero Ge Fuzz's that have no DC socket...

I guess NOW I know why GGG and BYOC include those plastic jacks after all

Anyway. Beware the metal jack fellow box builders!

I might go see if i can jury rig a solution with heat shrink so I can finish this off without major surgery to accommodate a plastic DC jack (that I'd have to order in)

Oh and as you'll likely see when I finish it up and photograph it, it's actually an OCD Ver 4 on vero in a large box with selected caps and transistors socketed for experimentation...

[DeanEVO_Dude]

Good one... maybe you should invest in a smaller soldering iron? Then you might stop melting them... LOL!

[Ch0jin]

NEVER!

[deeaa*]

Dude,

Waaay back I had this 20W Marshall amp I got this sudden urge one late evening, wanted to make into a head since I had a nice 4x10" it'd fit on top perfectly and I didn't like the open back combo sound...so I went and did the casing cutting and folded the tolex all nicely, glued the bottom, fine...drilled a hole in the chassis for the speaker out, put a jack there...and forgot to add a plastic spacer in between, so when I put in a metal jack and turned the amp on I had the jack minus going to amp chassis...took but seconds to burn the amp...man I felt stupid when I realized what I had managed to do.

Since then I've tried to refrain from starting such projects in the middle of the night especially after a few beers...

[Ch0jin]

Yeah I did something like that with a SS Hi Fi amp I was making years ago. I'd got the amp board populated during the day. Then friends came round, few beers, I get the urge to do some more work on it and end up forgetting the insulator that was supposed to go between one of the power transistors and the heatsink.

I didn't notice until days later when i fired it up and "blammo!" Only blew a fuse and wrecked one transistor, but what a PITA to remove 8 TO3 size transistors and heatsinks and replace all the thermal gunk and insulators and...

Well yeah, as you say, electronics and alcohol don't always mix well

[deeaa*]

Well at least u knew how to fix it...I had to toss the Marshall in the bin...kept the speaker and some knobs, logo etc, though. Oh well I only paid like 60 bucks for it and I did get to play it for a few hours before I ruined it :-)