Finish Breadboard and Test It

I finished setting up the circuit on the breadboard. Now, I needed to test it to make sure I did it right. First, I wired the input/output 1/4" jacks. Mono jacks have two connections: the sleeve and the tip. Stereo jacks have three connections: the tip, the ring, and the sleeve.

Typically, a guitar pedal will have one jack of each type. The stereo jack is used as a switch to turn the battery on/off when a guitar cable is plugged in. I used one of each jack even though I'm not using a battery in the pedal at all, so really I could have used two mono jacks.



The sleeves of the jacks connect to ground. The tip is the connection that transfers the guitar signal through the effect and out the other side of the pedal to an amp. So, I soldered black wires to the sleeve of each jack and a red wire to the tip. I reinforced the joints with electrical tape.



Counting from the left, which is usually the convention, pins 1 and 2 of the potentiometer connect to ground. Pin 3 is connected to the source of the transistor. So, I put black wires on pins 1 and 2 and a white wire on pin 3. Again, I reinforced it with electrical tape.



I also soldered the DC power jack. I wanted to test as much of the pedal on breadboard as possible to make sure it all worked before I assembled it all together. The bent pin is ground and the other two pins are +9V. The reason for the third pin goes back to using a stereo jack; basically the pedal can be wired so that the battery is excluded from the circuit when the pedal is being powered with external power. Again, this is not applicable to my pedal, so I just left one of the pins empty.



First, I tested the circuit with a battery. Also, note that these jacks are two mono jacks I had from a previous project.



I also tested out the DC power jack to make sure I wired it right. This setup also has the LED connected, just for fun. The LEDs I got from Bitches Love My Switches are awesome because the resistor is already included and I don't need to worry about anything shorting out because it's all enclosed. So basically here the power flows from +9V to LED to resistor to ground.

Here is a quick video I took on my phone of me playing through the pedal on the breadboard. I'm playing a Gibson SG through a Marshall MG 100HCFX head and a MG412CF 4x12 cab. My phone fell over halfway into the video and the audio quality isn't great, but it's good to get an idea of how the pedal sounds and I'm planning on recording a new video anyway.