Done

I tried to solve my two problems and neither solution worked.

Video shows the switch popping and knob noises.

1. Fix the popping. Using this and comments on the Guitar FX thread, it seems like the standard solution for fixing popping is attaching a 1M resistor from the input jack to ground. I try this without soldering, because I was afraid of messing something up, so maybe that is why it didn't work. However, I had the resistor touching both and the signal totally cut out. I don't really know what's up with that. For now, I'm just going to ignore the popping sound.

2. The knob makes loud scratching noises when it's turned. I bought some contact cleaner and used that on the pot. It kind of worked; I think the scratching is quieter, but it's still there.

3. I think I accidentally threw out the waterslide decal paper a couple of weeks ago, so I'll guess my pedal will sport a minimalistic look for a while.

That about wraps up this project. In the future, I may write a post about how this pedal works, but I'll need to do a good amount of research for that. In the meantime, I'll probably order parts to remake the OCD in the near future.

Put in it the Enclosure

Testing with the breadboard worked! So I know I soldered everything correctly and I can move on with the build. I have all the components and everything wired up (the pot, power switch, and jacks) so now it's just a matter of putting them in the box.

Here is the schematic I used for wiring everything together in the exclosure.

I put the 1/4" jacks and the DC power jack in the enclosure. They fasten with nuts and washer, so I used pliers to tighten them up real nice like.

Stolen from DIY stompboxes

The footswitch used in guitar pedals are 3PDT, which means three pole double throw.

Switch Basics. The pole is how many circuits the switch can control at one time. For 3PDT, that means there are three different lug connections made at any time. The throw is the number of circuits in a pole, aka how many configurations the switch has. In state 1; lug 2 connects to lug 1, 5 to 4, and 8 to 7. In state 2; 2 connects to 3, 5 to 6, and 8 to 9. The middle row is always active; it just depends on what it connect to.

So for any guitar pedal, there is an on and an off state. In what I referred to as state 2, the pedal is off. The signal from the guitar goes through the input jack, connects from pin 9 to pin 8 of the switch, and goes through the output jack to the amp.

In state 1, the guitar input from the jack connects to the input of the board. So the guitar signal passes through the effect. Then the output from the board connects from lug 7 to lug 8, which goes through the output jack and into the amp. Through lugs 1 and 2, the LED circuit is completed so it turns on.

I put the pot and the footswitch in the enclosure, tightening them with pliers. The pot is connected to the veroboard, which can be seem to the left. There's a lot of wires around now; two ground from the pot, white from the pot to the board, input/outboard of the board, ground from the board, and power to the board. As I started soldering things, I measured and cut the wires down to make sure they would fit easily inside on the enclosure.

The 9V for everything in the pedal needs to be connected. So I twisted together the 9V wires from the DC jack, the board, and the LED. By the way, the LED I got is awesome because it's bundled together with the resistor with wires already included, so it was super easy. After I soldered these wires together, I wrapped them in electrical tape.

I did the same with the ground wires. These wires are from the DC jack, the board, both 1/4" jacks, and the three lugs of the footswitch. At this point, the only thing wired to the footswitch so far is three wires to ground on lugs 2, 3, and 6.

See? I wasn't lying to you.

I wired the ground wire from the LED to footswitch lug 1. You can see the electrical tape on the groups of 9V and ground wires and also some to separate the soldering on the board from the pot so nothing shorts out. The ground wires have been cut shorter and you can see them at the bottom of this picture.

I finished wiring the footswitch. The two green wires are on lugs 4 and 9 and they both connect to the signal (red) wire from the input jack. I twisted them, soldered them, and put electrical tape on the end in a similar fashion to the 9V and ground wire groups.

The red wire on lug 8 is the signal wire from the output jack. The middle lug (5) is the input to the effect veroboard (green wire). The blue wire on lug 7 is the output from the veroboard.

I finished it! I put the back on and screwed in the four screws.

Intense lighting!!

So sparkly.

I haven't created a demo video yet, but I did test it at this point and it worked!!! I was really excited. It has a pretty noticeable boost in the first half of the potentiometer range, but when you crank it up, this thing gets loud and fat. It's a really distorted sound and I dig it.

Two things I'm going to adjust:

1. There's a really loud pop when you turn the switch on and off. Some of my other pedals make some noise, but this one is really loud. Apparently the popping effect is magnified when the pedal is capable of more gain. To fix this, I'll add a resistor connecting the effect input to ground. More on that later.

2. The potentiometer creates a lot of scratching sounds when turning it. This is because there's dirt or dust or whenever inside the potentiometer, which is basically a needle sweeping through a range of resistance. I ordered some contact cleaner that will solve this problem.