What are the common causes of (cheap) pedals dying?

JamesC01

I just got a Joyo British sound, and I'm really enjoying it. But being a cheap pedal, It'll likely die quicker than more premium options. What are the most common causes of cheap pedals dying? It sounds like it would be a fun project to learn a bit about soldering and electronics if/when the day comes. Is it usually the switches that die? Or the actually electrical components? Are pedals sometimes unrecoverable, even with some electronics knowledge?

viz

I don’t think it will die. 

ICBM

viz said:

I don’t think it will die. 

Probably not, most cheap pedals are quite reliable.

If they do die it's usually the switches, although they're often the same as the ones used in many expensive boutique pedals... which also die.

The pots and jacks are also usually flimsier than the ones on more expensive pedals, made from brittle plastics, not properly supported by the casing, or a combination of some of those. Actual electronic circuit component failures are quite rare unless an incorrect power supply is used.

Most analogue pedals are repairable and will probably remain so for a long time. Many digital ones use custom chips which may not be. A few (eg Electro-Harmonix) use very specialist physical parts (the rotary/push encoders on some of their modern pedals) which makes things difficult when they break.

Does that help?

ewal

I had an American Sound die after several years use. I'm afraid I took the more wasteful option and bought another one. Couldn't justify repair given how cheap they are new.

JamesC01

ewal said:

I had an American Sound die after several years use. I'm afraid I took the more wasteful option and bought another one. Couldn't justify repair given how cheap they are new.

What exactly died? Could it have just been the switch?

ewal

I defer to ICBM. He's seen a lot more pedals than I have.

If you want a project to learn soldering etc, by far and away the best place to start would be a diy pedal kit.

darthed1981

I assume some lump of an over-enthusiastic guitarist has put their foot right through a Behringer pedal before.  Apart from that they all seem pretty tough.

Budget ranges of mini-pedals, like Tone City, are very nicely put together.

Snags

I've got a dead American Sound, but haven't yet taken the time to work out what exactly has died. Probably the input jack, as they're not the best quality.

mrkb

Normally it’s the EHX branding that kills it

ICBM

darthed1981 said:

I assume some lump of an over-enthusiastic guitarist has put their foot right through a Behringer pedal before.  Apart from that they all seem pretty tough.

I’ve never seen it, although I have with a couple of older plastic-cased ones. The Behringers are tough - it’s only the jacks that let them down really. The pots aren’t great but they’re fairly well protected by the casing design.

I have actually got a Boss DF-2 with a broken casing - its owner jumped in the air punk-style and landed on it… he was quite a big lad. Both the switch rocker and the panel around the knobs are cracked.

BillDL

One of the issues with cheap pedals is that the nuts on the jack sockets sometimes aren't tightened much or at all.  The temptation is to grab a spanner and give them a twist, but they're usually mounted directly to the circuit board and even a tiny twist on the jack can break the joint.  In more expensive pedals the nuts are most often tightened and in some cases are wired, so this is far less likely.

The Joyo pedals in that format (American Sound, British Sound and the ones badged Harley Benton) use the plastic bodied jack sockets like this with the legs soldered directly to the circuit board:

Even if they have a chromed metal bezel nut, that kind of socket can't be nipped up as tightly as a traditional open frame jack socket, so they can end up rotating and loosening solder joints.  The spring leaves usually weaken over time as does the plastic into which they are secured.  That's the real weak point of cheap pedals that use this kind of socket, but the 9v power in socket can also be of cheaper quality and fail quicker than more expensive and resilient ones.

ICBM

BillDL said:

In more expensive pedals the nuts are most often tightened

Apart from most boutique pedals - the builders of those seem to believe that shakeproof washers kill the mojo or something... given that it seems to be standard practice to not fit them on anything more expensive than a Boss.

Alongside the stupidity of wiring true bypass through both poles of a 3PDT switch in series and thus maximising unreliability, that really irritates me about so many expensive pedals...

Danny1969

The most common faults I see are  

Shorted diodes on the DC input ... I assume this is meant to be some protection against reverse polarity power supplies ... as almost ever DC supply in the world is centre positive but guitar pedals are negative centre. If someone connects the wrong power supply then the diode conducts on a full on short to ground and normally stays shorted rendering the pedal unusable. If it fails open circuit then there's no protection to the pedal anymore and all the semiconductors in the pedal get blown so this method of protection is completely pointless IMHO 
If they put the diode in series then this wouldn't be an issue full stop other than a small voltage drop ... if that was deemed unacceptable then a MOSFET biased by a diode would achieve the same thing with no voltage drop at the expense of another 25P .

Pots go crackly through wear and contamination, some pedals use very cheap nasty pots  - EHX 

Mechanical footswitchs like ICBM mentioned always fail eventually ... as do the little microswitches actuated by footswitch plungers although some use large types capable of a far higher duty cycle then the shit TC and others use on pedals like the Polytune. 

In general though pedals are low voltage / very low current devices and there's not normally much component failure if the circuit is well designed. You get opamps go noisy and the odd cap fail but not often in my experience. 

ICBM

Danny1969 said:

Shorted diodes on the DC input ... I assume this is meant to be some protection against reverse polarity power supplies ... as almost ever DC supply in the world is centre positive but guitar pedals are negative centre. If someone connects the wrong power supply then the diode conducts on a full on short to ground and normally stays shorted rendering the pedal unusable. If it fails open circuit then there's no protection to the pedal anymore and all the semiconductors in the pedal get blown so this method of protection is completely pointless IMHO

It goes back to the days when most power supplies were only capable of 200mA or so at most, and the standard 1N4001 is rated for 1A... meaning that the power supply shuts itself down (or dies completely) before the diode burns out, so then it was a just about tolerable method of protection.

But as soon as power supplies became routinely capable of over 1A, the protection is useless because then the diode shorts, and the power supply will usually continue to pump current through it until it burns away completely, leaving the pedal circuit completely unprotected.

This is why I don't really like the very high current 'one spot'/'power-all' type power supplies, because that's exactly what they do if you connect to something with the wrong polarity.

BillDL

I'm curious about something, and I hope @JamesC01 doesn't mind me piggybacking on the thread, but it seems an opportune time to display my lack of electronic knowledge.  I'm not sure if computer towers ever used actual wired traditional transformers to reduce mains down to 12 and 5v, or whatever voltages a computer uses.  I am aware that the ones I bought were "switching power supplies" with fans, and I have a rough idea how they work.  Were the old "wall wart" power supply adapters for the original hand-held Nokia mobile phones once standard transformers but now something else?  The old power supply adapters are always really heavy by comparison with modern ones but seem to outlast new ones.

ICBM

BillDL said:

I'm curious about something, and I hope @JamesC01 doesn't mind me piggybacking on the thread, but it seems an opportune time to display my lack of electronic knowledge.  I'm not sure if computer towers ever used actual wired traditional transformers to reduce mains down to 12 and 5v, or whatever voltages a computer uses.  I am aware that the ones I bought were "switching power supplies" with fans, and I have a rough idea how they work.  Were the old "wall wart" power supply adapters for the original hand-held Nokia mobile phones once standard transformers but now something else?  The old power supply adapters are always really heavy by comparison with modern ones but seem to outlast new ones.

Yes. Old ones are 'linear' power supplies with a large power transformer operating at 50/60Hz, a rectifier, a smoothing cap and a voltage regulator. Modern ones are switch-mode - they rectify the mains directly, then use a high-frequency switching oscillator to drive a much smaller transformer which steps down the voltage. Some very low-power supplies (eg for LED light bulbs, and I think some phone chargers) don't even need the switching transformer, they just drop the voltage with solid-state components and resistors.

The old linear type are bulky, heavy and have a high idle power draw - that being why they've been banned by the EU, as well as mostly superceded by manufacturers - but simple, and if the components are properly-spec'ed they will last indefinitely. Switch-mode supplies are small, light and have near-zero idle power draw, but much more complex and everything in the circuit is under more stress, so they tend to be less reliable especially in the long term. Progress? I'm not sure.

Cols

Mechanical failure.

The switches, potentiometers, jack sockets and power socket are commonly direct-mounted to the PCB.  This saves on assembly time, reducing cost.  However, all of these parts are subject to mechanical stress from stepping on switches, plugging and unplugging leads and twiddling knobs back and forth.  As they’re rigidly mounted, you’re more likely to crack a solder joint or, worse, the PCB.

BillDL

Thank you for that explanation @ICBM

Rocker

A few years ago my battery powered Peterson StroboStomp tuner stopped working.  As it is a very accurate tuner I started to look around for a replacement but something suggested to me to try an external mains powered PSU.  The StroboStomp sprang into life and it has worked perfectly, powered externally, since.  One of the battery cables might have come adrift but as long as it keeps on working, I will leave it as it is.

dilbert

Snags said:

I've got a dead American Sound, but haven't yet taken the time to work out what exactly has died. Probably the input jack, as they're not the best quality.

@Snags, mine was the same, it kept cutting out every time you looked away from it and sure enough, when I took it apart it was obviously the input jack which seems to have a standoff between the jack body and the pedal body which stops the power supply from mating correctly with it. I gave it to a friend of mine who does loads of repairs like this and he fitted a new socket at the top of the pedal which has been faultless ever since.    

Dave_Mc

Ennui.