Pedal repair/troubleshooting for a noob

thefez

Wondering if anyone could help/point me in the right direction.

I bought a Danelectro Cool Cat Chorus the other week for £20. Looks to be all in working order, can't see anything wrong with the insides so far. 

There isn't a chorus sound coming from the pedal at all, nor do the other controls seem to work particularly well. However, when I move the depth knob I can hear a chorus sound. 

Should I just be looking for any broken connections?

ICBM

Check the push-connector between the PCBs first - wiggle the connections about, with a squirt of contact cleaner if you have some.

If it's not that, it sounds like the oscillator isn't working. If this was a 80s Boss or Ibanez - or any other pedal of that era - I would suspect an electrolytic cap (probably the V/2 cap) as the most likely cause... these pedals are old enough now that the electrolytics are degrading and failing due to age. (If it is that, change all of them in the pedal - there are usually half a dozen or so, so it's not a huge job.)

I don't know if the Danelectro is old enough for that to be the top candidate, but the symptoms fit.

If it's neither of those it could be a cracked or cold solder joint somewhere, which might be tricky to find but usually not impossible.

thermionic

ICBM said:

If it's neither of those it could be a cracked or cold solder joint somewhere, which might be tricky to find but usually not impossible.

Having opened up a couple of Danelectros of that era, I would suspect this (along with the cables connecting the two pcbs). Be careful though, as the pcbs are pretty low quality iirc and it's easy to damage the tracks.