Sunday, August 14, 2005

Soldering for fun and profit!

I've been working on the Rangemaster this weekend and for a moment I thought I was done.

I took it to my gear, plugged it in and... nothing. That is nothing when running off of a 9V battery, bigassloudmotherfucking hum when running off the AC adaptor.

So I kinda looked at the schematic to try and figure out what I did wrong but it didn't help because I don't know how to read a schematic. But did I double checked the layout and everything seems to be ok.

Hmmm...

I did something wrong but I know I can fix it given enough time.

On a totally unrelated note,APPLE'S JOBS KILLS APPLE LAWYERS!!!... not really, but you know he's plenty pissed.

2 comments:

LisaPal said...

When you figure your hum out, maybe you can help me figure out why my favorite acoustic/electric has a ground loop hum. It's coming from the built-in preamp. I don't have this problem with my other a/e, nor with my electric guitar or my electric bass. When I record, I have to attach an alligator clip to some metal at the output jack of the guitar, then attach a piece of bare wire to the other end, which I either have to tuck into the waistband of my pants so that it touches my skin or step on it with my bare foot to ground it. Otherwise, I can't get rid of the hum. (I've already tried all the usual techniques- ground lifts, different guitar cables/jacks, etc.) Do you think some wires might have been reversed when the preamp was custom installed by the guitar dealer I ordered it from in VA? Do you think that would cause this? If you solve this one, I'll put you on a t-shirt, too.

On the totally unrelated note...

Boy, I hope that bit about the patents turns out NOT to be as bad as what it sounds like. Can a legal department be THAT stupid? (I'll bet Richard has the answer for this one.) Isn't that one of the most important things they do for tech companies...protect intellectual property???

pi22seven said...

It sounds like the ground on the preamp's jack has come disconnected.

You'll have to open it up to check. The ground wire is prolly just floating around on the inside.

I bet that your local music store of choice could fix for about $5 if you don't want to DIY.