[bperboy]

Okay, I was measuring for continuity between the input ground and the pot, and it wasn't continuous, so what I did is resolder the input ground to one of the ground holes scattered around the board. Neil, thanks for being so patient, and showing me the joy of troubleshooting

I think everything is working so I'll just case 'er up and have fun listening to the music.

 

[Clutz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bperboy Okay, I was measuring for continuity between the input ground and the pot, and it wasn't continuous, so what I did is resolder the input ground to one of the ground holes scattered around the board. Neil, thanks for being so patient, and showing me the joy of troubleshooting I think everything is working so I'll just case 'er up and have fun listening to the music.

fwiw, I wouldn't case itup immediately. Leave it protected, but just let it sit and do it's thing for a while and make sure everything is working fine. Casing it and uncasing it over and over again becomes a pain.

Cheers,
Clutz

 

[NeilR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bperboy Okay, I was measuring for continuity between the input ground and the pot, and it wasn't continuous, so what I did is resolder the input ground to one of the ground holes scattered around the board. Neil, thanks for being so patient, and showing me the joy of troubleshooting I think everything is working so I'll just case 'er up and have fun listening to the music.

Trouble shooting is the fun part. Glad it's working smoothly. Clutz had a good suggestion to let it burn in a little before you case it up. But you are probably too anxious to get it finished so we won't hold it against you if it's already cased before you read this

 

[bperboy]

Sorry to bring this up again, but playing music off my iPod, some parts of the music are a normal volume, but some, usually the vocals, are barely able to be heard. I think it might have to do with the fact that my input ground goes to one of the ground holes scattered around the board, but I'm not sure. It's not my interconnects, because I tried several different ones, and its not wiring left to ground or other sort of miswiring the channels. Neil, I went through and thought it out logically, but I've come up against a dead end. Oh, the biases are both set at 12vdc.

 

[NeilR]

Your problem sounds like the problem in this thread, which I remembered reading.

Check your input and output wiring VERY VERY carefully. Triple check it. And remember....

TIP is left channel

Skinny Middle ring is right channel

Big fat ring in the back is the ground

If possible measure from the iPod side of the interconnect to the board pads/traces.

As far as your rewiring of the ground line... I hosed my input pads trying to jam Kobiconn connector pins into them (my board's pads were too small). I used a ground pad that was a half inch away, as I recall and had no problems. I think it was the closest one between the L and R input traces. Any ground plane pad is as good as any other, and as good as the input pad.

 

[Clutz]

That does not sound like a problem with the millet to me. It sounds like a problem with wiring your jacks.

Tip, Ring, Sleeve on the jacks are Left, Right, Ground for both input and output. If you mix up the Sleeve with either Ring or Tip you will end up with a situation where the audio will sound funny - but it will only be audible in certain passages, where the left and right channel differ from each other substantially.

 

[bperboy]

Okay, I've solved the riddle. My wiring was correct to all the jacks, but then I measured from the sleeve to one of the ground points scattered on the board. I noticed that there was no continuity. I thought to myself, hmm, what the hell, lets move the ground wire to a different point. Voila, everything works. Considering the output was wired this way, and now the input was wired this way, I think that those grounds were not connected to the main ground plane. In fact, I'm positive of it because I measured for continuity, and there was none. I'm not sure if this is another mistake by the manufacturer of the PCB, but I was able to use those pesky troubleshooting skills

to solve my problem. w00t!

 

[NeilR]

Very good. You're learning.

I just checked a spare unpopulated board. I checked every apparent ground via against the IG pad and they all connect. It would be interesting to know exactly which pads did not conduct. We all have different revs of the board, of course, and I think they may have been made by different board houses.

The lesson here, of course, is to check continuity when you switch pads or use what looks like a ground via. I have gotten in a habit of buying a spare board, mainly to test continuity of the pads during and after building and cement my understanding of the board layout. For example, if I am doing a pre-power up continuity check on important points in the circuit, the spare acts as a reference so that I know FOR SURE what pads were originially connected before I populated the board. I have older eyes and sometimes I am unsure if a pad is connected to ground plane without a very strong magnifying glass. Even with a glass, I trust my DMM more than my eyes.

I do a lot of checking before I power up a board the first time. I also immediately check important voltages after the first power up, and if possible before the chips are installed. I like to see V+ and V- going to the power pins and NOT see V+ and V- on things like my output L&R pads, opamp In+, things like that.

Regards,
Neil

 

[Vertigo Acid]

I just got done discovering a both input and output ground were not tied to, well, anything! At least from what I can tell (I have a blank board i'm going to do some measurements on in a bit). Looks like the newest batch of boards might all have this issue

 

[n_maher]

I'll check this tomorrow but this would be news to me, maybe someone else can check this before that?

Nate

 

[NeilR]

Nate, I just metered a new board. The input and output grounds are NOT tied to the groundplane. The pots look ok, and the little pads sprinkled around the ground plane are ok.

Just at a quick glance, the easiest solution may be to run a wire from one of the ground plane pads to the connector pads under the board. There is a ground plane pad near each bad ground.

Obviously I did not go through the board pad by pad.... I just checked obvious ground points.

 

[NeilR]

I just metered about 80% of the pads on the board, if not all of them. The only problems are on the 3 pin connector blocks. Most likely the ground plane connections were lost when the pad sizes were increased.

THe 2 pin DC power in connector is fine.

 

[Blooze]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeilR I just metered about 80% of the pads on the board, if not all of them. The only problems are on the 3 pin connector blocks. Most likely the ground plane connections were lost when the pad sizes were increased. THe 2 pin DC power in connector is fine.

I just got the same thing on mine. Just on the input/output 3 pin connector block pads.

 

[amb]

It would seem like there is indeed a problem with the latest Millett boards. There were a couple of posts over at diyforums.org with similar symptoms.

 

[bperboy]

Yay! I discovered my first error in something!

I'm glad that some of the problems I had didn't stem entirely from my ineptitude sp?. Thanks again all for helping me out. The Millett sounds great, and it looks great on my desk! When I aquire a digital camera, I'l post pics of it!