Electronics problems with guitar pedals

[Lex]

About drove me nuts today. I isolated one bad pedal, that is less than 6 months old. :M

In the process, of trying other things out, I wound up having a blast with a 15 watt Vox tube head on my old Marshall 2 12 cabinet. No pedals, just a Dunlap wah wah pedal, and the old telephone coil style Guitar cable.

For those that don't know, Jimmy Hendrix used the coiled cables to get his distortion. I forget exactly what he did, but I think he set the gain all the way up on the amp, and used the volumn to control the amount of distortion. The Wah Wah pedal, a Dunlop clone of one of the originals with the coiled guitar cable was giving me all kinds of cool feedback, and I was controlling it! 8O Total blast.

[chrisn]

At least a good time was had. Any warranty left on that pedal? I had a distortion pedal that worked sporadically, then died. I harvested its parts, and now it houses an L-Pad.

[Lex]

Chris, I think it will be warrant-able. But one never knows. GC gave me the heave hove on it, and said I have to contact the manufacturer. Not totally surprised on that of course. I will have the receipt, I mean purchased in July 2016 I would think it's fully warranted. I just filled out paperwork on their web site to get a return authorization. We'll see how they do, probably next week. To quote them, I "can't do anything until I talk to tech support". It says: "Footswitches carry a 1 year warranty" So, that's what this is, a foot switchable effect pedal I would hope. But paying freight both ways alone, not cheap, pedal sells for 119.00 on their web site, it doesn't look like GC sells the FullDrive 2 now, they have FullDrive 3. I never liked this pedal to much anyway, it just didn't seem to do to much for me. They already said I am responsible for shipping both ways, IMO, a warranty repair should be return shipped NC. I'm not going to put 50.00 in shipping in this thing I do know that.

If it will fit in the smallest flat rate postal, might not be bad. I don't know if it would. NOPE Checked.

[chrisn]

Agree, it's not your fault it broke, you shouldn't be responsible to cover shipping. That's a nice looking pedal, too bad you can't look inside it without voiding the warranty. The way the warranty is phrased, are they saying only the actual foot switches are warranted?

[Lex]

Actually, the Owner of the company told me there was a 9V battery in it, to put a fresh one in, and not use the AC/DC converter and try it, he was convinced nothing was wrong with the pedal. Well, I did not know there was a 9V battery in it! LOL.

I had been plugging it up to AC/DC power Likely what happened, it was running on the battery, when the battery went dead, the pedal still was defaulting to battery mode. Only if battery is removed does it go to AC power. That was my theory, I removed the battery after removing the 4 screws on base, put some gaffer tape over it so it would not contact electronics inside, put the cover back on, and put it back on AC power, and whala! It worked! :-)

No warranty repair necessary now. Cool! It was also cool that the owner of FullTone Pedals took the time to help me himself. Pedal companies may stay pretty small, but still, they aren't that small, they build some quality stuff!

OCD and Plim Soul, by FullTone pedals were recommended by a guitar geek at GC I trusted, and I have to say, OCD is my favorite overdrive pedal ever. PlimSoul adds some extra tweaks, but for basic overdrive and crunch, OCD can't be beat I don't think. Of course, individual taste applies too.

I got this other pedal just thinking I'd try it, I was never really sold on it, but I like to have a few different pedals to try on different guitars and amps, it's fun. so, I got it. Sometimes, I combine pedals to get some of the meanest growl possible. Maybe that is how I blew out my Marshall tubes once though. To much OD. So, I will try to be more conservative now.

I don't want to many more pedals, I don't think I need a lot more, unless one really speaks to me.

[chrisn]

That is excellent customer service, glad it was a simple fix. I'd like to try out more pedals, but I rarely have the chance to play at higher levels, and it's too cold to set up in the garage. I've been watching a few of these videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGh...-yxyBrUJtnUMoA