Steve really liked this pedal and gigged with it constantly. However, one day, he found that he couldn’t control it through the stomp buttons. The screen lit up, but nothing could be configured in the screen, and the pedal was useless. The Unbrokenstring Crew rides to the rescue!
Yogi Berra said “You can observe a lot just by watching.” Sometimes, a little exploratory surgery will make the problem more apparent than going through the electronic menus. We’re going in!
It’s a little tricky to get the halves apart, but a little patience and good lighting lets you disassemble the unit.
If you design your own circuit boards, as I do, you can order your circuit boards with any color solder masks. I see that Line6 used red. I’m good with that. Although I use red solder masks with prototypes, and green for production.
The top row of stomp box buttons are fastened to the large circuit board at the top, with the DSP engine right in the middle. The lower circuit board handles the bottom four stomp box buttons. What do we have here?
Nothing like a little spilled beer to brand this pedal as a gigging, mud/blood/beer-stained Texas Rock and Roll weapon. But the beer is not the problem.
Nor is this the problem. But it points us in the right direction. Hot glue is commonly used in electronics, for encapsulation and adhesion. Here, a blob of hot glue kept this cap down on the circuit board. Or it should.
Here’s another big capacitor held down with hot glue. Any guesses yet why this pedal failed?
I’m using the hot air rework soldering iron to soften the hot glue and stick down the big caps.
Do you see what I just did? The pedal was dropped, and the force of impact unseated this connector. And it dislodged the big capacitors. Now that the connector is reseated, everything works fine. Easy Peasy!
The unit is reassembled and checks out fine! The firmware in this unit is update-able through the MIDI port, so if you need to update an older unit, you will need to connect this unit into the MIDI chain on your PC or laptop as there is no USB configuration capability. But the factory reset can be done through the menu, and is well-documented on the Line6 Web site.
Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom!
Contact Info :
David Latchaw EE
281-636-8626