Possibly faulty EHX Soul Food, could someone sense check this for me?

[spleenharvester]

Received my new Soul Food today, 99% sure it's faulty but just want to check I'm not doing anything stupid before I return it.

The signal pathway is a Blacktop Stratocaster > Pedal > Blackstar HT1. When the Soul Food is plugged in the middle it makes an extremely loud buzzing noise and the guitar is barely audible. The buzzing noise stops if I touch the metal casing, but the guitar is still quiet. Different pedals work fine, and I've tried different cables with the Soul Food - as well as a different power adapter - and still no change.

Am I correct in thinking this is probably DOA?

[ErikH]

Contact EHX. They can take care of it for you. Sounds like something internal or the power supply is not compatible. That pedal has a charge pump inside. I got one used and it didn't work other than with a battery. I shipped it to EHX and they addressed it.

[spleenharvester]

Contact EHX. They can take care of it for you. Sounds like something internal or the power supply is not compatible. That pedal has a charge pump inside. I got one used and it didn't work other than with a battery. I shipped it to EHX and they addressed it.

Cheers - I opened it up and found the signal side of the input jack was shorted to ground due to some flux residue. I removed the residue and the short has gone, but it still just buzzes in AC mode. In 9V battery mode bypass mode works fine but it won't go into OD at all, the signal dies completely and the LED doesn't even light up.

Going to troubleshoot the circuit a bit more but I think there's probably multiple things wrong with it.

[Blille]

If it’s new I personally wouldn’t touch it because you may be blamed

I would ship back or contact EHX.

[ErikH]

Yeah, that sounds like a power pump issue. Mine did that.

[spleenharvester]

So I decided to dive into it anyway because I was curious, and couldn't be bothered to walk it back to the post office. The faults were:

• Inappropriate continuity to ground from input jack signal line due to leftover flux residue on rear of PCB
• No continuity to ground on both input jack ground pads due to incomplete solder joint
• Delaminated pad on battery positive terminal preventing power getting to the switch

So needless to say this was not EHX's finest pedal! Some reworked joints and a jumper wire later and it's now fully working :-)

[DCikes88]

Glad to hear you managed to get it to running condition. I doubt I'd be so skillful in troubleshooting and, being from outside the US, the option of sending it back is not really an option.
May I suggest you still send EHX an email outlining the issues? Maybe it will have some miniscule effect on future QC since it looks like a reccuring issue, which is not great for a ~100$ decent selling pedal. It might save someone lacking your prowess some time, hassle and money down the line.

Cheers!

[spleenharvester]

Glad to hear you managed to get it to running condition. I doubt I'd be so skillful in troubleshooting and, being from outside the US, the option of sending it back is not really an option.
May I suggest you still send EHX an email outlining the issues? Maybe it will have some miniscule effect on future QC since it looks like a reccuring issue, which is not great for a ~100$ decent selling pedal. It might save someone lacking your prowess some time, hassle and money down the line.

Cheers!

Thank you! Fortunately someone had already traced the schematics for the pedal, think I'd have been stuck otherwise. I've sent them an email indeed - their QC must be really awful if this one is anything to go by, there's absolutely no chance this thing even remotely worked when it should have been tested after assembly.