I left a delay pedal on overnight with cables plugged in. The next morning the op amp was bad. Could it have overheated with an idle guitar? Doesn't seem likely to me but I'm not an expert on op amp heat generation.
Is it risky to leave pedals on like that? You're powering an LED and gaining up some line noise. Perhaps it was just time for this op amp to go to a better place.
I'm not advocating leaving pedals on all the time, just curious as to how big of a deal it is.
Leaving pedals on - destructive?
-
Dirk_Hendrik
- Old Solderhand
Information
-
deltafred
- Opamp Operator
The theory is that the components receive the most stress at power on so leaving them powered should give you the longest life. That is as long as they are running within the manufacturers specs, if not then all bets are off.mxaniac wrote:Is it risky to leave pedals on like that?
A lot of electronic equipment is powered for it's whole life. One example is internet servers, they can run for years without being powered down.
Politics is the art of so plucking the goose as to obtain the most feathers with the least squawking. - R.G. 2011
Jeez, she's an ugly bastard, she makes my socks hurt. I hope it's no ones missus here. - Ice-9 2012
Jeez, she's an ugly bastard, she makes my socks hurt. I hope it's no ones missus here. - Ice-9 2012
Well in retrospect:
1) I bought a pack of 5 RC4558 op amps off Amazon because of the free Prime shipping. One of those is what was in the pedal. Later I noticed that 3 of the op amps were KIA4558 and had solder on the leads so I won't be buying electronics components from Amazon anymore. Digikey is just as fast and they have pretty good prices on shipping anyway.
2) I marched all over the place with the PCB as I was trying to repair what turned out being a bad memory chip so I most likely gave it an unintentional hipot test in the form of ESD. After I got the pedal working the op amp went out a week or two later.
So as pointed out leaving things on should avoid in-rush current, and I can't come up with a plausible reason for it to get hot so this would either be ESD related or just on the infant mortality rate part of the curve.
Thanks,
Rich
1) I bought a pack of 5 RC4558 op amps off Amazon because of the free Prime shipping. One of those is what was in the pedal. Later I noticed that 3 of the op amps were KIA4558 and had solder on the leads so I won't be buying electronics components from Amazon anymore. Digikey is just as fast and they have pretty good prices on shipping anyway.
2) I marched all over the place with the PCB as I was trying to repair what turned out being a bad memory chip so I most likely gave it an unintentional hipot test in the form of ESD. After I got the pedal working the op amp went out a week or two later.
So as pointed out leaving things on should avoid in-rush current, and I can't come up with a plausible reason for it to get hot so this would either be ESD related or just on the infant mortality rate part of the curve.
Thanks,
Rich
If I understand the way most pedals are wired, using an external power supply (not a battery) means the pedal is powered up all the time, even without a guitar cord plugged into the input. The only thing the switch does is route signal thru the pedal circuit or not (and turn on the LED). Battery is a different animal, since the battery ground connection is only engaged when a cord is plugged into the input - which means that in that case the pedal is always on as well (which is why the battery runs down).