No idea what is going on, it worked perfectly the last time I used it! Everything is really quiet like there’s something wrong with the amp or something; tried hooking it up to two different batteries as well as a single 8 ohm speaker (as opposed to the two 4 ohm speakers) to no avail. I’m not an electrical guru so I have no idea what’s going on; the lights all still work perfectly fine. Any advice for troubleshooting would be appreciated! :mrgreen:
Erm…I seem to have fixed it; I think there must have been some crud in the volume pot or the battery connections or something.
Make sure you are using a large enough battery.
Most people test their kits with a 9V battery and then complain when the volume is low / distorted. Something like a 9V battery isn’t enough to power the thing to the full capacity.
It happened to me again today…and you’re going to laugh at what was causing it; when I originally hooked the speakers up, I used those slide over paddle connectors on the speaker terminals. I think they oxidized which was effecting the speaker connections; suffice to say, I took the paddle connectors off and soldered the wiring directly to the terminals on the speakers and that seems to have solved the problem! :mrgreen:
Scratch that; it conked out again. 
I’m running out of ideas as to what could be causing it; pretty sure it’s not the battery as I have it hooked up to a 12v battery that has run it with no issues and have run it off 8AA’s in the past. For what it’s worth, here is how I have everything set up!
**edit It seems to reset and work if I unscrew the speaker terminal connections, remove the wires and reconnect them. Odd! It just leaves me more confused! ** :lol:
Did you put solder on the wire ends (not soldering to the connection just the wire ends to make it solid)? If not, maybe the screw is squishing the little individual wires and not all are solidly connecting or are working loose. Hope that makes sense.
I’ve actually encountered this too and haven’t been able to isolate the issue. It seemed to happen randomly. At first it happened when putting all the electronics into the gun, so I thought i’d tweaked something. Took them out, put them back, everything okay. Then randomly it happened again - whilst the pack was running without being touched, moved, or otherwise interfered with. Then a few minutes later it came back fine, and has been okay since.
My initial thought has been that it must be something to do with the volume pot, but without being able to reproduce the problem reliably, I’m still clueless.
As it’s only intermittent, and is working 90% of the time, I’m not going to let it stress me too much. After Halloween I may strip the pack back down (scratch build, bar the gun, so wont be easy!) and tinker a little more. I’m certain it’s something I’ve done wrong, maybe a dry joint somewhere.
Made perfect sense and I did just that! After I tinned the wires, I gave them a light sanding and re-inserted and it’s working perfectly again. If it’s working again tomorrow, I’m calling this little issue resolved! :mrgreen:
It’s still acting up unfortunately; I’m out of ideas! It’s the same thing; if I unhook the speakers from the screw terminals and reconnect them, it works . The next day it doesn’t until I repeat the process! :lol:
There could still be a bad connection. Perhaps at the speaker terminals on the board.
See if you can turn it on and replicate the condition when moving the wires around / putting pressure on the speaker terminal. (Just be careful when doing it).
I’ve been unable to replicate it; I tried moving the wires around, the block around, etc. all said and done. The negative speaker connection wouldn’t tighten down as much as the positive one so I removed the wire in question and flattened it out some, then re-inserted and removed the wire a few times before snugging it down. To remove a variable, originally, I had put gorilla tape on the back of the board to prevent a short; I removed that on a whim as it isn’t really needed with the board mounted on the posts.
I’m sure it was as you say; just a poor connection between one of the speaker wires and the block. Thanks for the help (and being patient with my inexperience/panic at troubleshooting this sort of thing!) :mrgreen: