Why there are missing components on stock devices’ boards?
The reason for this post is a friend of mine. I won’t reveal his personality and I will call him Peter.
Let me tell you the long story short…
About a week ago Peter came at our office frustrated and he told me something like:
“Emil, dude, I know you don’t have much time, but yesterday I received one stopmbox (guitar effect) from eBay and I doesn’t sound as I expected. I opened it and I think I am defrauded!!! There are missing elements from the board!!! It’s awful!!! I want to pay you to set them up.”
I immediately guessed what the deal was and I explained him. In order to tell you I made few images of what Peter has seen.
Namely, the elements really were not soldered on the board.
You probably never asked yourself this question
or you never paid attention, but in many cases, when you open a factory devices and look at the boards, you’ll see really missing components. There are white stamp, but they are not soldered.
First I want to reassure you. You are not screwed up!
The reason to do the boards in such way is that the manufacturers save money.
This does not mean that they are lying.
Normally a device may have several models or variations with different features and functionality.
In our case the manufacturer Blackstar have a product line of 6 similar effect pedals.
