Beginner question about not having stripboard

[Gullywood]

Hello beautiful people.
I almost completed my first pedal which is from Kurt Ballou's Brutalist JR, and I already want to try my hand at something not pre printed.  I only have perforated CB right now that was given by a coworker, and I was wondering if it's at all possible/worth it to "convert" stripboard schematics to work on boards with nothing linked on the back.
Is it only a matter of linking whatever is on the same row on the stripboard schematic together?  Anything else I should keep in mind?

Thanks a lot in advance

[Marbles]

Hey there, and welcome!

I must admit, I have no experience whatsoever with it, but yeah, it should be possible. Just link all the rows (but not where the red squares (cuts) are).

To be honest I would not go through all that trouble. Maybe if you start with the smallest circuit, but then still:

Everyone that started out doing this has had some trouble with something not working. And that's totally fine, you'll get a lesson out of it eventually. And i'm not saying you aren't capable or anything, but that's what I and everyone here ran into a lot. And when stuff doesn't work, you debug it.

If you you start out like this though, you're making it unnecessary hard for yourself. The chance of making mistakes is a lot bigger and debugging is going to be a b*tch.


So yes, it's possible, but since stripboard is not that expensive, I personally would save the headache and just buy some stripboard. Not worth the frustration IMHO

[Gullywood]

Yeah that makes sense.  I'll try to find somewhere local that sells it.

Looking at tagboards schematics, it looks like these would not be that complicated to adapt, maybe I'll try my hand at something really simple just to practice soldering and whatnot.

Thanks a lot for the answer!

[reddesert]

Rather than try to build stripboard layouts on perf, I would try to build some simple effects from layouts that are meant for perfboard. Runoffgroove has some, and some of the simpler circuits at http://effectslayouts.blogspot.com/ would be doable. Perfboard has the nice property that you can lay out the components in a logical way similar to the schematic.  Try something like a fuzz or DOD 250 overdrive.

[Gullywood]

Oh that's great.   I'll have a look.

On a sidenote, I just finished the Brutalist, and it only really does clean when the volume is at full, the two other pots don't seem to do anything, and the clean signal still goes through when the pedal is unplugged.  Any usual suspects here?

[Marbles]

Hard to tell without pictures.

With the pedal unplugged do you mean switched off? Cause that could be correct. The pedal is true bypass, so even when switched off, clean signal will always pass. If you really mean unplugged, could you elaborate on that? There is not  aguitar plugged in, so where does the sound come from?

I have a feeling you should check your wiring for the switch. When you switch the effect off, does the volume pot still work? Double check the 2 green wires and the 2 blue wires.

[Gullywood]

I had a guy troubleshoot it with me at work, sounds like I should double check my soldering.  I'll take pictures if nothing works.

Thanks a lot

[Muadzin]

Avoid perfboard like it is the proverbial plague! Anything more complicated then a millennium switching board (3 components) I have nothing but failure with the abominable perf. I hate the damn stuff with a passion. Just save yourself the aggro and find some stripboard. It's not that hard.