Projects Difficulty Rating

[Alex]

As some people have suggested, I've tagged my projects based on difficulty levels.
I've used: Easy, Medium, Difficult and Hard.
It took me ages and I've ended up with just one "Easy" project (EQD Acapulco Gold)!
The tags don't appear on the right column at the moment (need to click on the layout tag to get them all).
I'm not very good with computers and I've no idea how I'm supposed to do that.
Obviously the choices are based on my personal opinion and others may have used different ratings.
I don't want to sound nasty but please, considering the time it took and that I did the best I could without falling asleep, don't ask me to change them in the layout comments.
Otherwise, with different opinions, it will never end.
Hope they can help

[Neil mcNasty]

This is a great and very useful feature!
It will make life much easier for those who are starting out building pedals.
If this feature was there when I started out, it would have saved my a lot of headache!

Thanks a lot for all your great effort and for contributing to making this the best site of it's kind on the web!!!

[Frank_NH]

Ratings like these are always somewhat subjective, but with your experience Alex, I trust your judgement 100%.  

And as we all know, sometimes it's small ones that are the hardest to debug!  

[Pavlos]

Great idea Alex, and I'll second everything that Fank and Neil have said, especially that your efforts are very much appreciated so many great layouts and the generous help and support that yourself (And many others) give to those of us who are rather less technically capable is what makes this site so great, certainly helped me no end so a big thank you from me

As Frank says, the small ones can be the hardest to debug, I've built the EQD Acapulco Gold, and try as I might, it just does not want to work, yet the EQD Sea Machine (Madbean Gravity Wave) that I built worked perfectly first time and is in the process of becoming my first build to get actually boxed up (Box needs finishing off then loading up and other boards are earmarked to follow suit) Either way though, it's always good to have an idea of how big the mountain is that you are attempting to climb

[Alex]

I'm glad it could be useful.
I think Frank had suggested it.
I wouldn't expect Mark or Miro to do the same.
I've created a tiny number of layouts compared to them and it took me a while to rate them.
They have so many that it would take them a lifetime to do it! And it's a really boring job!
After rating them I've realized that I have one "Easy" layout (which Pavlos didn't find that easy), a few "Medium" and (surprisingly) plenty of "Difficult" and "Hard"!
I think a beginner could try his/her luck with Medium but should avoid the rest.

[Muadzin]

Methinks its quite easy to judge a project's difficulty, just look at board size, number of components and offboard wiring. The more you have to do, the bigger chance of a mistake. Most dirt is fairly easy, simple modulation or delay becomes intermediate, advanced modulation and delays are, of course, either advanced or worse, reach GOD DAMN!!!! levels of complication. Like a flanger or a BBD delay. And some projects are just so damn big and complicated they reach INSANE levels. Severe love of masochism is required to even contemplate starting such builds.

[Frank_NH]

And anything that requires JFET biasing should automatically be labeled Advanced...

[Pavlos]

I agree with Mudazin about being able to make a reasonable judgement about level of difficulty by just looking at the size of board and number of components/ofboard wiring complexity, however there are some of the less obviously challenging builds that use more tempramental componets (PT2399, Frank's favourite JFETs etc) that are still quite compact and appear to be very simple, yet will really make your head hurt when you try to get them to workproperly!

As a relative noob (I only started building less than a year ago) I thankfully took the time to lurk for a while, read a lot, ponder and then read some more before I even ordered any parts and fired up the soldering iron. It stood me in good stead though because I started with very small and simple boards before trying anything bigger......oh and then I threw caution to the wind and will consider having a go at almost anything now I've had a mixture of results, most have worked, generally first time (A mixture of luck and trying not to rush building) while a handful are stubbornly refusing to play ball(the box of frustration) some of them I really like and will box up, some of them I've been very dissapointed with (personal taste)

I certainly think that Alex's rating system would have made choosing which circuits to start with a great deal easier for myself when I started, and is still a useful guide for anyone more experienced as to how sensitive / tempramental a circuit may be, sometimes you just want a quick,  simple feel good build

Oh and Alex, your easy layout......little git just just sits there looking smug and superior while I rack my brains trying to get it to work.......I am thinking I should label it Nemasis lol

[Muadzin]

Methinks biasing JFET's is not really a question of adding great difficulty. As long as you have trimmers and a DMM that is. If you have to sort the bastards, that's a whole different thing of course. But overall you can get a build to work and sound even with misbiased JFET's. And getting a pedal to actually work is the biggest first hurdle to overcome. If it's not working the best pairs of matched JFET's are still worthless. And getting it to work gets progressively harder with larger boards. More components, more cuts, more links, more chances for something to go wrong. Getting it to work right after that is a different matter. And with trimmers not that big a chore.

As for PT2399's, some work fine, some work less fine and some flat out refuse to behave. Shouldn't be a big deal if you got several off them. It might be a good idea though if you have a working PT2399 delay and you get some new IC's to test and audition them in that working delay beforehand. Might save you a lot of aggro when you try to fire up a new build. Nothing more like the kind of fun that is not of a new round of 'is it not working because I soldered something wrong or because the IC is a dud?'.

[Pavlos]

I agree 100% about the JFET's and biasing, with one caveat though, JFET's can sometimes be so far out of spec that a circuit just won't work (Had a couple like that) but with a quick swap to a more suitable JFET it works fine, so I'd say that it's always worth checking with  tester (I use http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zLpU6E6w8xs/UBRUu_pzPhI/AAAAAAAACCo/3XLcB0oReSc/s400/Greatly+Improved+JFET+Matcher+II.png)) then at least you know if you have a working transistor, and also how close to being in spec it is. Personally all my JFET's are tested and bagged up in closely matched groups, then if I need any for a phaser or anything else that calls for close matching, they are good to go straight away, works for me anyway But yes, biasing is pretty easy even for a novice, and I also think it's better to start off with something fairly simple, the more components, the more potential errors/problems, so make it easy on yourself and keep it simple

As for the PT2399, I can't remember which post it was on but someone reccomended along the lines of, that even if you need 1 buy, 10 and swap until you find one that works nicely. I must have been lucky there though because all of mine have worked perfectly so far, but I do have a couple of boards that don't want to work properly even with chips that are known to be good in 2 or 3 other builds. Your advice is good though, a known good build is a good way to test if a suspect chip/transistor is working or not, fairly basic fault finding technique but so easy to forget as well

[Travis]

IMO buying 10 from the same seller doesn't really help your chances. If they're going to send you one fake or out of spec part chances are they will send 10.

You could buy a small amount from different sellers until you find a legit source, and then stock up.

[Pavlos]

Good advice there Travis, I got mine from bitsbox here in the UK, prices aren't necessarily the best out there but not too bad (At least on some things) for a non-far eatern seller, and for a lot of stuff there is a discount when you buy 10 +, 50+ and 100+ so can work out far better than it initially seems. The quality of everything I've bought from there so far is also pretty good, and domestic UK delivery only takes a couple of working days, so I'm happy to consider that a legit source I guess it can also be worth a little extra outlay to buy from reliable sources as well for these kind of parts, after all 10% extra on the cost of a batch from a reliable source is probably better than 30% less from elsewhere and finding that only half of them work

There are some great prices out there though if you care to look, and some great small scale sellers, hardest part sometimes is finding them amongst all of the dross, which is where personal recommendations can be so helpfulI'd have never heard of bitsbox, tayda etc if it wasn't for them being mentioned positively on here

[motterpaul]

Great idea Alex - and I also want to say "Thank You" just for continuing the blog here so people can continue to reap the benefits of DIY.

Funny, biasing a jFet was always easy for me, basic use of a DMM.

What makes a build hard for me is

1) the number of components
2) anything with LDRs
3) an abundance of knobs & switches (too many wires)
4) Anything with outdated or unusual parts - such as old resistor values, or "on-on-on" DPDT switches.

It isn't the build that makes a project hard, it is the trouble-shooting if it doesn't work. After that, it is the boxing.