awwww, drilled the holes wrong.

[Jon the Art Guy]

On my Black Cat OD project. Clean, but one column too close, and I didn't figure it out until after soldering the jumpers and the socket pieces.

Glad I did sockets. I would have been in a bad mood had I soldered that OP275 in place.

I...really hate my soldering iron. I need a station, or a friend with a station.  

[Heath]

I went through building 5 pedals and about 4 guitar re-wirings with a couple of Radio Shack soldering irons.  I would literally wear the tip to a nub and, ignorantly, grind it back to a point with my Dremel and keep going.  They were cheap.. so cheap that you could not find a replacement tip.. so cheap it was easier just to buy another one.

I knew there was no way in hell the tip should be more or less melting off, so I went online and started reading.  I can't remember the exact site, but in addition to stating that you should *never* regrind the tip, he mentioned that several friends of his had attempted to get into pedal building, but had given up after dealing with Radio Shack soldering irons, assuming that soldering was just a plain pain in the ass.

After reading that, I got one of these:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/csi-station1a.html

It's still pretty basic by a lot of standards, but it's made an enormous difference in my soldering.  I have no intention of upgrading.  I'm still using the original tip that came with it after building about 10 more pedals and other solder-related goodies.  I've used it with lead solder and lead-free and it worked perfectly with both.  It also comes with a replacement ceramic heating element, which I thought was nice to have.

The shipping is a bit much, so if you are interested, they sell some fantastically priced shrink tubing and average priced replacement tips as well as some other stuff you might need in your stock of doodads.

[Heath]

Oh, and mis-cutting a track on vero board rates up there with hitting my thumb with a hammer as far as frustration goes.  

one time I had just the one usable piece of vero left and I was making a Phase90 from Sabro's layout.  I made all of my cuts 1 row over from where they should be.  I think I might have invented a few never-before-heard obscenities.  Somewhere a nun fainted.

Anyway, after an hour of trying to trying to perform micro-surgery with solder all over the place, random dremel gouges, blackened vero wafer and a brown-slime substance that I can only think of as Vero-Blood, a small blob of sanity started saying "Let it go, dude.. just let. it. go... it's over.  Time to move on, man..."  I stopped and took a look at myself... pcb dust in my nose and all over my shirt, second degree solder burns on my fingers, teeny strips of copper insulation for guitar control cavities, which, in recent mental state I thought would FIX EVERYTHING, all over the place, Xacto knife cuts, a cat who will never trust me again, and the slack-jawed look of insanity...

I stood up, tossed it in the bin, ordered more vero board, placed all the bits and pieces well out of sight, and went outside for a smoke.

[Jon the Art Guy]

yea, this sounds like where I wanted to go after I realized what happened. It's not so much the components, but the miscalculation that got me. I only had jumpers and an IC socket soldered in place, so I wasn't out much, but man...I could have SWORN the cut was 5 holes over. Oh well, measure 5 times, cut once.

I'm being very slow and conservative because I only ordered a small amount of parts; in essence, enough to build the projects I wanted to do at the time twice. Only about 250 pieces, and $20 all together, including shipping. I'm still debating on how deep I want to get into this hobby. One thing's for sure, however. Getting a halfway decent soldering station is a good investment anyway; I think the 30W iron I bought cost quite a bit of the cost of that station you got.

I seem to remember reading a Beavis Audio article on which iron to get, with a BIG aside on how horrible the cheapo irons are for hobbyists to continue with the hobby. I'm feelin' it; I can't get the solder to adhere to the tip AT ALL, even after dedicated cleaning with a wet sponge. I'm having to apply heat to the component end for over 10 seconds, and I have been having to resort to heating, slicing off a chunk of solder with the iron, then flowing the solder into the vero. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be doing round three on making this little circuit; to be safe, I'm going to heat the circuit up with a cheaper op amp and introducing the OP275 if I get sound and not essplozhun.

It's a pain to wait for orders, and Radio Shack and Fry's is not getting my money anymore.

[Heath]

Beavis Audio!  THAT's where I was reading about the Radio Shack soldering irons, ha!!

[Jon the Art Guy]

That site is a massive plethora of good info. He put up a hfE and pinout chart of common transistors recently,

http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/Transistor-Pinouts/index.htm

as well as all that Beavisboard project information. I keep forgetting to get an i/o set up for my breadboard and start playing around with the project list he has.

http://www.beavisaudio.com/bboard/