Re: Anti-Show your Pedal guts Thread - The Tragedies...

Posted by helveticat on Jul 13, 2017; 2:18pm
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/Anti-Show-your-Pedal-guts-Thread-The-Tragedies-tp30474p39093.html

Sorry to bump this old thread but I had to let off some steam.

My only job this afternoon was to built a tiny little 2-JFET boost circuit. Not design it. Not get it in a box. Just solder up 14 components and give it a quick test.

Here's how that went. Bear in mind this is a 10x6 vero, and while I'd still call myself a relative beginner this shouldn't be a hard challenge.

Attempt 1: Made a DIYLC layout, cut the vero, drilled out the cuts, populated the board. Did the wiring. Tested it -- disappointingly quiet and muddy. Poked about, inspected. Realised I'd confused 10k and 1k resistors on the second gain stage. Desoldered (yay! solder sucker!), clipped, fussed to get the bits out, swapped the resistors, resoldered. Test for bridges -- looks tight. Nice.

Tested again. Still sounds weak. Crisis of confidence: were they wrong on the second gain stage or the first? Of course I've used the components off the breadboard for the build, because I'm that cocky. Back to schem. Yes, the first stage was wrong, not the second. Now I have 4 wrong resistors instead of 2.

I rebuild it on the breadboard, which confirms my suspicions. Out comes the solder sucker, off come all four resistors. New ones go on the right way round. Check which is which about 100 times before soldering each one. Done! Except now of course I have some solder bridges to cut out.

Still not working right. I look over everything again. Yes, folks, in between drilling the cuts on the vero and starting to populate the board, I'd rotated it by 180 degrees. Somehow this never came up during the disproportionate amout of time I've spent looking at the thing. I know when I'm beaten: in the bin it goes.

Attempt 2: Cut a new piece of vero. One column too short.

Attempt 3: Cut a new piece of vero. Count the columns 3 times. Drill out the cuts. Start populating the board. Something is amiss. At least I notice this time. What I've done is drill the cuts in a mirror image of how they're supposed to be. Bin.

Some days you have to know when to hang up the iron and go and sit in the garden.

[UPDATE: Attempt 4: After posting my rant and having a cup of tea, I felt like I wanted to put this thing to bed before dinner. So I did everything very carefully this time, although in the process I did manage to stub my toe, toast a JFET and spend 5 mins testing without the guitar plugged in (I promise I'm not making any of this up).

Now I have a board that looks 100% correct but produces almost no sound. So the very real possibility is that I've been building an incorrect layout all along. More tomorrow!]