Using Perfboard

[lovekraft]

I know that a lot of people have expressed interest in making their own pc boards, but a lot of folks, including me, find using a perfboard, like the Radio Shack 276-148, or their 276-159 for ICs, a cheap and easy way to avoid the extra time, mess and expense of etching a pcb. They're cheap, easy to find, and ready to use out of the package, and you don't have to spend hours designing a board that you're only going to use once. This tip is from Paul Marossy of DIYGuitarist.com, and it should help anybody not familiar with perfboard get started :

(from Aron's DIY Stompbox Forum)

I take a piece of this stuff I have that is commonly referred to as "stickyback". It's a clear plastic sheet that you can print stuff on and stick onto things. I use it for my graphics on my boxes. Anyhow, I take a blank piece and stick onto the side of the perfboard opposite the side that I will be soldering. This gives me a surface to write on. Next, I take an extra-fine point Sharpie marker and layout everything on the perfboard and get all the connections and layout worked out before I solder anything. I double check all of this against the schematic before I solder anything. When it's all good, I just solder the parts together per my layout, and voila!, it works. It's almost as easy as populating a PCB.

There's also a lot of interesting stuff at Paul's site on amps and stompboxes, and everyone who gets the chance should check out his workbench article, if only for the pics of a truly organized workspace ( my bench will never look that clean and efficient, I fear). Sorry, benno, I know you probably could have used this about a week ago, but hopefully some of you other guys will benefit from it.

[ansil]

good on ya lk i think more people should get into the whole diy stompboxes. i know its guitar electronics here but people are more open minded here thats why i came over in the first place cause of all the cool people... [not that arons people aren't cool ]

[psw]

Thought I'd contribute something here

I found a program on the net called Stripboard Magic (I'll try and work out from where) that sets up and checks connections from a schemetric that you enter on one screen and shows where parts can be placed to your specifications on breadboard or stripboard including all breaks and links required. It even lets you create bmp components of your own if they don't have it in it's library, for that, something special.

Be warned it does have a few bugs but you get used to them and save your work in case;)

stripboard is a good half way between perf and pcb. I've never got into PCB making. If I had something that well developed I'd probably get it made. It's the drilling and cutting that most puts me off!

psw

oh and ansil, I reckon everything between the strings and the speakers is part of the instrument, so stomp all you like

[ansil]

haa.. good one psw.. i reckon so.. lol i needed a good laugh after the night i have had. however i did manage to get the latest beast up and running.. weird tube socket problem, had to swap them out. brand new ones down the toilet. however the amp has enough gain now to oscilate into a spacey tremolo at maximum gain and master volume settings. of course it was intended to be like that as the first time i did it on mistake my buddy was like leave that in there. so since then almost all my amps have the capability if tweaked to the max.

sorry didint' mean to hijack the thread.

[benno]

I think ill be sticking to perfboard, initially for the $$ reason, but also the simplicity reason. Cant wait till school is over ill be DIY a few stompboxs i could never afford

Ben