First “real” breadboard success and noise question

[pdfermat]

Very encouraged with my Guvernator breadboard attempt. This my first “more than a simple boost”-type circuit to actually get everything working as it should. Learning a lot about troubleshooting/finding dumb mistakes/etc… Tone pot wiring seems to be where I screw up the most.

The circuit isn’t horribly noisy, but there’s definitely a buzz. I’m guessing that’s to be somewhat expected with overdrives on breadboards though - isn’t it? Also - how important are “audio” quality components when it comes to noise/overall performance? The IC and pots came from stompbox parts dot com, but the resistors/caps/diodes are Amazon “whatever” brand assorted kits.

 

[jwin615]

Very encouraged with my Guvernator breadboard attempt. This my first “more than a simple boost”-type circuit to actually get everything working as it should. Learning a lot about troubleshooting/finding dumb mistakes/etc… Tone pot wiring seems to be where I screw up the most.

The circuit isn’t horribly noisy, but there’s definitely a buzz. I’m guessing that’s to be somewhat expected with overdrives on breadboards though - isn’t it? Also - how important are “audio” quality components when it comes to noise/overall performance? The IC and pots came from stompbox parts dot com, but the resistors/caps/diodes are Amazon “whatever” brand assorted kits.

Going to have various amounts of noise On any unshielded circuit. Environment conditions will be various.
For bread boarding, use what works but if you are going to be populating from the BB, use the good stuff. I'd stay away from cheap electrolytics. You want low ESR quality caps(nicicon, Rubicon, Panasonic, etc).
Cheap leaky capacitors can cause all kinds of odd issues. It's worth spending the extra 50 cents per circuit to use quality caps and save yourself some possible hours of troubleshooting down the road.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Welcome to the rabbit hole that is breadboarding!

Quality components are worth the money. I'm not talking about $20 Zoso capacitors, just decent parts from the usual suspects. It's hard enough to assemble a breadboard without errors. No need to add worry about parts quality to the mix.

All of those long wires can act as antennae and pick up hum from transformers & house wiring. Keeping them as short as possible will reduce hum and radio pickup. If that wooden baseplate was metal and connected to circuit ground, it would act as a shield which helps greatly. Pre-assembled breadboards come on a steel plate, but that plate still needs to be connected to circuit ground. These days, I build my breadboards on upside-down stainless steel trays. The aluminum bracket holds the jacks which provides a connection to circuit ground for the baseplate & pot bodies. You are also an antenna, so when you are sitting near the breadboard, you should touch circuit ground so that you don't couple hum into the circuit. Seriously. I sometimes hold one hand over part of the circuit to "shield" it if I'm looking for where hum and noise are sneaking in.

One last thing. Those pot leads are too large and will stretch out the contacts in the breadboard. Then nothing else will fit properly. You can imagine some vulgar sexual analogy.



The Protoboard from PedalPCB contains a ground plane which shields the breadboard. It also has places to mount jacks, switches, pots and contains a charge pump, Vref circuit, 5V and 3.3V regulators. Highly recommended. Notice that I have mine mounted on a piece of wood. That's ok because the white PCB contains a ground plane. Yeah, those pre-fab jumpers are kinda long and sometimes cause problems.

 

[jwin615]

Recently bought a variety of these 3386Ps to use instead of pots on the BB.
There's also the 3296W variety that has a little knob attached. Those are even more compact but in prefer the sturdiness of the P type.
@bean has some dandy 9mm adapter boards in his store as well

1 watt resistors are nice too as they have nice thick leads.