Stripboard is kind of like breadboarding. There are many ways to get the job done. When I first started making my own layouts the tag board link was helpful to an extent. At the time I wanted a fish without learning how to fish so I found it frustrating. The best advice I can give is to just do it. Practice. Pick a simple circuit like a LPB-1 or another one knobber and make a layout for it. Then do it again, but make it a more compact layout. Then do it again, but this time add another knob such as a gain control. It will force you to think differently how to lay it out.
Some general tips/advice:
In nearly every circuit you are building 2 separate paths simultaneously: power and guitar signal. With few exceptions, they shouldn’t overlap.
IN, OUT, 9V, and GND. Those are the bare minimum offboard wires for any circuit. I make my IN on the left side and OUT on the right. Power is a little trickier, but it comes down to trial and error. The more ground connections you have, the better.
Try to keep your component footprints to a minimum. 1/4w resistors use 4 holes, box caps use 3, electros and ceramics use 2. It makes a neater layout and a more compact board. This doesn’t always happen.
Use track cuts to your advantage. That big, long track that’s only good for 1 path (power or signal) can give you more options with a simple cut or two. You can lay any component horizontally as long as there’s a separation between the two leads with a cut. Cuts also allow you to carve out your board into multiple work areas besides just a single track.
Use jumpers to your advantage. If you’re running out of room, continue the circuit a few rows above or below with a jumper. The downside is that you lose the real estate the jumper is on top of. Many people including myself add jumpers to get extra grounding points.
Practice tracing other layouts online. Not necessarily against a schematic (though that would help), but just to see how others do it. Good practice would be to draw a schematic based solely on the layout.
Offboard wiring becomes a rats nest really fast if you’re not careful. Try to keep offboard connections for a single pot or switch to one side of the layout. Having multiple pots on both sides of the board is fine, but when lugs 1 and 2 are on the left side and lug 3 is on the right it can get messy fast. There are exceptions to this.
Use the right tool when designing layouts. Pencil and paper I gave up after 5 minutes from all the eraser marks. I recommend DIY Layout Creator. There’s no tutorial, but it’s pretty intuitive and you can alter components lengths and widths easily with a right click. Or is it a double click?
Keep in mind the maximum board dimensions you can work with. A google search will tell you how many rows/columns you CAN work with in a certain sized enclosure. Depending on the circuit you’re building and how experienced you are at layouts, you won’t need all that real estate. I tend to shorten my boards by 2-3 rows and columns so I can easily mount it in the enclosure and have room for wiring.
Don’t forget LED and CLR. I’ve had to get creative after making a layout using any free 9V and ground connections to offboard wire both of those components. Not a dealbreaker, but kind of annoying and I’ve kicked myself a bit for not thinking of that earlier.
ICs and trimmers take up more real estate than you think.
You can always make a daughterboard for certain sections in a pinch, such as a diode selector with a switch. Or simply wire the diodes to the switch.
You can add cuts and jumpers underneath ICs. Many layouts have cuts to separate the pins from one another.
Once you’re done with the layout, trace it. Make sure the power and signal paths aren’t overlapping. I usually forgot to add a cut or two when going through this step. Trace it again after a few hours or the next day with fresh eyes to make sure it works “on paper”.
Designing a layout isn’t easy, but it gets easiER the more you do it. It’s a giant game of problem solving and trial and error like most DIY projects.
Most importantly, have fun!
