Sweet! I'm just revisiting various utility boards I whipped up during The Plague, as I'm going to need some blender and splitter circuits for a few customer jobs right quick. This one has two inverting inputs and two non-inverting, for instance:
Even if you don't get it fabbed, it's good practice and fun to do. Your layout is really nice and clean. And symmetrical, which shouldn't really matter, but does to me.
I'm often doing that, or using AI to generate enclosure art.
Those TH/SMD transistor patterns look great. Tempting to migrate to something similar myself.
Care to share that hybrid jfet footprint? It's on my to do list to create one and that would save me
Thanks!
The fixation with layout symmetry is quite bemusing to me, it works against a lot of what I've been taught by a few pro audio gear designers. One more reason I may not post that many gut shots, I'm definitely a form follows function sort. Or maybe just lazy!
Same, symmetry is cool when you can do it and when it makes sense from a circuit perspective, but I'm more utilitarian in my layouts. I don't think my layouts are ugly, I still try to keep them organized, but I care more about optimized routing and reduced noise than I do about actually making it look nice.The fixation with layout symmetry is quite bemusing to me, it works against a lot of what I've been taught by a few pro audio gear designers. One more reason I may not post that many gut shots, I'm definitely a form follows function sort. Or maybe just lazy!
I tried to start that way, then moved to the “follow the audio path” approach and try to keep the audio traces as short as possible. Followed closely by build practicality (a pot surrounded by a mountain of caps? No way!).The fixation with layout symmetry is quite bemusing to me, it works against a lot of what I've been taught by a few pro audio gear designers. One more reason I may not post that many gut shots, I'm definitely a form follows function sort. Or maybe just lazy!
Yeah, since mods and SMD board rework are such a big part of my workflow I'm still learning those lessons on practicality a lot! And my recent change in focus from onboard preamps and fairly compact bass amp builds to pedals is obviously going to bring some substantial changes to my priorities. But that's what keeps it fresh and fun too!
You can have your cake and eat it too, at least to a degree. I do a couple high-gain designs, and that's one of the things that pushed me to make 4-layer boards the rule rather than the exception. A solid internal ground plane and split power plane and super spaced out signal traces makes a big difference. I still can't claim that they're dead silent, but I feel like the noise floor is pretty damn low.Killing noise when I can will always be job one, I reckon. I hate, hate, hate white noise with undying passion. If I can even tell a device is on when it's at idle it sucks hard, in what passes for my world. Just another thing I am going to have to let go of a little as I transition back to higher gain guitar widgets and things like modulation effects though.
I'm on KiCAD, and already looking at that solution when I go to some DSP based builds. I used to build and/or work on some pretty high gain tube guitar amps, and also have experience with digital SONAR stuff, so I do have some decent tricks up my sleeve already. Typical pedal routing is interesting, especially the I/O side, and brings some new challenges for me. Just have to know when good enough is good enough, I reckon.
Nope, with a ground plane as a reference you don't need ground pours on signal layers, I just leave them as traces. Extra pours when you don't need them can actually lead to more noise.
Awesome! Definitely bookmarking these for future use
I always just let JLC handle the panelization, they make it pretty easy. Design it like you're doing a single board then check "panel by JLCPCB" during ordering. Tell them how many you want in your panel and boom, you're done.
