Buddy's Stripboard Builds

[HamishR]

More and more I like stripboard because I am always wanting to try different ideas and fit them into a 1590B! PCBs are a luxury and make building something you know you will like easily, reliably and quickly. And to me Vero/stripboard is kind of the next step for those of us who want to take that circuit and customise it, for better or worse. I love the PCBs I get from here and don't like to mess with them.

 

[szukalski]

Off-board wiring doesn't have to be a mess. As BTR says it pays to keep the wire as short as possible. But I also think it's important to make it logical so that trouble shooting is easier. Colour coding is a very good idea.

There is a logic to populating the interior of the box. I like to put the stomp switch, DC socket and pots in first and get them all wired up first - ground wires, Volume pot 2 to Out, that stuff. Then I install the jack sockets because most of my pedals have top-mounted jacks these days and they can get in the way of the pot wiring. I like to route this wiring around the perimeter of the enclosure, which makes it neat, keeps it out of the way of the circuit which may help to keep it quiet, and avoids it getting trapped under pots.

Which only leaves wiring the board in place. As I add the wires to the board I kinda put the board where it will sit, pull the wire to the pot where it will connect and cut to length. That means there is only enough wire to join the board neatly to the necessary connections and no more. It actually doesn't take any longer now that I am used to it and not only is it neat it helps keep the board in place. If I want to make changes later on down the track I can usually just unbolt the lower pots and I can get access to the underside of the board.

I guess it's because I came to building pedals from building amps where lead dress is extremely important that I do it this way. Building amps is all about off-board wiring!

Here is a recent build. You can see that the in and out wires to the jacks go around the outside of the box, hopefully avoiding any chance of interference from the circuit. In most pedals its not really an issue but I think it's good practice to avoid any problems you might have with higher gain circuits or whatever. For the same reason the wire from pin 2 of the Volume pot goes down the middle, away from the pedal's output wire. Over-cautious for sure! You might also make out that the wiring from the board to the pots is only just long enough. There is plenty of wiggle room really, but not an excess of wire. In general these pedals are very quiet. Maybe that's more down to the low gain of my preferred pedals I don't know, but less wire can't hurt.

Oh, and I do like to sand the edges of the board flat after cutting just as BTR describes. I have a belt sander so it takes all of 30 seconds to do. It stops wires getting caught on the edge of the board.

View attachment 36228

Nice boxing. The tolerances on top-jacks in a 1590B are pretty tight. How do you do yours?

 

[HamishR]

I measure carefully and use a drill press! To get just enough room for the Lumberg jacks I measure in from the sides 16mm and from the lower lip of the enclosure 9mm. The DC jack is in the centre laterally and 10mm from the top of the enclosure. These are the hole centres. The input jack does hit the gain pot and at first is at an angle, but as you tighten the nut it straightens up and I rarely have issues.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Here's a charge pump I'm going to use on my breadboard platform project. This takes a simple 9v input and converts it to 17-18V, 25V, and -9V. This was a breadboard project that I converted to stripboard. I'll need to add a jumper for the 9V input so I can make that voltage selectable too on a rotary switch.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Here's a voltage divider into a buffer I made for my breadboarding platform project. Many thanks to @Chuck D. Bones for the collab and schematic for this. With a 9V input you can toggle anywhere between ~1.75V to ~8.75V. An excellent SAG control for a fuzz.

 

[BuddytheReow]

The JHS Lizard Queen. In these parts it's called the Lot Lizard. I breadboarded this last week and was like "meh, nothing special". It's a bazz fuss, an additional gain stage, then a Tim Escobedo octave section. Every once in a while, the breadboard will lie to me (see Bill's Law). So, I used a stripboard layout I found on the net. The verdict? IMO, "meh..." I see what they were trying to do. IMO this pedal is not worth the price to buy new. I'm probably going to box it up just because I can. There's no volume pot in my pic. I'll solder it up when it goes in a box.

 

[Feral Feline]

The JHS Lizard Queen. In these parts it's called the Lizard Lot.
...

Lot Lizard

 

[BuddytheReow]

Lot Lizard

Updated. Thanks

 

[BuddytheReow]

Here's another "roll your own" design I cooked up. The DUST BUSTER. This is a blendable fuzztortion with a boost and baxandall tonestack. Works well on guitar AND bass! Link to the schematic is below. The chip is a TL074.

Buddy's Breadboard and Circuit Design Notes

Chuck's Boneyard post on buffers got me thinking a little bit. Here's a little ditty I came up with. I'll post a breadboard pic shortly and you can see how I cheated. I still have my opamp Muff on the BuddyBoard in case you're wondering. This circuit is essentially an inverting opamp boost into...

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