CONTEST Inventory Builds - Player Hater’s Ball 2025

CONTEST
really not sure what there is to hate about breadboarding.
- it's fast as heck to build a circuit and hear it.
- if you fuck up, no worries mate, just pull it out and chuck it in the correct spot. no crying. no desoldering.
- if you hate the circuit, you can just strip it down and build something that doesn't suck.
- you can reuse components again and again. (no cost).
- it's ridiculously quick and easy to test mods / alternate values, compared to anything assembled with solder.
- can actually test/measure/compare/listen to transistors (Ge), opamps, whatever, without actually having to solder them into anything.

imagine all the excruciating questions that could be avoided if folks could just neck up and breadboard the thing they're querying, and then literally answer their own query in about 10 seconds.

how different will X opamp sound from Y opamp?
if i dont use these bs mojo diodes can I just use 4148? how important is it?
will this big muff sound ok with BCxxx instead of 2Nxxxx ?

christ alive. just breadboard it.
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I get why people don't like breadboarding and that's cool. It's different strokes for different folks. I tend to like it for reasons @owlexifry mentioned and once I feel like I understand well enough what I've built, I'll probably never breadboard it again and just make a utility pcb of the section of it I like to speed up prototyping other things.
 
Big Monk said:
The problem is you outgrow it quick, to the point where making a working prototype and modding that is more effective, quieter and faster and it integrates into a pedalboard or a more functional role.
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fair. that makes a lot of sense if you are very focused on/limited to working on developing an 'original' circuit of your own for eventual production.

but if you're just trying out circuits or mods to amuse yourself, i can't really think of a quicker way to do that.

Big Monk said:
someone who will be cycling lots of different things on and off.
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yep, that's me.
 
It just takes a long time to set everything up. I like to keep things organized so when I breadboard circuits I trim each component leg short and make it so it's nice and orderly, and at the end of it I have to take it all apart.

It would be nice to breadboard a Charlie Brown so I can tweak the EQ stack to work better with my amp setup. That's the main issue I have with drive circuits - many of them sound boxy thru my DRRI. But rn I'm more focused on production of whole pedals rather than fine tuning them to fit my setup. I want to see the big picture before I zoom in and make small changes.
 
owlexifry said:
really not sure what there is to hate about breadboarding.
- it's fast as heck to build a circuit and hear it.
- if you fuck up, no worries mate, just pull it out and chuck it in the correct spot. no crying. no desoldering.
- if you hate the circuit, you can just strip it down and build something that doesn't suck.
- you can reuse components again and again. (no cost).
- it's ridiculously quick and easy to test mods / alternate values, compared to anything assembled with solder.
- can actually test/measure/compare/listen to transistors (Ge), opamps, whatever, without actually having to solder them into anything.

imagine all the excruciating questions that could be avoided if folks could just neck up and breadboard the thing they're querying, and then literally answer their own query in about 10 seconds.

how different will X opamp sound from Y opamp?
if i dont use these bs mojo diodes can I just use 4148? how important is it?
will this big muff sound ok with BCxxx instead of 2Nxxxx ?

christ alive. just breadboard it.
View attachment 103743
Click to expand...
I really don’t have a compelling argument for or against it, there just isn’t any cheese in it for me personally, Although I do use it to confirm mod ideas, it merely a means to an end and not a part of the hobby I particularly enjoy.
 
falco_femoralis said:
It just takes a long time to set everything up.
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with practice, it does get a lot quicker.
falco_femoralis said:
and at the end of it I have to take it all apart.
Click to expand...
admittedly, that's the least fun part. especially when i have to re-organize the pulled components (TC-1 tester is great for this)
falco_femoralis said:
It would be nice to breadboard a Charlie Brown so I can tweak the EQ stack to work better with my amp setup.
Click to expand...
do-it.gif
 
falco_femoralis said:
It would be nice to breadboard a Charlie Brown so I can tweak the EQ stack to work better with my amp setup.
Click to expand...
And that is a very valid use for breadboards. When you need to hear something but you expect you'll need to tweak it several times to get it exactly right, it's hard to beat a breadboard. I usually spin a prototype PCB when I'm 90% sure something will work and sound the way I expect it to. If there's a lower percentage than that, I'll often spin a partial PCB and jump out some wires to a breadboard so I can swap out a couple components easily without having to solder.
 
owlexifry said:
really not sure what there is to hate about breadboarding.
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Me either. Just the wrong tool for my jobs, but that could change at any time, I reckon. Only maybe 2% of my design/mod attempts ever even get physical builds, thankfully. Maybe once or twice a year I need to test something that’s not worth whipping up a PCB for, and to the perfboard it goes. But my stash of TH components is getting thin, and the only other thing I use TH resistors for these days is tube stuff, so a reusable solution does have some appeal.
 
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The contest came, and went.
What remains is the hate.

One positive thing that came from breadboarding for me is the speed I read resistor values. Pre-breadboarding, I used the acronym my father told me when I was a kid. I won’t repeat it here.

After a few weeks, I noticed that I could just look at them and read the value right away.
 
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