Breadboard and prototyping

[RollingElbow]

Hey Everybody, new to the forum but have been poking around and reading through archived posts. Did a search on breadboarding and prototyping but did not see anything more specific. I was having a look here http://www.diyguitarist.com/DIYStompboxes/GEPB.htm and noticed that i have an old chassis and hardware that I could use for something similar. Can you guys shed some light on the basic components that I would require to test most of the pedals being built on here? This way, I'd have a better idea of what caps, resistors, transistors to buy in order to prototype anything from a DOD 250 to a thunderchief. Also any other considerations would be nice to know in terms of the more common values of POTS used and switches used in these pedals. Probably too broad to cover but might be a good thing to document as I know that there are many people whose first times never work. Breadboard is much cooler for this then having to desolder.

I do have some soldering skills and have just completed my first amp..sure it only worked for one night before i had to make some changes which seem to have silenced it, but that's beside the point!  Amps are bloody expensive to play with so here I am wanting to play with pedals in order to expand my knowledge in this area as well.

Great forum from what i have seen.. its great that people can get together and share ideas like this. The holy grail of design for me will eventually be trying to make that LXH2 simulator... with my luck though, its probably a year or two away.

Thanks.

[RollingElbow]

Ok then!  I'll go with what i found in the link..the rest i'll just look at a general list of some of the pedals that interest me and order or buy components accordingly.

Looking forward to learning more on this site and building some monstas'!

[Gilles C]

First, welcome to the forum.

I don't use breadboards, or only once in while, so I can't help you about that, except that it's a good idea to build a breadboarding box like this.

But I can tell you what I do for the parts. I normally only buy what I need for the projects I have in mind, but I always a bit more than what I need. After doing that for a while, I can tell you that you are left with enough unsused components to start a new project without having to buy anymore parts.

Gilles

[gez]

A lot of suppliers sell packs of resistors, caps etc.  The caps are often useless as they're large value electrolytics, but resistor packs often work out very cheap.  You usually get 10 of each: everything from 1 ohm to 1M.  Good investment in the long run. 

Caps, I just buy them in on a need to basis and order a few more than necessary each time.  Eventually you end up with a full set.

Breadboard, the bigger the better; even if your circuits start off small you'll tackle larger ones some day.  Try getting one with screw terminals for power connections if you can as you can crock clip a couple of heavy duty wires to them and solder the other ends to a power jack/battery snap.  This type of board ususally has the facility to break power connections to the various segments within the board too, which is really useful for isolating oscillators etc.

For pots I use trimpots with my breadboards then switch to full size for builds.  You can get miniature pots which fit boards nicely, but they're not commonly available in the UK and when they are they tend to be pricey. 

Jacks, I use PCB mount and ram them into the board.  So long as you don't move them about (think carefully where you want to place them) they won't come loose.

[MartyMart]

Welcome to a new addiction !!! 

www.smallbearelec.com
One of the best places to get your parts, Steve is a cicruit nut too and provides a great service.
I dont breadboard that much, but it's a good way to try out something that your not 100% convinced
about building , I've used my little rig around 10-15 times.
I have a bent chunk of aluminium with I/O jacks and 4 pot connections/ 2 switch connections.
Makes normal hook-up a breeze.
Here's some common parts that you'll need for most circuits for now :

Resistors : Metal/Carbon film all standard values from 47 ohm to 1M ohm
possibly a few at 2M2 3M3 4M7 and 10M too

Caps : smallbear does a poly cap "box" with several from 1n through to 470n
you can get small box caps at 1uf value too

For small "pf" values , ceramics are fine, you'll need some 20pf/33pf/47pf/100pf/180pf/220pf/470pf

1uf and over just go with "electrolytic" , get 1uf/2u2/4u7/10uf/22uf/47uf/100uf all at 16volt rating
unless your going to build any 18v circuits, then buy 25volt rated caps.

Transistors :
NPN high gain : 2N5088 and 2N5089 also MPSA18 darlington and MPSA13 are useful
NPN Low gain : 2N3904 and 2N2369 or any "BC" equivalents
PNP : 2N3906 BC557  Germanium , PNP AC128 OC44 etc , NPN AC127/OC140

Jfets : J201/2N5457 and MPF102 should cover it
Mosfets : BS170 2N7000 "N" channel and BS250 for "P" channel

IC's :
LM741
LM308
TL071
NE5534    all single

RC4558
NE5532
TL072
LM833
OPA2134   all dual

cmos : 4049 ube and 4069 ube

The rest, sockets for swopping out parts and protecting transistors/ IC's
Jack sockets / DPDT and 3PDT switches , small SPDT switches  etc etc

I got a huge bag of parts on "evilbay" three years ago and have just started to run out
of some of the resistors ! ( 5000 resistors for 9.99 ) it did have some useless things, but all the caps
diodes etc etc have kept me going , so do a little search 

MM.