Is it lazy to use existing layouts or premade PCB's?

[Mark Hammer]

Hey, my grandma used to live near Tolstoy in St. Petersburg before WWI, and she told me that Tolstoy used to wear his shirt-tails out/untucked.  Didn't stop him from being productive! 

[Canucker]

Its lazy to spend all of your time designing layouts rather then farming the food you eat, sewing the clothing you wear and doing your own dentistry. Sometimes you have to cut some corners just so you have time to play guitar.

[mattoverse]

Thanks guys!  I really appreciate all the feedback.  The best advice seems to be to focus on the aspects you enjoy and realize that may change over time.  Also, you have to draw the line somewhere and decide what you want to spend your time working on.

[stevie1556]

I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but personally I really enjoy designing my PCBs (due to a slight SMD addiction and there being a lack of those boards). However, I still buy a lot of boards from others to try out new circuits, and it's nice. It certainly makes the builds quicker (especially if you consider the PCB making and shipping times), and it's great to know that it should, hopefully, work first go. When you do your own boards, that is a big unknown factor on if it will work or not, and it's great having peace of mind.

I've got a pedal I really really like, built on a pre-fabbed board, which I want to do in SMD, just because I can. I'm about to send the files off to the PCB fab house, it's my 3rd attempt on this board, took about 2 hours to get a neatish layout with board mounted pots, and I still have no idea if it's going to work or not. If I did that for every single pedal I wanted to build, I would never get the time to build any (especially as I have about 20 boards waiting to be built up).