Audio Circuit Breadboarding-your advice

[Noplasticrobots]

After messing with a couple audio circuits on my breadboards, I've come to the conclusion that I'm doing something wrong; especially considering that when I breadboarded a Bazz Fuss that had barely audible output from the breadboard worked perfectly once soldered.
It made sense to me to use solid core wire to temporarily connect offboard components like phone jacks and pots to the breaboard, but it didn't seem to work too well ( assuming I breadboarded correctly of course  ). So how does everyone here breadboard their audio circuits?

[KORGULL]

If you were only wrapping the wire around the lugs of the pots and jacks and not soldering, I could see that being a problem.
I use clip-on jumper wires that I bought at Radio Shack to connect to off-board components. They have insulated alligator clips on the ends.
I have alot of them and it can get pretty sloppy looking if you have alot of pots to connect, but it works.
Eventually I'd like to have an array of pots, switches, and jacks with solid core wires soldered to them that I can always use for breadboarding.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Other people seem to breadboard OK (especially if they have made a metal bracket wiht holes to contain switches & pots) but, personally, I 'breadboard' on stripboard.
One advantage is, if it works, then you have an effect finished
(the small PCB mount pots that I use in prototyping, can fit to the alternate strips, though I usually lie them so the pot legs solder flat to teh strips).

[petemoore]

  yupp, I never got a breadboard, just socketted nearly everything a few times, then still used sockets on transistors IC's and some of the caps.
  I like that after debugging and tuning It's ready to box up or mess with.
  I have quite a large pile of perfboard 'rejects'.
  The board can be left sitting on the 'back burner', then when say parts arrive or I get a hankering to mess with THIS circuit again, [I take the 'other' one out of the testjig] and put THIS one in, clip three wires and I'm ready for that one to be powered up and tried out.

[Jered]

  I've bought eight breadboards to date, four still working (they do wear out) and I can't imagine doing it any other way. How else can you try out 5-10 different circuits in an evening to know if you like the effect or not? I find them essential.
  Jered

[MartyMart]

I've bought two and only ever used them once !
I find it just as easy to use strip-board ( almost exclusively ) and also
use quite a few "sockets"
If it sounds "duff" it's only a couple of dollars worth of components
and I usualy remove them anyway, so only the strip-board is wasted,
I even recycled that a few times !!
Of course jacks/pots are easy to remove and re-use ...

Marty.

[bwanasonic]

I *dedicated* a couple of mono jacks for breadboarding, and soldered solid-core wires to them. I've done this for a couple of pot values, but for others I use insulated alligator clips. I find breadboarding to be really useful if you are experimenting with the architecture of the circuit, and not just swapping part values. For a simple circuit where I just want to try different cap values or transistors, I might go ahead and perf it with sockets. When breadboarding watch out for leads crossing and shorting ( I keep a magnifying loupe handy), and make sure the leads are well inserted into the breadboard. Keep a DMM handy and check your connections and voltages. The other handy thing to have is a bypass loop box. You can use this to easily compare bypassed levels, etc, without trying to breadboard the switching (generally to be avoided).

Kerry M

[H.Manback]

For potmeters, jacks and bypass switch I made a little 'chassis' out of some old aluminium housing. I wired everything to bananaplug sockets and use wires with bananaplugs to connect them to the breadboard and stuff.

To use different potmeters I have a good tip. DIP sockets fit the legs of my potmeters exactly, so I bought some cheap dip sockets and soldered some wire to bananaplug sockets. This way I plug the pot in the socket and can connect them to the breadboard.

[B Tremblay]

Seems like many of us are on the same page with our approach to breadboarding.  The pre-tinned stranded wire from Steve is what I use the most, but I do have a just-for-prototyping battery clip and 100k-A pot with solid core leads.  I put two mono jacks and a DPDT switch in an old printer selector box, which works very well for me.



The breadboard power module is visible in the top right corner.

[gez]

I'm supremely lazy by nature, so I use PCB mount jacks and ram them into the holes.  So long as you don't move them about (ever!  ) then they stay in place no problem (pic shows a 5yr old breadboard and they're still going strong), though it helps to use angled jack plugs which can rest on the ledge.



For power I solder crockclips to a socket and use my PSU (make sure you have a bumper pack of fuses for those little accidents though! )

For pots I use tiny PCB mount ones (you can see them in the 'library' section of the pictured board at the bottom) or trimpots (unless a log pot is required).