Do you always breadboard???

[Bill Mountain]

I always prefer to breadboard my ideas and then decide if they're worth building.

This is sometimes extremely frustrating because I get stuck in development hell.

Saturday night I threw caution to the wind and spot built a pedal.  I had a basic idea but I just went straight to building it.

The pedal was a bust but it was freeing to just test my idea in a night or two instead of spending weeks tweaking and tweaking only to drop it when my whims changed.

This can also be quite expensive.  I bought some Rat and EQ PCB's a few weeks ago (I still have a BMP and TSF from 2 years ago) and I'm already way past those ideas.

I want to avoid breadboard induced analysis paralysis but I'm not quite sure how.

What do you guys do?

[mth5044]

I voted before I read your entire post.

It makes a lot of sense to breadboard new ideas as that's what it sounds like you're talking about. I never breadboard known circuits or the mods to them.

[StephenGiles]

Yes

[karbomusic]

I want to avoid breadboard induced analysis paralysis but I'm not quite sure how.

What do you guys do?

I don't know if skipping bread boarding is the way to do it but I feel your pain; I pretty much always breadboard though as it is too painful when things go wrong and I didn't. For me personally, I breadboard to within some basic specification as a proof of concept, tweak it just a little leaving all the extra iterative paralysis to the side. I then build that from the schematic with new parts and leave the breadboard version as-is and fully intact. I now have cake and eat it because I can test changes on the bb and enjoy my physical build.

There is a high chance at this point that I can continue to make adjustments to the BB build and migrate those to the pedal which works for a large number of changes minus things that require a different layout and helps me bridge that gap. Beyond that I usually commit to one of the following:

1. This is a baked design to an extent.
2. This is a design that needs designing and lot's of iterative refinement.

Never confuse #1 with #2. IOW, attempt to make some decision up front as to which it is and if #1, build it and clear the breadboard. I can certainly say that I see an awful lot of "halp meh" posts here of issues I never experience simply because I breadboard first. If I do that, I already know the circuit and catch most potential build mistakes before they get burned in. Due to that practice, the high majority of my builds work very first attempt (knock on wood!).

[Bill Mountain]

I want to avoid breadboard induced analysis paralysis but I'm not quite sure how.

What do you guys do?

I don't know if skipping bread boarding is the way to do it but I feel your pain; I pretty much always breadboard though as it is too painful when things go wrong and I didn't. For me personally, I breadboard to within some basic specification as a proof of concept, tweak it just a little leaving all the extra iterative paralysis to the side. I then build that from the schematic with new parts and leave the breadboard version as-is and fully intact. I now have cake and eat it because I can test changes on the bb and enjoy my physical build.

There is a high chance at this point that I can continue to make adjustments to the BB build and migrate those to the pedal which works for a large number of changes minus things that require a different layout and helps me bridge that gap. Beyond that I usually commit to one of the following:

1. This is a baked design to an extent.
2. This is a design that needs designing and lot's of iterative refinement.

Never confuse #1 with #2. IOW, attempt to make some decision up front as to which it is and if #1, build it and clear the breadboard. I can certainly say that I see an awful lot of "halp meh" posts here of issues I never experience simply because I breadboard first. If I do that, I already know the circuit and catch most potential build mistakes before they get burned in. Due to that practice, the high majority of my builds work very first attempt (knock on wood!).

I will be working on a simple overdrive idea tonight.  It's a new design (to me atleast) so no stock circuits to copy.  Perhaps I should simply breadboard the basic circuit blocks as a proof of concept and then build it on vero with one or two points in the circuit socketed for tweaking and leave it at that.

[karbomusic]

I will be working on a simple overdrive idea tonight.  It's a new design (to me atleast) so no stock circuits to copy.  Perhaps I should simply breadboard the basic circuit blocks as a proof of concept and then build it on vero with one or two points in the circuit socketed for tweaking and leave it at that.

I certainly have a tougher time with something that is my own vs just making small tweaks to something already designed (#1 and #2 above). I guess it would depend on simplicity and whether its a matter of working or refining. The overdrive I built with lots of changes and personal additions sat on a breadboard for months. I was carrying the entire breadboard to band practice for awhile but I decided to commit and just build a physical prototype which still in the end made things easier. Here is that one early on at rehearsal using 4 bread boards. 1 large and 3 small ones connected and using an FX loop bypass box for the bypass switch.

[deadastronaut]

yep, always......i wouldn't build something i'm not happy with...

everything is tweakable..

i do understand the 'perpetual state of tweaky temporaryness feeling' issue.....but you do end up with what 'you' like in the end.........eventually 

[Bill Mountain]

yep, always......i wouldn't build something i'm not happy with...

everything is tweakable..

i do understand the 'perpetual state of tweaky temporaryness feeling' issue.....but you do end up with what 'you' like in the end.........eventually 

Been going on 4 years now...

[Bill Mountain]

I will be working on a simple overdrive idea tonight.  It's a new design (to me atleast) so no stock circuits to copy.  Perhaps I should simply breadboard the basic circuit blocks as a proof of concept and then build it on vero with one or two points in the circuit socketed for tweaking and leave it at that.

I certainly have a tougher time with something that is my own vs just making small tweaks to something already designed (#1 and #2 above). I guess it would depend on simplicity and whether its a matter of working or refining. The overdrive I built with lots of changes and personal additions sat on a breadboard for months. I was carrying the entire breadboard to band practice for awhile but I decided to commit and just build a physical prototype which still in the end made things easier. Here is that one early on at rehearsal using 4 bread boards. 1 large and 3 small ones connected and using an FX loop bypass box for the bypass switch.

That is madness!!!

[mac]

Most versatile pedal ever! 



mac

[JustinFun]

If it's my own design or an adaptation (germ to silicon or tubes to fets) then yes. If I'm building from an established verified schematic I'll just break out the pad-per-hole and build it on the fly.

[cloudscapes]

depends on the kind of effect:

if it's analog, yes, almost always. so many unknowns, theory and ranges of voltage/capacitance/etc that it's better for me to breadboard. especially because I aren't so hot on all the theory.

if it's digital, then I often design and order a board confident it'll work. especially if I've used the parts before.

[digi2t]

More so over the last couple of years. Especially unverified circuits, or traces that I'm testing.

For established circuits, or verified veros, I just build them.

[antonis]

I never had a breadboard so I allways design, print and etch an "oversized" PCB (bigger traces, pads,a lot of GNDs...) with sockets for transistors, ICs, diodes and capasitors and after tweaking (if needed) I remove the sockets (except of those for ICs) and I do the final soldering...

(OK.. I don't use any standard enclosure because I don't build only one effect per pedal..)

[duck_arse]

always breadboard? yes. (except I'm building a tim now I didn't bb.)

ever complete the build? hardly ever.

[deadastronaut]

ever complete the build?

erm.....eventually yes...

[CodeMonk]

I voted before I read your entire post.

It makes a lot of sense to breadboard new ideas as that's what it sounds like you're talking about. I never breadboard known circuits or the mods to them.

I'll breadboard even then.
Maybe I won't like the stock version or the mods aren't to my liking.

If its a new design, something I made up, or I got a new batch of some parts, like transistors, that I haven't used before, of course I will breadboard it.
Even if its something I have done many times before, but I want to put a new (to me) twist on it.
Be it a Fuzz Face, TS, Bosstone, Tremolo, Compressor, etc. but I want to try something different that I haven't done before, I'll breadboard it.
Or in the case of the Bosstone (I've probably built more of those than anything else), I may just socket a few components.

Yeah, sometimes I do suffer from "breadboard induced analysis paralysis", but I just go with it.
Or I step away from it for a few minutes, hours, days, whatever, if it gets to be to much or progress isn't happening.

[MrStab]

after a long time experimenting with strip/veroboard, and wasting a lot of solder and parts, i bought my first breadboard last week. under £3. i'm kicking myself. here's to more experiments and motivation to do them.

[anotherjim]

Yes always, but sometimes I can only half prove it in the breadboard.

If there's LFO's and BBD clocks or PT2399's involved, you never know if you've planned enough decoupling and separation to avoid unwanted noise until it's built.

If it's a complex project involving clocks, I'll only prove separate parts I'm not sure of in the breadboard as far as I can, without really knowing how well the overall scheme will work until it's built. As it's on perfboard, it's awkward but not impossible to modify it some. I would never go straight to a PCB unless it was a well known circuit that I want as it is.

Then, my Lab (OK - Shed) is only equipped with one of those generic little guitar amps. Unfortunately, mine has a magic mojo response that makes everything sound better than it will on a bigger and better amp

[amptramp]

I use pre-patterned boards since the effort to lay out a breadboard is about the same and I never really trust the connections on a breadboard.  This is similar to what I use:



Soldering is not really that much slower than breadboarding and you get actual capacitances and coupling rather than something that will come as a surprise when you actually build a final unit.  It is scarcely more effort to unsolder a component to try another one than to pull something out of a breadboard.  The best part - when the experiment is done, you add standoffs, put it in a box and you have a unit you can use - no need to build a second permanent unit.