Newbie Grounding Question

[MannequinRaces]

This is a really ignorant question.  When I am looking at schematics that I want to build (beginner stuff off of Tonepad) and there is a schematic symbol for something to be grounded to the chassis, how does this translate to perf board construction?  Since there is no metal chassis to ground, what do I connect the wires to?  Thanks for any help!

[jefe]

Your board will have a ground, which does get connected to chassis ground. All of the onboard components that need to connect to ground are connected to the board ground. The tonepad pdf files are really nice, look a bit more carefully at them. The boards that he designs always have a nice ground trace running around 3 of the 4 sides of the boards. Pick out a component on the schematic that has the ground symbol, then find that component on the pcb diagram... you will see what I'm talking about.

[MannequinRaces]

Awesome!  Thanks for your quick reply and the clarification on grounding!  I took a closer look at the schematics and yes there is a nice ground trace.  Here is another stupid question; what does the color blue represent on the Tonepad schematics?  I see that green is ground and red is positive but I am unclear about the blue.  Also on the Small Bear Pad-Per-Hole board is the ground the line that runs around the outside of the board and also criss-crosses a few places in the middle?  Thanks again for any help!

[jefe]

You're right, the green traces are ground, red is positive... you could say that blue is "everything else"... mainly your guitar signal, getting all distorted and/or fuzzy and/or whatever...lol... don't worry about the colors too much, I think it's just to make things a little easier on your eyes.

As for the smallbear perfboards... are you referring to the white dotted lines? Those are just silk screened I believe (or printed somehow), along with the numbers and letters along the edges. Not a ground.

[MannequinRaces]

Thanks again for your reply!  Here is a link to the Pad-Per-Hole board at Small Bear http://www.smallbearelec.com/Detail.bok?no=70&sfs=3bc73a42.  You can see in the picture that there is a line all the way around the outside and then it intersects several places in the middle.  It looks like metal but I could be wrong.  Thanks for taking a look!

[jefe]

You're very welcome! I'm still pretty much a newb myself, but I have learned a thing or two along the way, and I'm happy to pass along what I know to others.

I checked out the pic, and I'm 99.9% positive that the white lines are just ink. There's a line every 5 rows (I think) to help you lay things out, but I don't know why the line runs around the perimeter as well.

[MannequinRaces]

So if I were to use the Small Bear Pad-Per-Hole board to lay out a schematic would I just connect all the grounds together since there is no designated "ground" strip?  Thanks again!  You rock!

[jefe]

Yes - when using pad-per-hole, then you have to connect all the grounds together... via that green trace on the tonepad layouts.

I should probably back up little here... I have made a couple of tonepad builds using perfboard. I use the pcb layout as my perf layout, to me they are one in the same. When it comes to that green trace (the ground), I run a bare piece of wire along those three sides.

Hope this makes sense!

[MannequinRaces]

I run a bare piece of wire along those three sides.

So you run an uninsulated piece of wire for your ground, right?  Then I assume you just connect the ground to the negative of your power supply (9 volt battery harness or wall wart) and the positive to the +?  So to complete the circuit basically all the grounds are connected together and all of the +'s are connected together?  Seems simple enough.  Time to get my hands dirty!!

For a first build would you recommend using perfboard, a printed circuit board (from Tonepad for the specific project(s), or putting together a breadboard?

Thanks!