Last Blogger

I bought myself a solderless breadboard and started laying out my circuit using the extra parts I had. Ordering twice of all the components I needed was the smartest thing I’ve done yet in this venture.

On the advice of Dave Green I then pulled up the spec sheet on my JFETs to make sure I hadn’t gummed up my layout. That’s when I noticed a problem. When comparing my layout to the original schematic I noticed that I had a resistor going to ground instead of feeding back into a JFET source. The good news was that it would be really easy to fix.

Then came the bad news, uppon closer inspection I realised that I mixed up the source, gate and drain pins. This is a really bad thing that likely won’t be easy to fix on the board I’ve alreayd soldered. But it’s late right now and I’m going to wait until I get it working properly on the solderless board first. If I can get it working properly there, then I’ll know exactly what needs to be changed to get my already soldered board working.

Lessons learned:

1. Taking shortcuts like skipping a solderless breadboard prototype when you’ve never built a pedal before is not a good idea, no matter how much you tell yourself that you’ll be really careful not to make mistakes.
2. You’re going to make mistakes, so make sure it’s easy to fix them (see lesson #1)
3. Buying two of all of the parts you need is a really, really, really good idea when you’re starting out. Even if you prototype it properly, you may screw something up while soldering. If you do, you don’t want to be waiting for another order to come in or waiting for the electronics shop to open.
4. Be patient when you make a mistake (see lesson #2)