top of page
  • joepampel

Prototyping

Not the only way, but my preferred cheap, quick and easy way (pick 3)


  1. Buy some Garolite. This is flame proof PCB material. It cuts nicely, it drills nicely. It comes in designer colors. No one will tease you about using old cheap materials. ;)

  2. Buy some Keystone eyelets. Why eyelets? I like them. Buy whatever you like to solder to. If I am trying stuff out and moving stuff around, I find eyelets are just quick and easy to work with. Drop the leads in a hole. It doesn't get much easier.

  3. Draw your layout on paper. It should be actual size. It may take a few runs to figure out where the best locations are for some components. That's ok.

  4. Cut a sheet of Garolite to size, and then tape your layout on top of it, using it as a drilling guide. I taped mine on and used it to cut as well. Either is fine.

  5. Press in the eyelets when you are done drilling.

  6. Stuff the board and rock out. Prototypes don't have to look like the dog's breakfast.

Quick pics

Being lazy, I just taped my layout to the larger Garolite sheet (I chose designer blue for its superior tonal qualities <cough>) and used that as a guide for the saw.

And then we drill the holes for the eyelets (or turrets or whatever floats your goat)

Use a press (I just use the drill press but a real press would be better) and staking tool to install the eyelets. Stuff, solder and go.

Test fitting in the chassis before punching holes etc. If the layout doesn't look very Fendery, it isn't. That's a single channel Selmer Zodiac 30 (trem removed) coming together. While doing the paper layout I thought about flying leads and pre-amp tube positions/roles. The most basic rule for this stuff is that if you need to cross power and audio, or high level audio and low level audio, first try not to have to, and if you have to, do it at a 90 degree angle to minimize interference. If you have a negative feedback loop coming off of the output transformer secondary, keep it away from everything.


I used a 3-row concept here to help me organize the layout; you are optimizing for the circuit but also the physical size of the components. There is one jumper on the board to make this work out, not too bad. You can see jumpers in most Fenders. It's common. You can do as many rows as you like but it starts getting crowded fast. I like to leave room to add/remove parts or change values/type as well as have them not interfere too much with each other. I used actual components while I made my drawing to ensure the sizing would work. It's not beautiful, but it was very fast and inexpensive and should last a very long time. Look at how other builders solve various problems, it can be eye opening. There are lots of wheels - you don't have to go it alone.


References:

Garolite boards: G10 (12” x 12” Blue, 1/16” thick): McMaster-Carr 85345K11


22 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Tube Manufacturing Data

I am planning to scan materials I have on-hand and also provide links where possible to original sources to help the curious better...

Comments


Post: Blog2_Post
bottom of page