Advice for PCB design

[Giguer101]

Hello people, I'm new to all of this DIY guitar pedal thing. I know this is not a pedal, but it's a little project that looked easy enough for me to do. I made a PCB design using DipTrace and I was wondering if everything was OK with it, did I make any mistake? Here's the schematic and my final design, can someone confirm that I've done it right?

[diablochris6]

Most of it looks fine to me. Did you mean to have only two pads for the volume control? Pad 3 connects to pin 4 of the IC, but there needs to be another pad for the pot if you intend on using PCB mounted pots. The pads for lugs 1 & 2 need to be linked together and connect to ground. You could get away with just using the two pads that you have if you connect the isolated pad to ground and solder a bridge across the two lugs on your pot. Either of these options will more accurately match the schematic.

[HamSandwich]

You want to avoid traces that are longer than necessary.

For example, do you need the IN pad to be all the way up there? Perhaps closer to R1. If not, you can have the trace from IN go directly down then branch off to the base of Q1 and R1 rather then going all the way to R1 and looping back to Q1.

Same for the top pad of Q1. Instead of where it begins to go south east, have it go straight up to D1. At where it branched off to go north, make another trace going down the resistor and IC.

It seems you are making it more like a racetrack when it should be more like a web. You always want to shortest distance rather than the order of how it may appear on the schematic.

[Giguer101]

Alright, thanks a lot! Wasn't expecting a response so fast! Thanks guys, will correct the little things you mentioned!

[HamSandwich]

No problem. The PCB is my favorite part. Also, RG Keen's (from GEOFEX) book PCB layout for musical effects (something like that) is a good one for takeoff.

[Giguer101]

Hey guys, just a little update! There was a mistake on my pcbs, ordered them from OSH park and soldered everything, but it didn't work. Finaly, I found what was wrong (I think, didn't test yet) The transistor wasn't connected properly, the pins (D-S-G from top to bottom on my design) the input should have been connected to G and S should have been connected to R2. By chance, the pins on the Transistor are long enough to be twisted and place in the right hole, I'll try to wire it properly tomorow and run some test. Here's the pcb with the correction!

[Giguer101]

Finally, nothing works like it should. Tried switching the pins of the 2n5457 because there was an error but it didn't help, all I get is a buzz that gets louder when I turn the volume, but no guitar signal... Any ideas?

[HamSandwich]

Please post voltages and pictures of your wiring.