Things I've learnt this weekend.

[Willybomb]

1.  Don't populate 5 vero projects and a delay PCB in one night.

2.  Build a test station of some sort that you can plug these projects into for rocking before boxing.

3.  Put the IC sockets facing the right direction.  Then, when you put the IC in the socket, alining the notches together, your project will work.

4.  Don't solder 6 projects in one night.

5.  Check all your components and sockets are in the right rows on your veros.  This is seems to be more accurate when you havent populated 6 boards in a session.

6.  Make sure you've put the track breaks in the right spots on the vero.

7.  Don't grab the soldering iron at the tip like a pencil.  You'll only do this twice.

8.  Clean up after yourself so the wife doesn't get too cranky about the loungeroom turning into a mancave.

[Mike B.]

Haha nice! Wish I would've learned all of those things in one weekend.

[Willybomb]

Yeah, I love working with vero, don't mind doing the artwork for the enclosures, but hate the actual boxing process.  But jeez, I had a whole IC socket on Sabrotone's Marshall Cab Sim down a row.  I had 3 components connected to the wrong row in the Really Cheap Bass Compressor.  I fudged some breaks in another cab sim vero (did them mirrored).  I put the TL072 IC socket around the wrong way, put the chip in wrong as a result and spent an hour looking for solder bridges before I realised what was wrong....

[Mike B.]

Don't feel bad, I've been doing this for years and I still make silly mistakes - usually because I get in too much of a hurry. My favorite one I did recently was firing up a build with no ICs

[alanp]

Drinking is a bad idea, don't drink and solder... you wake up the next morning with electrolytic caps and IC sockets jabbing you in the ribs and when you stagger to the desk you try and work out what the hell you were making.

[selfdestroyer]

Don't feel bad, I've been doing this for years and I still make silly mistakes - usually because I get in too much of a hurry. My favorite one I did recently was firing up a build with no ICs

Haha done that a few time also. Got to love it. That panic that sets in when it doesn't work then the shame when you figure out what you did wrong. Lol we all learn from them.

[Stomptown]

Haha! Great post! I can verify that after grabbing the soldering iron from the tip twice you will never do it again. 

[billstein]

Don't feel bad, I've been doing this for years and I still make silly mistakes - usually because I get in too much of a hurry. My favorite one I did recently was firing up a build with no ICs

Haha done that a few time also. Got to love it. That panic that sets in when it doesn't work then the shame when you figure out what you did wrong. Lol we all learn from them.

Or one of my personal favorites, get no sound, freak out, then discover you haven't even plugged the cable into your guitar.

[alanp]

Or one of my personal favorites, get no sound, freak out, then discover you haven't even plugged the cable into your guitar.

Ha, I did that with the ?Flange With No Name. Briefly shat my dacks thinking "OH **** I DO NOT WANT TO DEBUG *THIS*!", then realised the gat was not plugged in. (Thankfully, there was NO debugging needed!)

[juansolo]

I limit myself to building/testing no more than two boards a day. When I do more, that's when I tend to make mistakes. Though I can populate loads of boxes in a single day as usually the bulk of the work is all done and I can do the stomp wiring with my eyes shut.

I've also discovered that I have a surprisingly narrow window of creativity/motivation. About 4-5hrs. Beyond this there is no point in doing anything as I'll either f**k something up, or it'll be scruffy/substandard. The only time that one doesn't apply is when I'm doing something challenging/interesting, then I can be in the zone until it's done. During which time I will not take a break and I usually find my bladder is on the edge of exploding by the end of it.

I find it slightly disturbing that solder fumes are quite sweet smelling. I don't know if this is familiarity or some sort of poisoning occurring...

[muddyfox]

Don't feel bad, I've been doing this for years and I still make silly mistakes - usually because I get in too much of a hurry. My favorite one I did recently was firing up a build with no ICs

had this sort of thing happen a few days ago. a snowwhite autowah just didnt work, boxed on faith that it would work. audioprobed my way through the circuit on the component side while still in the enclosure and found out i lost my signal just as it was entering the ic. took out ic, put in another, same thing. decided it was time to take it out of the box, turned it over, only to discover that the ic socket only had two diagonal opposite pins soldered to keep it in place. i totally forgot to solder all the other pins and it really is quite amazing the magnitude and the simplicity of an error one is capable of when soldering in the early AM.

[stevie1556]

Qso many thongs on here that I've done!  Worst one I did was having a few drinks while building, not realising how drunkni was, dropping the soldering iron and then trying to catch it. Burnt so much of my hand!

Sent from my thumbs using Tapatalk!