Naughty Fish - 1st Build

[mothbox]

The Naughty Fish is my first circuit board build since I took electronics at school about 10 years ago so this thread is likely to become an ongoing list of questions and problems from me.

But, firstly, having soldered in all of the resisters and most of the caps.  I've attached some photos of the board in its current state.  A lot of problems getting my hands on the right value components despite having a number of large independent electronics shops near me so I've ordered a lot from Mouser in the US.

I didn't realise that IC chips come in different sizes and ordered these: TL072CDR, which turned out to be tiny, so have now ordered these: TL072CN, which are hopefully the right size.

I want the sweep to be an actual knob, not a trim pot so I've substituted the trim pot for this Bourns 5k pot.

I'm currently having trouble sourcing 1n8 film (C6, C8), 4uF electrolytic (C10), and 200uF electrolytic (C11) caps.  I'm planning on a tour of my local electronics stores to check this weekend but I'm struggling to find these online as I don't want to pay hefty international delivery charges for a few caps.  I initially ordered these from Mouser but they turned out to be huge (200V+ capacity).

I found the Vactrols on eBay advertised as Coolaudio Vactrol VTL5C3 Analog Optical Coupler/Isolators.  I'm hoping these are an adequate substitute.

I'd really appreciate any advice for this build, if I've got any components which immediately look wrong or those listed above are wrong.  I've had no problems yet with the souldering, no burnt components etc so fingers crossed, but I always remember doing circuits at school and I never had one that worked first time!

[jmwreck]

my advice will be on the (mode) switch, it's on-on-on but some switches like the ones I have was oriented in the reverse way as what you will see on the link (see documentation).

here's my build if you don't mind

[midwayfair]

I highly recommend leaving the sweep as a trim pot. There are very few settings in which it will do anything above the minimum setting, and MANY setting where it will sound like the pedal isn't working if you set it above halfway. There are hundreds of sounds in the pedal even without including it, and all it does is allow a tiny bit of fine tuning.

Mouser has all the capacitors you need, as would Smallbear and Tayda. C10 is a 4.7uF cap, not 4uF; they're one of the most common values, so you shouldn't have trouble locating that. Also, C11 is 220uF, not 200uF. You can use a 100uF if you really can't find it, but they're not super rare. the 1.8nf is the hardest to find, but you should be able to get a 5% box cap from Mouser or a greenie from Tayda. Smallbear has them in ECB-B (little red panasonic caps, the same size as box caps).

[mothbox]

my advice will be on the (mode) switch, it's on-on-on but some switches like the ones I have was oriented in the reverse way as what you will see on the link (see documentation).

I picked mine up from Smallbear following the link in the build info after ordering an on-on-on switch from elsewhere and it turned out it required a push action for the middle on which didn't work.  The finished box looks great!  Especially the LED eye!

Mouser has all the capacitors you need, as would Smallbear and Tayda. C10 is a 4.7uF cap, not 4uF; they're one of the most common values, so you shouldn't have trouble locating that. Also, C11 is 220uF, not 200uF. You can use a 100uF if you really can't find it, but they're not super rare. the 1.8nf is the hardest to find, but you should be able to get a 5% box cap from Mouser or a greenie from Tayda. Smallbear has them in ECB-B (little red panasonic caps, the same size as box caps).

It appears I scrippled those two down wrong on the postit yesterday.  Thankfully I'm not going hunting for these caps until this weekend, but C1 and C11 shouldn't be an issue anymore.  Originally I'd ordered these as 200V capacity so they were huge.  Not sure about those 1n8's yet.  If my local store doesn't have them I may have to bite the bullet and order them from the US.  A lot of postage just for 2 caps!

I highly recommend leaving the sweep as a trim pot.

I'm not a fan of tweaking so if the sweep only causes problems I'll leave it as a trim.  I'm picking up my stuff in the UK so looking at Maplins and found this: http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/5k-andohm-cermet-horizontal-preset-potentiometer-wr41u  Will it do the trick?  And should it be set fully off, fully on, or half way for the "default" setting?