God, how I HATE vero-board!

[greekie]

Okay, I know a lot of people love this way of constructing circuits, but I have just never had any succes with it.

Long story short, I've been soldering for almost 20 years now, and I've been producing amps and effects for people at reasonable prices for the last 8 years, to support my studies. I've had zero complaints about the stuff I do and at most I have a failure-rate of 1-2% within the first year, and all failures are due to components malfunctioning and not the work I do.

Now, having done a bit of halo polishing, I am going to tell you about my relationship with the vero-board method of constructing circuits.

I've built a lot in the last years - about 150 amps and twice that in buffers and pedals, with or without tubes. I've made PCB's, built on perfboard and done turret boards, eyelet boards and tag strips and everything's been honky dory. However, whenever I try to the "easy way" and use vero to build a one-off, the damn thing NEVER works! And trust me, I've tried everything - using a magnifying glass to find solder bridges, checking everything, using only verified layouts and checking it against the schematic.

When I first built something on vero, a complex auto wah, I never got it to work. I stuffed it down into a drawer, and continued to work on my other projects. A year after that I tried using vero again as an easy way to do a quick project - again this did not work for me - weird errors that I didn't have the patience to debug.

Then today, I was trying to build a clone of the fabled Centaur Klon-pedal for my friend who really wants one, but hasn't got the salt for an egg. I do it on vero, on a verified layout, and I am VERY careful building this. I guess I spent about 2 hours drilling, soldering and putting everything nicely together. And guess what, I doesn't work. The gain does nothing, the clipping diodes doesn't recieve any signal, and having spent 5 hours debugging it, I again give up. And this time, I've binned all of my vero-board, as I am simply not touching that stuff again. I feel like there's a curse hanging over me when I work on that stuff. Never again!

Do any of you have similar "bad mojo" regarding a certain type of building method, circuit or component? Or am I just the only one not of the more evolved race homo verosolderiens?

Jake

[Enzo]

How about this? Just as a learning experience, take that dead project and find out why it doesn;t work. Oh, wait a month so your mind refreshes. I would not be surprised if the same reason was not responsible for the other failures, or at least a portion of them. KNowing why it fails would be helpful knowledge for future encounters.

Using ready made hobbyist or designer boards over the years, I have found that a lot of them come with some sort of clear finish on the copper to prevent them from oxidizing on the store shelf. You have to sand this clear finish off the copper before it takes solder well. COuld this be a factor here?

I don't like vero board myself, but I do like those little wireless breadboard strips. Radio shack used to sell, and maybe still does, a circuit board the same layout at the wireless breadboards. They are made so you can take a successful breadboard and just move it over to a solder board. I build small circuits on that all the time. The board is like 6" long, and if I need just an IC or a relay and a couple resistors, I can saw a couple inch piece off the end and use the rest another day.

[mfratus2001]

Schmart board... not so schmart! At least that's the way I felt after building with one.
It's supposed to make using surface-mount parts easier. Mix and match with Through-hole. Well, I built my circuit, just an interface board about 1/2" square, matched up most pins on a weird connector. I found a few thin bridges that I made, but when I removed them, there were still shorts between pins. Ends up this board is full of tiny traces going BETWEEN pins to other pins. I guess I'll read the documentation next time. But who thought a perf-board-looking thing needed docs?
Two razor blades later, I finally found and destroyed all shorts. Problem was, the board overcoat is dark blue. You can't see the traces, and can't look through the board.
Obviously some very specialized stuff, and not for casual use.

Yeah, Enzo. I like those boards too. But its a pain to transfer the parts one-by-one. So I've tried building THROUGH the board onto the wireless proto-board. Gets a little fun when you pull it off and try to keep things in place while you bend leads and solder. A piece of thick foam held down over it keeps the parts more-or-less secure while you turn it over to finalize the construction.

[Enzo]

I rarely actually transfer a circuit part by part. I build it up on the breadboard, and then duplicate a working circuit. SO when I say "move it over" I am speaking figuratively. But I don't have to invent a new layout or interconnection pattern.

[km6xz]

I've worked with most rapid prototype methods and don't like most that require working on both sides of the board, like perfboard or as it is called in the UK "Vero Board" because it is hard to spot errors in trace selection from the component side. After the item is proven workable, usually on a solderless prototype board like Enzo described, I go straight to etching a pc board or if not complex, point to point for a working unit.
I like the solderless proto boards because all connections can be seen from one view and changes are as quick as you can think about them. When transferring the design to a hard wired unit, the choice really comes down to component requirements. Logic boards one-offs are really well suited to wire wrap because high component interconnection density can be achieved. If large parts are needed like in tube circuits, point to point with tie blocks is really pretty hard to beat. Medium density, small component circuits like analog processors, ones the circuit is set, a single sided pc board is really quite practical. My Spice simulator is the Electronic WorkBench system with the Uniboard pc board automation and really good autorouting. If you set design rules with enough clearances to work with home etched boards, the whole process is faster and more reliable than hand wiring anything. If it is OK in Beta, and you want to build more, tighten up the layout by selecting another rule catalog for commercial board makers and send the files to them. If needing more then 10 boards the cost per board really beats hand building or doing them at home, plus are pro quality etching. I built a little 2 sided board for a compressor module 2 months. It worked well so friends wanted them. I sent the files to a local PC board maker who turned out 20 for $58, precision drilled and beautiful. I gave the finished compressor modules to friends for presents. Cost per module turned out to be less than $12 a piece.

[Steve Conner]

I started with veroboard and built a lot of stuff with it. The main thing you have to watch for is solder bridges between tracks. Even a buildup of flux between tracks can be conductive. And, incompletely cut tracks.

http://scopeboy.com/tesla/drsstc/driver2/111_1171.JPG

But nowadays I like these fancy protoboards from RS, which are double-sided with a matrix of plated through holes and a groundplane. They're expensive unfortunately, but I can cut them up and make one do several projects.

I use the solderless protoboards for quickly testing simple circuits, but I don't have the patience to make anything really big on them. The connections can get unreliable, and if you just stick in resistors without trimming the legs down, you end up with a kind of jungle where things can short together. The most complicated thing I made recently on them was a preamp with 2 JFETs.

Having PCBs made gets more and more tempting as Stan says. I've done PCB layout for years in my job, so it's no problem to put one together for a personal project. I just really splashed out there and had two 4-layer boards made for hi-fi amp output stages. Cost 100 bucks each. But I think the extra layers will be good for a few .001% less distortion.

[Jazz P Bass]

Cannot say about the Vero Board.
I have always used Vector board.
Link: Circboard : 3677-6

[greekie]

I have debugged a LOT of builds when I was starting out with my dad teaching me how to solder, how to do a good layout, etc.

The problem is, that if I do things on perf, it always works out the way I want it to. But when I do it on vero, the curse hits me almost everytime! I feel that I just needed this last straw to completely drop that method of constructing circuits.

[J M Fahey]

After my first couple terminal-strip PTP tube amps (in 1969), I got fed up and bought the drill, drill stand, eyelets and eyelet press, plus unclad Pertinax (phenolic) board to build "like Fender".
Boy, was I proud. *Now* it did look "Pro".
I got my feet wet in the SS sea, precisely, with the local version of Veroboard.
I cloned entire Ampeg SS amps (BT15, etc) using it, straight from Jack Darr's book, a great hands-on practical course.
Never had the problems you face, because for some unknown reason the Argentine makers used .15" hole (and track) separation, instead of the original .1".
Excellent to build discrete transistor circuits; impossible to use DIP ICs.
Since I had become very proficient with eyelet boards, I started to use them for SS stuff too.
No, I was not crazy using an eyelet per part leg, I used one per node (2 , up to 5 legs into 1 eyelet) so board design was real simple and fast.
Think about it: a 100 hole PCB can become a 20/25 eyelet one, not a bad simplification.
And SS stuff becomes as easy to repair as Tube stuff.
You can desolder, replace and resolder with no fear of pulling the "pad"
When I discovered those fancy "Operational Amplifiers", I bought my LM741 in the round, metallic, 8 pin case, and mounted them in, you guessed it, eyelet boards.
I *did* have PCBs professionally made if I thought I might sell at least 50 units of something.
Minimum order was 100 of anything.
I designed them with 2X size Bishop Graphics' "donuts" and black "crepe" tape, on tracing (vellum) or polyester drafting paper, taped over a Bishop's "grid reference" which was necessary to keep everything aligned.
Then that original drawing was photographed and reduced 2X on Litho Film at a Pro (Printing Press) Photo Lab, with room size cameras mounted on railroad type tracks, no kidding.
Finally, the Independence Day: I discovered Silkscreening.
As a friend said in a mystic but accurate phrase: "Silkscreen is Everything".
It was so for me, because to harness the mighty Front Panel plus the mighty PCB was like discovering Fire for the primitive Man.
But we were talking Veroboard, weren't we?
Well, the wheel has turned full circle: since Vero is "still" unavailable in Argentina, I sometimes sikscreen my own "Vero" patterned PCBs, and my own "Protoboard" patterned ones , for one-off experiments.
Not each time I need them, but a few A4 size boards which I leave in a bag or box until needed.
Am I crazy to hand drill thousands of holes, of which I will use only a few?
No, I use them undrilled, track side up, and "blob" solder component legs on top, "surface mount style", only with regular through hole parts, with legs cut real short.
The end result is acceptably strong, errors are kept to a minimum because "everything is in sight" and has the added bonus that since parts and copper sit on the same side, the other (insulated) side can be glued to a chassis, pot case, whatever.
Has saved my bacon more than once.
So in a way it can be said that 40 years later I still use "Veroboard".

[Ronsonic]

Greekie, are you American?

I'm fairly sure that it is only the other English speaking peoples who are able to successfully use that stuff. I think there's something in the bylaws, right after the part about amusing one another with our idioms, accents and turns of phrase, Americans build on perf.

[greekie]

No, I am Danish and live in Copenhagen, Denmark. But I have family in the States :-)

Any how, what I am talking about is the prototype board-types with long copper rows that you cut with an xacto knife to break the connection between different parts of the circuit. What I call perf board, is the stuff that has little copper circles around each hole, but doesn't connect them together. That stuff I like!

[Steve Conner]

Well, you're not supposed to cut the tracks with a knife. You poke a drill bit into one of the holes and twist it by hand, and it gouges away a little round bit of copper, breaking the track neatly. Vero sell a cutter for the purpose, but I always used a drill bit.

For extra authentic English mojo, do this while drinking Earl Grey tea on the lawn.

[Ronsonic]

See, I'd expect that being European you'd get along better with the Vero. Maybe it's those American family connections.

Or, maybe it isn't just Americans who prefer the Pad per Hole perf board.

Anyway, the Glaswegian Steve Conner, seems to know how to handle the stuff. I do approve of the tea and working outside when the weather is agreeable.

[greekie]

Yeah, well, I must confess... I scrapped it and made a PCB instead. And now the darn thing works like a charm!

I also finished an amplifier today for a customer who came in with it a couple of weeks ago. It was meant to be a Matchless DC30-clone, but it had problems in terms of build quality, hum, and a not so great sound over all. I've been doing an amp like this for some time. 7 years ago it started as my take on the DC30, as I think Matchless' super-hard-to-service and textbook wrong way of doing PTP could use some corrections. And then I thought "hey, what if I change a couple of thins here and there", and now it's a long way from the original DC30 design. But a great amp that does clean to mean and everything in between.

Here's the pictures - just so nobody will think of me as the guy that quits on everything but PCB ;-)

Jake

[J M Fahey]

Nice build.