frederic
New member
If you really think you're going to enjoy electronics (i.e. make more than one thing in your lifetime), is to purchase from a place like radio shack, something like this:
Solderless Breadboard
The reason is you can insert the pins of the parts into the holes, and using wire you can make your connections between parts. If you make a mistake, you simply pull the wire out, and move it appropriately.
The beauty of the above particular solderless breadboard, is once you get your circuit working as you want it to, you can transfer it AS IS from the solderless breadboard to this product - a identically wired soldered breadboard:
Soldered Breadboard
Other places aside from RadioShack sell solderless, and soldered breadboards that are identical in how they are connected, shaped and sized, so you're not limited to what Radio Shack has. Here in the states they are as common as McDonalds so it's convienent.
Anyway, that is how I'd tackle the wiring of the pre-amp if you've never done electronics to this degree before.
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Perfboard is fine, and you're essentially doing point to point wiring. Where it gets difficult is if you have multiple wires going to one pin on a tiny integrated circuit, and the IC's leads are only so long. You can extend those leads but that's a soldering hassle. Perfboards also can be bought with solder pads - those also are a good choice and similar to the above soldered breadboard I linked above - except usually all the pads are isolated from each other, and you can bridge them with wires or solder as necessary.
For audio stuff, I highly recommend silver solder which is more expensive then ordinary electronic solder. For one, it requires less heat to melt and make a good, trouble free joint, which is always a plus for a beginner. Also every solder joint adds resistance to the circuit, and silver solder conducts better than regular electronic solder, so that helps the quality of the signal path. For automotive stuff, I use whatever is lying around but for audio, I generally use silver solder.
Point to point wiring, like in the old days with lugs on supports and such, is difficult to do with integrated circuits. I've done it, but it looks nasty
About the AT power supply - for testing purposes you can use the +12V and the -12V supply lines to feed audio circuits as I've designed above, however for your final version you're not going to want to do this. PC power supplies tend not to be a consistant in their output as they'd like us to think... their voltage often depends on the load. Also, the -12V line generally cannot provide much current at all, unlike the +12V line which often can provide 10-35 amps depending on the power supply size. The -12V line is usually limited to 100-300ma, which is enough for one, two or three pre-amp chips. One of the common mistakes in power supply designs for audio is not having enough power to drive the op-amps when the audio signal is "hot", and the voltage drops at that point and then you have a nice fuzz-distortion sound as the signal clips.
Generally, electronic engineers that design audio circuits, use a 2:1 rule. If the op-amps throughout the entire design can draw 5 amps, they'll design a 10A power supply.
but for testing a simple pre-amp circuit, a AT power supply is fine. I did it when I was testing the already posted schematics. I even use AT power supply for testing vehicle electronics.
Solderless Breadboard
The reason is you can insert the pins of the parts into the holes, and using wire you can make your connections between parts. If you make a mistake, you simply pull the wire out, and move it appropriately.
The beauty of the above particular solderless breadboard, is once you get your circuit working as you want it to, you can transfer it AS IS from the solderless breadboard to this product - a identically wired soldered breadboard:
Soldered Breadboard
Other places aside from RadioShack sell solderless, and soldered breadboards that are identical in how they are connected, shaped and sized, so you're not limited to what Radio Shack has. Here in the states they are as common as McDonalds so it's convienent.
Anyway, that is how I'd tackle the wiring of the pre-amp if you've never done electronics to this degree before.
--------------
Perfboard is fine, and you're essentially doing point to point wiring. Where it gets difficult is if you have multiple wires going to one pin on a tiny integrated circuit, and the IC's leads are only so long. You can extend those leads but that's a soldering hassle. Perfboards also can be bought with solder pads - those also are a good choice and similar to the above soldered breadboard I linked above - except usually all the pads are isolated from each other, and you can bridge them with wires or solder as necessary.
For audio stuff, I highly recommend silver solder which is more expensive then ordinary electronic solder. For one, it requires less heat to melt and make a good, trouble free joint, which is always a plus for a beginner. Also every solder joint adds resistance to the circuit, and silver solder conducts better than regular electronic solder, so that helps the quality of the signal path. For automotive stuff, I use whatever is lying around but for audio, I generally use silver solder.
Point to point wiring, like in the old days with lugs on supports and such, is difficult to do with integrated circuits. I've done it, but it looks nasty
About the AT power supply - for testing purposes you can use the +12V and the -12V supply lines to feed audio circuits as I've designed above, however for your final version you're not going to want to do this. PC power supplies tend not to be a consistant in their output as they'd like us to think... their voltage often depends on the load. Also, the -12V line generally cannot provide much current at all, unlike the +12V line which often can provide 10-35 amps depending on the power supply size. The -12V line is usually limited to 100-300ma, which is enough for one, two or three pre-amp chips. One of the common mistakes in power supply designs for audio is not having enough power to drive the op-amps when the audio signal is "hot", and the voltage drops at that point and then you have a nice fuzz-distortion sound as the signal clips.
Generally, electronic engineers that design audio circuits, use a 2:1 rule. If the op-amps throughout the entire design can draw 5 amps, they'll design a 10A power supply.
but for testing a simple pre-amp circuit, a AT power supply is fine. I did it when I was testing the already posted schematics. I even use AT power supply for testing vehicle electronics.
