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Do you folks tin plate your etched PCBs or do you just leave them as bare copper?

I tried tinning an etched board with solder paste and a small solder reflow oven.  It didn't work very well.  :-)  It was a total mess.  I don't think I am going to bother doing that on any board that isn't solder masked.  A proper stencil helps a lot as well.

I tinned another board by hand.  That worked, but tool a lot of time and a bit of solder braid.

I ordered some liquid tin from mouser and will give that a go.  I hear it is nasty stuff, but we'll see.

So what does everybody here do? 


Btw, let me put in a note on the quality of Haberdasher's etched PCBs.  I beat the living hell out of that first board and it is still usable (and finally reasonably cleaned up).  His boards are really well made.

I am new around these parts, but it has been fun reading all of the posts here.

I built my first pedal in the middle of Dec.2011 and now have finished and boxed 7 pedals.  I started building to fill some pedal needs I had, but it has clearly gotten to the point that I just like building them.

Very very addictive and fun.

None of the seven were madbean, but I have over 15 mb boards waiting for me now.  Just starting the Pork Barrel and Current Lover, my first madbean builds.  Maybe this time I'll even take photos.

It seems most folks here go through the pain to dig up real MN3005 chips.  Has anybody actually built one of each version and compared them?

I read through some of the old posts, but didn't find any real world comparison of otherwise identical builds.

I think it would be cool to do one of the old versions of this.