Question about builds shown here - all PCB?

[Philtre]

As a real noob to pedal building I thought I'd have a look in the "Build Reports" forum section. All beautiful stuff, and all seem to be using PCBs which make my vero builds look like amateur hour (I'm using veroboard and building pedals from the layouts at http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.uk/)

So, where/how are you builders getting/making your professional looking PCBs from? Do you make them yourselves, or is there some place that sells these?

[mjg]

Nothing wrong with using vero board.  

If you want to purchase some PCBs, check out the colourful links at the top of the forum pages.  They all sell cool stuff. 

If you want to get into making your own boards, you would probably want to learn Eagle (or Fritzing), which produce a gerber file, and then get them manufactured at somewhere like oshpark or Elecrow.

That's a quick answer, feel free to ask for more details and someone will be happy to help. 

[Willybomb]

My guts aren't beautiful even when I do bother with PCBs....

[EBK]

I typically prefer vero for my builds (I see nothing amateur about it -- it is just a different artistic medium).  It has been over 10 years since I last designed a PCB layout, but everyone around here is so creative and generous that I'm practically buried in PCBs.  I can't complain.   

[playpunk]

There are a whole bunch of stores affiliated with this forum.

www.madbeanpedals.com

Is the OG. A bunch of others can be found in the links at the top of the forum page.

[jimilee]

We've all done vero builds, do a search. Most of them aren't pretty. Yours is great, keep doing what works for you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bsoncini]

I actually sort of prefer Vero. It's less neat in the inside but who cares. Once you put the backplate on no one  sees it . I normally only build stuff on PCB that is too complicated or big for Vero. Nice thing about it is you can build a simple fuzz, of whatever right away without paying and waiting for a PCB and if I don't like it I just unsoldered all the stuff I wanna keep and huck the Vero.

[sonnyboy27]

I used to do everything on Vero. Making it look good just takes some planning and patience. As for PCBs I have a few from pedalpcb.com (because I love top mount jacks) and some various other ones as well. I've only designed and fabbed one board of my own, although I'm planning on doing a few more this year.

If you're planning on making more than 1 or 2 then getting a board fabbed may be worth the time and experience. I got some done by jlcpcb.com and there's a few other places that will do fairly inexpensive "prototype" pcbs. I think there's even a calculator online that helps you find the cheapest one. The Bean knows where to go to get boards made for more of a production standpoint.