Development board test box for guitar pedals

I built these development board / test boxes to give me a robust and practical way to prototype my guitar effects pedals.
They are pretty solid and can easily move from work bench to the floor for testing – especially with the onboard battery.

The PCB ensures a solid connection to route power and audio onto the breadboards, and has a simple reverse voltage protection circuit, so I won’t fry the whole thing one late night changing the battery!
Power is routed using the input jack – protecting the battery life – and overridden with the DC IN jack. The foot switch provides a true bypass, and the routing is nice and quiet.

I initially built two of these for upcoming designs, and thought two would be good for A/B testing, but I’ve already ordered more parts and decided to make a ton more and even offer them for sale, as I’m convinced that once I’ve built a circuit on one, I won’t want to take it apart!

In the next blog, I’ll be using these to build a tube screamer, and posting the technical walkthrough and LTspice simulations with .wav files in a follow-on blog also.

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