Stompbox breadboarding station

I needed a breadboarding station for my audio circuits. More specifically some kind of an interface in which I can plug the guitar in and try the audio circuit that is currently on the breadboard before I confine it to a permanent enclosure. It's a pain to find out that you circuit doesn't work after it is already soldered inside the enclosure and now you have to undo all the hard work you put in it to look nice and tidy. For that sake it would be great if the helping station/interface had a true bypass and a place to mount pots, sockets and what not - wiring and circuitry that are requred to try out the pedal before you call it done.

The main idea:

You built a circuit on your breadboard but don't know will it work or you still wanna tweak it but you need to hear it how it sounds. You plug your guitar in this station press the switch and voila! Make some changes, try it again, rinse and repeat. No more doing and undoing the wiring each time.

Requirements:

- 2 1/4"TS jacks

- 3PDT switch wired for true bypass

- on/off indicator LED

- holes for pots and other misc sockets

- pcb in and pcb out wires coming onto a breadboard

- power rails coming from a breadboard into the station

I brainstormed for a while should I use some kind of metal sheet, bend it and drill holes in it. Then maybe screw it to a wooden board and glue my breadboard on it. However, for the sake of making things work quick and for the sake of using old hardware junk I have at home - I decided to use my old defunct pedal.

The guts need to go out and only offboard wiring needs to stay. Although it was already there for this pedal I remade it because it wasn't very tidy.

I saved the pots and two germanium AC128 transistors for some future Frankenstein builds.

This is the true bypass wiring that is required (taken from tagboardeffects.blogspot.com - great site if you want to roll your own audio effects)

The green and blue (pcb input and output) wires will go outside of the aluminum enclosure and into the breadboard when prototyping. The same goes for 9V and ground which will be provided via lab power supply directly from the board. I would like to see the indicator led on the enclosure and the TS jacks need to be grounded so that is the reason why the power supply leads need to go out of the enclosure.

I considered leaving the DC input jack in place so I would be able to power the station with the wall wart as well. However, I noticed that the metal part around it is connected to one of the pins. As the enclosure needs always to be grounded, it would be a bad news if I accidentally connect e.g. center positive instead of center negative DC jack. In short I ditched it and left the wall wart power supply option for some future modification of the station if the need for it arises.

And here it is. It might not look like much but it will help greatly when prototyping guitar pedals.