[sdiy] happy new year to everyone! and a quick question

[klosmon]

At 12:46 AM 1/1/2003 -0700, brett wrote:
>hey everybody!
>
>just wanted to wish everyone on the board a happy new year! not being one
>for new year's parties, i'm off to my garage to practice with the soldering
>iron my girlfriend got me for christmas on some old control panel for welding
>apparati her dad had lying around. be excited for me, it's my very first
>soldering iron! (i'm sure many of you guys have fond memories of your own
>about this) 

In my case, they're fond, VAGUE memories -- first soldering iron was back
in 1961 ("gee, grandpaw, did they have CARS back then, or did you ride
horses to Radio Shack?");  but, yeah, it gives one a sense of empowerment.

>anyways, onto the quick question part: i know i could use a perforated board
>for everything (etching a pcb custom seems a little involved for this college
>student right now...), but i have had suggestions from an older electrical
>engineer friend to use insulated copper wire for all my connections as
opposed
>to the exposed wire shown in the 'tweako' diy effects pedal edu silva posted
>a while back ( http://www.smallbearelec.com/Projects/TweakO/TweakO.htm ).
>would this cut down noise? i guess theoretically charge could be bouncing
>all over the place and insulation would cut down on this,

I've used perf board for most of the projects I've built over the years,
and my experience has been that parts layout, grounding schemes and
shielding of sensitive parts/lines has more to do with noise control than
whether or not the wire is insulated.  I always thought of the buswire
trails as analogues to the copper printed circuit board traces;  TREY'RE
not insulated, so why shoud the  wire be?

The only time I've used insulated buswire is in high-density situations,
where there's a chance of shorting.

As always on this list, if there are dissenting opinions, I'm sure we'll be
hearing them pretty soon.

>thanks and happy new year again!

Same to you;  and as I've told everybody else:
"I've upped my expectations for the new year; now up yours."

~Cavernosum