*I thought I was gonna blow alot of stuff Up!!

[petemoore]

Before my first DIY Buying spree, I had catastrophic visions of boards smoking components...
 I figured 20$ [for a Dist+ and startup stuff I didn't yet have]...it's worth the risk even if I have to do 3 to get one that isn't blown.
 I found out the 'blow rate' for DIY-ers is wayy lower than I'd expected.
 I'd blown circuits, motors etc. before...I figured it might be as high as 50% failure rate, and each failure would require re-upping the ante on fresh component replacements.
 After hundreds of builds, I have only a small pile of fried parts [probably less than 1% of total parts implemented], LED's [my fault] Opamps and Ge Transistors make up most of the list of blown components I have. I haven't blown components up for a long time either, so I attribute much of the damage to 'newbie-ism'...fried battery clip wires and a pot...V+ to V_ shorts took out a few things early on.
 Fortunate for today's newbs, there are nice perf layouts and Vero layouts...
 *Anyway I found out that most all of the parts I've bought still work fine...

[jmusser]

In my experiences so far, it seems like op amps can take a horrible amount of abuse. I have hooked power up to the wrong pin, and all sorts of horrible things, without them blowing. I recently wrecked two 4070 chips while building the DOF, and  they seem to be really sensitive. I almost blew a battery because I was using a scavenged switch which was internally shorted, but other than that, but really that's it. I am amazed how much abuse this stuff can take and still work!

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Whenever you burn out a component, immediately cut it in half. Because, otherwise, it will find its way back into a build & cause you endless grief!

[Pedal love]

Ge Transistors make up most of the list of blown components I have.

Personally I have seen more resistors and capacitors go that way.

[scratch]

'cut it in half' ?, heck straight to garbage can they go ...

CMOS is 'less forgiving' of having the wrong voltage on the wrong pin, blew a TOS chip that way ... ;-(

[Alex C]

'cut it in half' ?, heck straight to garbage can they go ...

But what if the garbage can gets knocked over while you're reaching to plug in your drill?  And later, "hey, here's a big 47uf cap I must have dropped.  It looks like it's rated for 600V; I'll use it in my tube amp's power supply filter..."

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

Whenever you burn out a component, immediately cut it in half. Because, otherwise, it will find its way back into a build & cause you endless grief!

ingenious! no more mysterious shorts!