Quick question about two grounds

Started by Shawbrook, May 04, 2012, 12:51:34 PM

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Shawbrook

I'm building this schematic at the moment: http://diy-layout.com/9

It has two ground wires, one on the Volume pot and one on the upper strip. How should I connect these to the other parts?  Should everything which goes to ground be connected to both the pot and the upper strip? Thanks.

slacker

#1
Everything that's ground should be connected together somewhere, doesn't really matter where, I'm guessing it's drawn as a separate wire because the layout would look messy if he'd routed it to somewhere on the board. I would connect the ground wire from the volume pot to somewhere on the top row. The wire from the top row is then the "board ground" that you connect to your signal jack sleeves or the DC jack or wherever you normally connect it.

Shawbrook


R.G.

Quote from: slacker on May 04, 2012, 01:07:51 PM
Everything that's ground should be connected together somewhere,
Correct.
Quotedoesn't really matter where...
As a footnote, it doesn't matter much for small, low power and low gain circuits. As the circuits get bigger, more distributed in space, pull more current and/or have high gains, exactly where the ground wires go and how many of them there are start to matter a lot.

This is just so beginners reading this stick the footnote away in their brains so when they get to something that matters, they'll go "Oh, yeah! I remember now..."
R.G.

In response to the questions in the forum - PCB Layout for Musical Effects is available from The Book Patch. Search "PCB Layout" and it ought to appear.