by erichayes » Tue Nov 20, 2007 2:56 pm
Printed circuit boards lend themselves to rapid manufacturing of product, especially now that surface mount technology has matured. Turret board construction and its variants (see any vintage Fender amplifier) was the PCB's main predecessor, although perforated board was also used to a much lesser extent. Point to point started it all, because it all had to start somewhere.
Personally, I prefer P2P for a couple of reasons. First, as a prototyper, it's more hassle for me to do the artwork, expose, develop, etch and drill the board than it is to just build the damn thing on the fly. Second, P2P is sonically superior to PCB, albeit very subtly so.
I've taken up turret board construction over the last two years for limited production, as it is the best compromise between the two other techniques for my purposes. But for prototyping, I can have a blank chassis at 9:00 AM and a working guitar amp front end by 5:00 that afternoon using P2P and drawing the schematic as I go. 'Course, I've had 47 years of practice, too, and that probably factors in.
Eric in the Jefferson State