PCBs arrived from PCBCart

More exciting news about the miniature instruments as our second set of PCBs from PCBCart.com arrived this afternoon. Woo-hoo! We had 200 boards made up for just under £100 - making them less than 50p each.

Here they are, ready for inserting into our first commissioned miniature guitars. The soldermask and HASL (hot-air-solder-level) finish certainly makes soldering the boards up much easier than the homebrew boards we've been struggling with so far!

The cable on the right was soldered first. As we got familiar with the method for attaching the ribbon cable, the last cable (right) has a much better finish. These cables were hand-soldered using solder paste rather than the solder pot but only because that was what was to hand!

Even soldering by hand with a cone-tipped iron (rather than our preferred hot-air-soldering method) was quick and easy. Ok, the first transistor we put down went a bit wonky, but that's only because we were rushing to see how quickly we could assemble a full board!

Here's the first of our new boards ready to go into the latest (commissioned) micro guitar

Back in 1991, Metallica released their eponymous "Black Album".
It is still considered by many to be their best album to date. Everything about it was black. Including the guitars. This guitar is for a 90's Metallica fan who wants to remember James Hetfield before he shaved off his handlebar moustache and cut his hair!