Anticipating good things

[azatplayer]

Each of the programs I’ve used required a pretty steep learn.
I’ve had a crack at kicad and eagle but ended up taking he hardest route altium. Super hard learn.
That’s not much help! But I have used several pcb suppliers and can comment there.
The last house I used was Itead (China) real nice boards, had no issues anywhere and priced well.
Only reason I’ve moved was they had a length restriction.
I’m now using Allpcb(China) and they are next level. Cost is less and the timeframe is mind boggling. If I get an order away on a Sunday arvo, I’ve had them by following Friday! To Australia!
Unbelievable.
I guess there may still be pcb houses in the States, but there are none left here anymore. Those who are are just reselling Chinese boards.
Check em out when you’re ready. I’ve used them so far around a dozen times. And am currently using matt black which looks super cool. Happy to help in any way, I’ve made the transition from hard wired tag strip style to hybrid of pcb for psb and small boards, relays midi etc. but kept all the signal hard wired. It looks great is super practical adding boards over ptp, but am leaving that style as a premium line and moving to single boards. Simply a matter of getting to market for less cost.
Anyway I’ve not checked in for a while but seeing this section is cool if not overdue!

[chief mushroom cloud]

AllPCB has a US rep in FL
https://www.allpcb.com/contact_us.html
A former client of mine that designs research instrumentation used them.

Re: Altium.....I used to use Protel for jobs for JPL....and I agree...STEEP learning curve. Not intuitive at all. MG Expedition would be an easier program to learn ha! My opinion of course.
Just a comment on sch capture and programs....it seems the biggest hurdle is semantics. i.e. Trace, track, wire, wtf!? I wished to fuck everyone would get on board w/ IPC and refer to them collectively as 'conductors' in their tool names and standardized the icon.....goddamnit! See what happened! A rant! I need an espresso to calm down now.....off to the coffee bar!

[strelok]

I'll toss in another vote for Kicad. I've had quite good luck with it over the past year. It's pretty intuitive and minimalistic, but should be more than adequate for most any guitar amp type project. Here's a great little tutorial series for new folks to get started on:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... RILfE4zdoL

One thing I will note about it. If you happen take projects across platforms, it can be a bit funky. Like say you create a project on a linux machine and want to load it up on windows. Some of the components/footprints aren't stored in the same way in the directory tree for each OS, so you'll get missing components and whatnot that you'll have to go in and fix. I suspect that won't be a problem for most people here. Other than that its been great.