Converting PCB to point to point

[Excavatoree]

Please forgive me if this has been discussed.  I tried searching, but if I screwed up, please delete.

I was surprised enough that someone would waste time removing components from a PC board and re-building a commercial amplifier to be "point-to-point," but the real facepalm was using the soldering gun on a PCB.

For the record, I might agree with hard mounting the tube sockets and running leads to the PCB, if that's necessary, but why turn an easy to repair PCB amplifier into a rats nest for some nebulous "sonic improvement?"



Again, forgive me if this has been posted before and discussed.

[0culus]

It's a "vintage" thing. A lot of "custom shop" guitar amps come with p2p wiring so they are just like the original. Yes, they are expensive. No, it probably makes zero difference in the toanz. My favorite amp is my little Egnater 15W head. It's got the tubes, but it's built on a PCB and it sounds great. And it + a 12" speaker cab is light enough to reasonably carry with me when I want to go jam with friends.

[james_s]

There's no point in looking for logic when it comes to this sort of audio stuff.

If I were building a tube amp from scratch I'd probably build it point to point just for fun, but I'm sure not gonna take the parts off a PCB that's already built.

[Berni]

Yep vintage design style and nothing more.

All the old amplifiers and radios and all used to be built like this just because circuit boards have not gained popularity yet. These devices ware really expensive anyway so it justified paying someone to put it together by hand. Then as technology marched on they found out PCBs can drastically speed up the assembly process and later on the process being automated entirely with pick and place machines for even higher production speeds.

This style of construction can still look beautiful in its own right. There are some old electronics where they have taken careful planning out of the component layout while the guy assembling it has taken care to bend the component leads nice and carefully, loom the cables together by hand, make each cable exactly to length, a true work of art. But is still annoying to troubleshoot and repair compared to a PCB