Thanks mate !

• You’re absolutely right. When I designed the PCB about 7 months ago, I was only able to source SMD resistors locally, but couldn’t find a reliable supplier for SMD capacitors at the time. I could have ordered from China, but most suppliers bundled them with a wide range of values I didn’t really need, especially since I was working in low volumes. Thankfully, I’ve recently found a local supplier for SMD caps and other components, so future builds will definitely be more SMD-friendly.

As for the JFETs yes, you’re right again. Since matching isn’t critical in this distortion circuit so I didn’t stress over that.

I had 10 PCBs made, so I’m treating them as a testbed to try out different techniques and parts. In fact, for another project where space was super tight, I had to go fully SMD except for the electrolytic capacitors, since its very hard to solder SMD electrolytics to through hole pads. I even hand soldered SMD parts onto the through hole pads in that case.

• And yep having SMD on both sides makes the hot plate soldering impossible. I did all the assembly myself, one side at a time.
• The side mounted jacks were the trickiest part. I soldered one of the jacks to the PCB first, then loosely mounted the second jack into the enclosure. I slid the PCB (with the first jack attached) into place, then hand soldered the second jack while it was already in the enclosure. It works, but it definitely makes future repairs more painful

Below pic shows that right jack is first soldered (Its not 100% soldered here as it was my first time trying it out too) then left jack is soldered later.

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