I had to do design and build almost exactly this for a lab in college (I did computer engineering and the first two semesters of analog design were required). It was impossible to make it work with discrete components like this due to things like uneven heating of the components. Now, in that class we were using a bread board and not a pcb and none of us thought to trim the leads on the components to keep it as neat looking as this. I'm curious how much of a difference that would make.