Well, I finished yesterday! The fact that you are reading this means I did
not kill myself, which is a definite plus!
Here is the chasis before I wired the jacks:
Here is me wiring the jacks on the outside of the chassis:
Here is that bitchy coax cable ready to go! (When I tried to strip the inner clear insulation, the whole wire would slide back and forth within the black outer insulation!)
Here's the whol thing complete before the tubes:
And here we are, done at last!
I checked all the voltages as instructed:
Mains: 125
B+ Before/After: 441/365
V1 1/3/6/8: 155/1/154/1
V2 1/3/6/8: 181/1.5/268/181
V3 1/2/3/6/7/8: 214/55/78/206/53/78
V4 3/7/9: 11/352/340
V5 3/7/9: 11/351/340
V6 1/3/7 310/365/311
Powered her up:
This thing is
LOUD! I haven't been able to get it
to 2 yet! It sounds great though! Very quiet, all the inputs work as advertised and, even though I was concerned about the switch, the boost worked great!
I've put it through the paces for about an hour so far and everything seems to be running great! I will get some sound clips done a little later on.
I would like to say thank you to Stephen for his great guide and outstanding service, especially with followups on the forum. I would also like to thank Dom, Revv23, Axe 34 and Jimmy James for posting great pictures that were informative and reassuring.
I only had four accidents on this project; I (slightly) burned myself on the soldering iron once, poked my finger with wire twice, and brushed against the live mains line as I was trying to push the power cord in (ouch! keep your hands outside the chassis when doing this!)
For anybody else considering this, I would say go for it! I was slightly amazed that it started right up without any problems, but the guide and help on the forums is excellent!
Here's a couple of tips that I learned:
Be generous with all your wire except the coax, you have plenty of hook up wire in your kit.
Be careful lifting the chassis once you put the transformers in, they knock the whole thing waaaay out of balance and if you are not paying attention you could end up dropping the whole thing! I would also add that I would recommend doing as much work as possible before installing the transformers, as it can be tricky to stabilize the chassis after that. But do put the transformers in before mounting the tag board or you will NEVER get those inpedence jack wires through that little grommet!
Wire your jacks up on the outside of the chassis BEFORE you put the plexi panel on. I didn't solder jacks in place because I was afraid the heat would melt or scar the faceplate and it was much harder because of that.
Make sure to put the fuse in before you start it up, I was worried the whole time that I would forget it.
The preamp and phase inverter tubes are a tight fit, wiggle them in gently. I had one that bent a couple of pins and they would have broken off if I had forced it!
Plug in your speakers before powering up, I STILL almost forgot this in my excitement!
Double check everything as you go and ESPECIALLY before you power up. I noticed early on that I had wired a jumper in the wrong hole on the tag board and right before I powered up I noticed that I had a solder joint that had broken loose and I had wired one of the 290V lines from the power transformer to pin 9 of the rectifier instead of pin 1!
Later today I am going to record some quick sound clips and next week I will be working on the cab with my bass player who has a nice woodshop setup in his garage. We are also going to do a couple of 1x12 speaker cabs at the same time. (did I mention this thing is LOUD!)
Thanks for everything!
AG