GuitarMasterClass Blog

Ok, back from my vacation. While I was away, I took delivery of an oscilloscope and signal generator. Neither are essential for building an amplifier, but they can be useful for scoping input vs output, measuring gain and also for setting and checking tube biases. Besides, I wanted an excuse to get another Oscilloscope! The Scope was bought from a nice guy on AX84.com, and I bought the signal generator from Ebay.

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A big push today - I spent the day wiring up the chassis, ready to drop the new board in when I have it done. Still waiting parts for that, but the wiring went well. All told it took me about 6 hours to do this - partly because I was getting used to making the twisted looms, but also because there is a lot of nitpicking, and I wanted to do a good job of routing the wires. It doesn’t look a lot for 6 hours work, and looks messy because there are a lot of loose wires waiting to be soldered to the board, but I’m pretty pleased with it. The hardest part was the heater filaments (green and grey twisted wires) - I didn’t get those perfect but they should work fine.

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Today I ordered a drill press. Its got a laser so it must be good. I sent an order to Mouser Electronics for new board components - the big caps were about $10 each - ouch! So I revise my estimate to about $50 of components and some more for the turrets and board. It will probably be after the weekend before I get all of this together, so my weekend task will be to wire up the chassis, I can use my existing board as a guide, I just won’t hook it up. Once all the wiring is done, it shouldn’t take long to hook all the wires up to the new board when I have built it.

Having thought about it a little more, I’m not 100% happy with my efforts below. The joints were fine and electrically sound I am sure, but I did not like the eyelet board much. It will only get worse as I start attaching wires - some of those holes are already running out of space. Add to that I am using 18awg wire - only necessary for the heater circuits but I figured thicker wire would be better so decided to use it throughout.

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Cool - my PTFE coated wire arrived early this afternoon allowing me to swing into action!

I don’t have a permanent electronics lab yet - need to move before I can get that, I set up a table in the garage, looks pretty technical if I do say so myself!

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Well after a busy week and a trip up to Massachusetts I finally have some time to put into this project!

I am still waiting for my wire to be delivered - it got caught up in the vacation and should arrive tomorrow. Not too bad as I am not returning to work until Wednesday. With a little luck it will arrive early in the day and I can actually start soldering some stuff together!

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