Well, the amp kit I ordered from Weber finally got to my local Parcelforce Depot today - so I immediately went to collect it. Have to say everything looks reasonably good - the cabinet is excellent -
Only complaint with the cab is the handle is crap and only held on with self tapping screws. Luckily, I bought up a Fender one a while back for £8 which has dome bolts and retainers so that has been fitted since this picture was taken.
I was going to wait until the weekend to start but excitement got the better of me - so I've hand tightened everything apart from the trannies to the chassis. The chassis seems really good, heavy, well finished with well printed control designations and numbers. I'd heard the sockets were poor so had bought Belden replacements but they were about 1 or 2 mm too big for the pre-drilled holes so I had to enlarge the holes with a step drill. The jewel lamp was crap too, but I'd read that too so picked up a Fender one - that fitted without trouble. They have supplied an RCA socket for the speaker which doesn't seem to have a mounting plate as far as I can see and is too small for the hole in the chassis so replace this with a standard Cliff socket I had lying about. Not sure how to wire these up though, so some research required. The marks on the chassis you see is just grot from my greasy hands.
I had a wee bit of time so sorted through the rest of the stuff too, measured resistors and stuck them to card to help me find them again. I picked up some Sprague Atoms a while back so subbed them too for filtering - and started to populate the board. This is when I discovered my first problem - the supplied wire is not proper push back wire, it's got plastic insulation under weird nylon like fibres. It's pretty horrible to work with but I don't know of anywhere local I can get the proper stuff and don't have time to wait for delivery - I'm hoping to get the majority of the build done over the weekend as I have plenty spare time. So I'll have to learn to work with it, think it will need the end's stripped rather than just trying to push back.
I'll need to make a bit more space on Saturday morning - the kitchen table is my work bench but I'll need to extend it as I was disorganised and cramped today. You can see the replacement handle here too.
More updates to follow. Probably requests for help too!
Comments
Glad it's arrived at last. Now the fun begins. I recommend putting some PVC tape on the front of the chassis to protect the nice shiny finish whilst you are working on it. If you are not happy with the wire, Hot Rox sell proper cloth pushback at a reasonable price. Poor quality wire will make the build an absolute pain, so worth getting the good stuff for the sake of a few extra days wait.
Looking forward to more piccys
Don't beat yourself up on it, the experience that you gain building the amp will be priceless.
Just take things steady, measure twice cut once.
If you are not happy with any wiring you have done, then stop, take a break and redo it later.
Have fun
Yeah, enjoying it so far. Didn't get anything done over the weekend but got the board populated (sans wire) this morning, still waiting on decent wire arriving from HotRox so can't do anymore just now. I had one head scratching moment this morning when I realised I had a 25uF, 25 volts cap left over but it seems like I was sent a spare! Anyway - I've seen neater boards but for a first try this is almost acceptable I hope!
Well, the wire came yesterday from HotRox but I was unbelievably hungover so didn't dare heat up the soldering iron - would have been a recipe for disaster, but had a free afternoon today so got stuck in and managed to get it finished and unbelievably it worked! Have to say, it was a lot easier than expected - the delay with the order arriving meant I had time to do plenty of research. It sounds amazing - really happy how it ended up. Now - what to build next? Thinking a 5E3 maybe.
Nice work.
What made you go for Russian coupling caps? Did you go with a 12AY7?