Assembly

Ok, things are coming along just grand. Lots more work to finish up the chassis so I could actually start getting this thing put together. I finished the wood with stain and two coats of semigloss polyeurethane. I finished drilling all of the holes and sanding the aluminum, and have mounted the power supply, PCB board, and done quite a bit of wiring inside.

I bought a power choke and supplemental capacitor (motor run) not shown here. These are optional, but I've put so much into this thing that another $8-10 for each of those was worth it, assuming they do the stuff they are purported to do. Once again, I'm not much of an electrical engineer so I don't really understand it. I think the choke filters the AC power to take the alternating pattern out of the signal somehow and leave only the DC signal. I don't know, something like that. And the capacitor just adds extra ability to provide power needed for peak demands of amplification.

You'll notice a blue knob in the picture above that I thought was a bit too heathkitish, and later I bought a different black knob. I still don't like that one either, it's so boring. I can't seem to find a knob that looks right.

The power choke

back panel with connectors mounted

My soldering skills faltered a bit on the potentiometer (volume control) when I first wired it backward and didn't have enough length of my wires to make it work. So I have some giant globs of solder holding it together. I used some old RCA cables for my audio signal wiring, and sliced open an old PC power cable to reuse the wire from it for the power switch and ground wiring.

You will also see my blog skills are weak as I can't seem to get these pictures to flow right on the page. Whatever, right? You want to see what I'm working on, deal with it.

Coming together inside