5F1 BUILD PART 1
So my kit did arrive after a very long time. I think it would have been faster to order from overseas, and split the opinions about quality whichever way anybody feels like. Included in the box was a very shiny steel chassis, two transformers with lots of wires and no labels or tags or anything, some wire, Chinese valves, a turret board, and a bag of whatevers. Looks like capacitors and stuff. No instructions. No diagrams. No nothing. Looking at it, a very basic bare bones “you will have to supply a lot of items and thought and genius to get this to work” kit. Ah well. I would have at least expected a power chord…
Steel chassis, no thanks, but it seems there are as many “Yes” as “No” votes between steel and aluminium out there. At least it is sturdy, heavy, and, well, too shiny. And barely big enough to house the bits supposed to make up an amp. I suspect that the kit is aimed to those fortunates who actually knows what is what, and can immediately tell a power transformer from an output transfomer, a diode from a pentode, and such minor things. Output transformers being talked about by my very unhelpful valve amp expert friends as pure magic vodoo. This one looks like any cheap transformer to me. I expected something, well, output transformer-ish?
Decision time – does this lot go to the trash bin, do I make up a better (?) chassis, do I try to assemble the kit, must I beg the supplier for assembly information, which is widely available on the internet, but the internet did not take my money for this kit. I do not like the layout of the F51 amp, valves hanging upside down next to the speaker magnet doen not make any sense to me, and I understand valves tend to get warm, and hanging upside down all that heat rises up into the valve socket. Now that sounds like a good idea? And there is no good ventilation in this design at all. Oh, only 5 Watt, so what. Hmm, life of already suspect components so what.
I do have this very shiny laser cut steel chassis, might as well see if I can adapt it for use in this project before I decide to order abigger aluminium chassis. I do have an aluminium chassis blank here, but it is only about 40 mm high, which will require extra material on the front and back, unless I separate the face panel from the chassis, not a problem if you have 2 mm aluminium plate. I do not.
More to follow.