Well it’s taken a little longer than I anticipated, and I’ve had a little less time to work on it than I hoped, but I finally have the chassis assembled. The fit and finish isn’t quite where I’d like it (I am by no means a metal worker) but broadly I’m happy.
The only real problem is the mounting of the veroboard with the bias and power scaling circuits. Although I did give its layout a fair amount of thought, I made a number of mistakes - such as: leaving enough space for the mounting holes… but not for the bolt; not considering the proximity of the power switch and the length of the bolts and of course the difficulty of lining up 4 holes between the main chassis, the aluminium cover plate and the board itself. I think I can get it to work as it is, but I do have duplicates of all components if I do need to build a replacement.
Here is the chassis and components from earlier today before I started assembly.
And here’s the chassis as it stands right now… tubes were added for the photo shoot and promptly put back into the box for safety. ?
(please excuse the blur)
One final point. A buddy of mine suggested that I house the attenuator resistors inside the old expression pedal housing, which I think is a fantastic idea. I’ve stripped out the innards (which were pretty interesting… a set of fins on a rocker moving between two other sets of fins… possibly a variable capacitor? I’ll look it up sometime). I also enlarged the holes connecting it to the inside of the chassis and added grommets to them. Of course, now that I have some more space I may look at increasing the complexity of the attenuator… possibly adding a second attenuation level and a bit of filtering… something for me to look into but not a call I need to make immediately.
