[Diabolical Artificer]

Finally finished the amps bar a few niggles, a bit of testing and a few other minor jobs, see pics. I'll hopefully get to listen to them over the hols, I will of coarse be playing Jingle Bells, Here it is Merry Xmas and Walking in the Air at full blast.....not : )

It took me a little longer than anticipated as I had to redo the ali chassis for amp #2. This amp "module" was the first one I did, so it wasn't quite square and in fact was smaller than the other. It didn't sit well in the wooden case, so not happy, start again. Progress was slowed by my only electric drill dying half way through drilling out the big octal socket holes, I had to file the rest out by hand and drill all other holes by hand drill, all 100 odd of them.

I made a big boo boo in that I should have made the monoblocks a mirror image of each other, with one on/off SW on the left, tother on the right. I started to do this on the wooden case, then realised that as the PSU was already made, I was committed to making them as is, otherwise the layout would have been wrong. I'm bu**ered if I'm starting again : )

Another SNAFU I encountered was no ground connection from the PSU to amp chassis on amp #2. I found this out when I nearly had kniption's after reading 70v on the heater PSU! What the flegnog? Turn's out the McMurdo red range chassis connector locating pins which I was using as ground connect have a 13 thou gap between pin and outer, so OC. I got a coke can and made a round shim, to fill the gap and now have a good ground connection.

I have a problem to solve on both amps, they could be quieter and amp #2 has hideous 100hz hum. Hopefully this mean's redoing the decoupling of the IP, PS and cathode follower and checking for any ground loops. One last job is to do the meter faces which I'll try and do on a bit of software called meter.

TFL, Merry Xmas, ho ho ho, Andy